Taxation v. Strikes

(See front cover)

It is apocryphal to represent the U. S. Labor front as a bristling grey skyline of elevators, tanks, derricks, combines and converters before which stand 32,000,000 men and women with sickles, trowels, wrenches and hammers in their hands. The effective strength of U. S. Labor lies not within the horny hands of the inarticulate mass of workers, but in the heads of the 4,000,000 who are organized into trade unions.* And the 4,000,000 are by no means marshalled into a solid line.

The extreme Left of the organized phalanx is held by the Industrial Workers of the World ("Wobblies") whose unclassified membership slugged and dynamited its way to notoriety before the War but is now practically defunct with a claimed strength of 68,000. A little closer to the centre the line is occupied by the Trade Union Unity League, commanded by William Zebulon Foster, No. 1 U. S. Communist. Liveliest unit in this organization is the National Miners Union which was active in the coal fields of the Pittsburgh area last spring (TIME, July 6). The T. U. U. L. claims 100,000 members, although it is estimated only 7,000 of them actually pay dues.

Well to the Right of the centre lies the numerical strength of U. S. organized Labor. Here are deployed the independent Amalgamated Clothing Workers. They have 100,000 members, two banks (resources: $16,000,000), a co-operative housing program in New York City. They form the strongest clothing workers union in the country. Next come the Big Four Railroad Brotherhoods--engineers, firemen, trainmen, conductors. In the past five years their enrollment has declined from 500,000 to 410,000 because of economies the carriers have effected in personnel. The Brotherhoods mortally hate & fear Moscow. They operate banks (not very successfully), distribute insurance benefits, behave conservatively.

Vastly overshadowing Brotherhoods, Communists and Wobblies stands the great pyramid of the American Federation of Labor. At the base of the pyramid is a membership of 2,889,550 represented by 29,574 local unions, 804 city centrals, 49 State branches, 4 departments. Almost at the top of the pyramid is the all-powerful Executive Council: secretary, treasurer, eight vice presidents. On top of the pyramid sits President William Green. Although all other labor organizations rush to deny it, his voice, when it does speak, is the Voice of U. S. Labor.

Convention. There are in the land between 5,000,000 and 7,000,000 people out of work. Three weeks ago that large part of Labor which works in steel, copper and textile mills received substantial wage reductions (TIME, Oct. 5). All last fortnight the movement continued, employers explaining that there must be less pay or no work at all. With the nation's banks and the world's economy at a crisis (see p. 13 and p. 15), Labor was expected to accept its share of the general misfortune in a peaceful spirit. For the most part it did so accept, but most of the workers thus far affected by the scaling down were non-union workers. The country observed closely as the 51st annual A. F. of L. convention sat down at Vancouver, B. C. last week to consider its third frugal winter.

Six-Hour Day. Many of the resolutions which were thrown into the convention hopper were perfunctory: a proposal that Congress immediately authorize the expenditure of $5,000,000,000 for public works; denunciation of the practice of "throwing men over 45 on the industrial scrap heap"; a petition to Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker of New York to give his firemen an eight-hour day. But others were more significant, indicated that Labor might be getting its back up. Harshly condemned for "inhuman working conditions" and referred to as "a $700.- 000,000 outrage" was Six Companies, Inc., builder of the Hoover Dam where twelve workers collapsed and died in the Nevada heat last summer (TIME, Aug. 24). And although the convention, encouraged by Senator James John ("Puddler Jim") Davis of Pennsylvania, longtime (1921-30) Secretary of Labor, turned its back on a Federal Dole, one Labor measure advocated by the delegates seemed certain of gaining the ear of Congress this winter. The 21 railroad unions (including the unaffiliated Brotherhoods), whose industry has laid off 250,000 men in a year, demanded a six-hour day to bring men back to work. President Green assured the movement of the Federation's "full political and economic strength." With that strength the transportation unions got the Adamson Act and the eight-hour day in 1916.

Voice of Labor. When President Green, Labor's diplomat, a pillar of Baptist conservatism, addressed the convention, Labor's hackles were indeed rising. In a preliminary meeting the Voice of Labor had assumed a surprisingly threatening tone: "Some of us have been wondering whether the present industrial order is to be a success or a failure. No social order is secure where wealth flows at such a rate into the hands of the few away from the many. . . . We will be in favor of having the United States Government take it away through taxation and distribute it to the masses."

