Bannerless Man

Thumbing through his mail about a year ago, A. F. of L.'s President William Green came across a letter from Princeton, N. J. The missive suggested that in these troubled times Mr. Green could do himself and the public a service by writing a book on Labor's role in democracy. This week Labor and Democracy* appeared under William Green's signature./- Mr. Green being a busy and none too articulate man, readers could reasonably conclude that his first book was the fruit of collaboration with some brainy hireling.

Labor and Democracy is nevertheless a true mirror of William Green--a plain work by a plain man. "Those of us who have grown up in the labor movement," he observes, "know that its real strength and function is not as an army with banners flying, enlisted for a crusade, but as groups of workers interested in having a job and in doing a good day's work. . . ."

Of his intimate associations with John Lewis in the United Mine Workers (before C. I. O. was formed), with A. F. of L.'s Founder Sam Gompers, with many another Laborite and politico, impersonal Author Green tells almost nothing. The one anecdote in his 194 pages of record and analysis concerns John D. Rockefeller Jr. (see col. 2) and the ill-famed Ludlow "massacre" at a Rockefeller coal mine in Colorado, where eleven children and two women suffocated when National Guardsmen burned a strikers' camp. Mr. Green was dedicating a monument to the Ludlow martyrs of 1914 when a closed car drew up:

". . . A man from the car came to the platform and indicated that he wanted to speak to me. 'Mr. Rockefeller is in that car,' he whispered, 'he wants to speak to the miners.' It was difficult for me to believe that anyone could so misunderstand a situation. 'For God's sake tell Mr. Rockefeller to leave here at once,' I replied, 'he may be killed, if these men find out he is here.' " Mr. Rockefeller left.

Author Green's views on C. I. O. are strictly A. F. of L.: that C. I. O. is the rotten fruit of John Lewis' personal, destructive ambition. True to A. F. of L. tradition, Author Green insists that Labor's base and strength are in the shop, that political activity must be nonpartisan and secondary. But, surveying the corporate structure of modern business, he worriedly notes "points of control which Labor cannot reach by collective bargaining alone," goes on to preach Government regulation (and even ownership of railroads), when & where private enterprise "cannot alone adjust itself to new conditions." Near the end of his timid tome, he tentatively concludes:

". . . Experience with democratic procedures develops discrimination and the realization that identical provisions for all do not necessarily result in equal opportunity for all. To work out the transition from a social structure that provides special privilege for those in positions of power, to a social order providing equal opportunity for all, is something that challenges both our intelligence and our integrity of purpose."

* Princeton University Press ($2.50).

/- Mr. Green's rival, John Lewis, has one book to his credit: Miners' Fight for American Standards, published in 1925.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.