President Green spoke as no high Federation official has spoken since the rough-&-ready pre-War days of the organization. "The right to work is a sacred right that every government, no matter what it's for. must guarantee if it is to endure. What shall we say of a system that relegates men at the prime of life to the human scrap heap and that knows no remedy for the situation other than a reduction in the standard of living? I warn the people who are exploiting the workers that they can only drive them so far before they will turn on them and destroy them! They are taking no account of the history of nations in which governments have been overturned. Revolutions grow out of the depths oj hunger!"

Dwindling Labor. Labor's critics, among them J. B. S. Hardman in last week's New Republic, paint a sorry picture of U. S. organized Labor, particularly of the A. F. of L. whose membership dwindled 71,000 in the past year alone because of unemployment. Urban U. S. citizens get the notion that every worker in the country has a union card. That is because city dwellers who are annoyed by having to pay plasterers $15.40 a day, come chiefly in contact with building tradesmen whose ranks show an optimistic gain of 461,000 in the past ten years. Over the same period, unionized printers and bookbinders increased 54,000, clothing workers 119,000, musicians 89,000. These are isolated instances and do not amount to much when it is considered that the unionized strength of steelworkers has melted to insignificance, that from 1920 to 1930 textile workers lost 70,000 members, the International Association of Machinists lost 252,000 and so on down the line. Coal miners were organized 37% in 1910, 21% in 1930. Why the decline in unionization?

During the War the A. F. of L.'s membership doubled to its highest peak (4,078,740). President Samuel Gompers was taken abroad to be presented to George V of England and to sit (unofficially) at the Peace Conference. In the light of subsequent developments, his critics feel that he might have shaped U. S. Labor into a great political and economic power by taking advantage of stressful times instead of trading a great opportunity for a slightly fatter pay envelope.

After the War the A. F. of L.'s power, the seat of which had been moved to a handsome Doric building on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue, dwindled. The Federation became more & more respectable. Its leaders had tasted national and international power, had associated as equals with the bigwigs of finance and politics. They decided to form banks which could lend money to fair employers, withholding it from concerns which favored the open shop. If Capital had to be fought, it would be fought with Capitalistic weapons. First labor organization to founder in this foreign field was the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers which sank $20,000,000 of its hundred-million resources in Florida's swamps in 1926. Total resources of the 22 Labor banks showed a decrease even in the boom years of 1928-29.

Labor's Gompers remained at heart a piecework cigar maker to the end. As industry grew more specialized, Gompers merely grew older, stodgier. He refused to see that it does not take years of apprenticeship to teach a man to screw two nuts on a Ford chassis as it passes him in straight-line production. So the A. F. of L.'s membership continues to be a diehard association of specialist craftsmen, for which industry has less & less use. On his death bed Gompers petulantly directed his membership to support the Presidential candidacy of the late Robert Marion La Follette, thus disregarding the non-partisan pledge of the Federation's first constitution. Samuel Gompers did not even get his own candidate into the A. F. of L.'s presidency. Instead it fell into the hands of an idealist.

William Green-- The Gompers candidate was Red-baiting Matthew Woll, "the crown prince," head of the Photo-Engravers Union, who has a flair for speechmaking. The day after Gompers was in his grave the Executive Council, from which and to which all Federation power flows, met behind closed doors. John Llewellyn Lewis, whose United Mine Workers swing the heaviest vote in Federation affairs (400,000, although their depleted ranks have but 156,978 dues-paying members) dominated the proceedings. Mr. Lewis, his squat face as knotty and uncompromising as a chestnut, did not want the presidency for himself, apparently preferring to run the bulkiest A. F. of L. union while having his own man in the presidency. Deviously he edged William Green, then United Mine Workers' secretary-treasurer, into the seat Gompers had left. In the face of bitter opposition John Lewis has adamantly clung to the miners' leadership. Last year Alexander Howatt, Illinois leader, led the insurgents away from the fold. But Lewis never loses a fight within his organization. He went to law, badgered and enjoined the Illinois rebels back in line. Last week instead of appearing in Vancouver he bobbed up unexpectedly at a grievance meeting in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. where there is a strike at the Glen Alden collieries.

If Miner Lewis expected William Green to be a yes-man he was mistaken. Mr. Green, 58, was also a miner. He has an ugly scar extending from his right nostril across his cheek as a reminder of his youth in the pits. The reason that Mr. Green was soon able to run the Federation with a free hand is that there is a profound organization loyalty among the Executive Council. Most disputes are settled by compromise which perhaps accounts for many of the Federation's flaccid actions: its failure thoroughly to support last winter's Danville (Va.) textile strike through which it might have penetrated the union-resisting South (TIME, Jan. 12); its reluctance to agree on a candidate for Secretary of Labor last year, forcing President Hoover to appoint Brotherhoodman William Nuckles Doak (TIME, Dec. 8); its inability to organize the automotive industry.

President Green, however, has shown ability in ordering the Federation's internal affairs. And no man rides horse against the dragons of Red propaganda more surely than he. Born at Coshocton, Ohio, his father was an Englishman. From his mother, a Welshwoman, he got brown eyes. At 19 he was elected secretary of the local union, eight years later becoming subdistrict president of the United Mine Workers. He joined the Baptist Church and the Elks and Odd Fellows, got his neighbors to send him to the Ohio Senate in 1911, where he became Democratic floor leader and president pro tern. In 1913 he was elected secretary & treasurer of the United Mine Workers.

He is a quiet man, stocky, with a bald spot. His home is still in Coshocton. He has one unmarried daughter, four married ones, one son. He is the prime example of Labor Leader, New Style. He has prospered and, until last fortnight, his public utterances have indicated that the Capitalist system seemed a good pragmatic one to him. His son, Harry, is in his junior year at Princeton where he studies seriously, plays a little tennis. He held a polite discussion in the Institute of Politics & Economics last year with young Laurance Rockefeller on Capital & Labor.

Program. After five days last week, William Green's convention recessed. Pending for consideration this week was the program drawn up by the Executive Council, proposing: i) legalization of 2.75% beer; 2) a national conference of employers and laborers to be called by President Hoover; 3) immediate inauguration of the five-day week; 4) prohibition of all child labor.

The A. F. of L.'s constitution contains this belligerent sentiment: "A struggle is going on between the oppressors and the oppressed of all countries, a struggle between the Capitalist and the Laborer!" Labor has two means of struggling: 1) strikes; 2) using its political strength to force the enactment of favorable legislation.

Strike news of last week: In Boston 3,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association walked out. Affiliated with the A. F. of L., they refused to abide by a recent agreement reached between the national organization and employers, demanded a four-hour pay guarantee for Sunday and holiday work, a lighter sling load. For this unauthorized strike, the local union's charter was revoked. At Lawrence, Mass., 23,000 textile workers quit when threatened with a 10% wage cut. Most unusual was the fact that the Communist National Textile Workers and the conservative A. F. of L.'s United Textile Workers joined in concerted action. Lawrence police refused permission for the National unionists to convene on the common, arrested seven agitators. But the United Workers were allowed to convene at will. At Boonton, Dover and Paterson (N. J.), Hampden (Mass.) and Philadelphia, members of the well-organized American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers, A. F. of L. affiliate, struck, but their leaders agreed to accept 35% to 40% reductions in wages in return for a guarantee of the 1929 scale in 1932.

Political portents at Vancouver: President Green made it plain that the Federation will urge the upping of inheritance taxation, possibly the restoration of the gift tax, to redistribute "superfluous wealth." He also plainly indicated that to provide more work he would agitate the six-hour day for workers in the transportation field, an industry in which the Government largely controls working conditions. The Federation has more than one way of gaining the ear of Congress: by workers' petitions, through Labor's Cabinet representative, by the personal lobbying among legislators and high executives of President Green and his Washington staff.

Looking to Vancouver last fortnight, it seemed evident that Labor had decided to lay by its rusty old weapon, the national strike, to use its newer weapons of diplomacy and politics.

*0nly 12 K% of U. S. wage earners are organized. In Germany the proportion is 35%, in Great Britain 371/2%, in Australia 52%.

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