DEFLATION AND LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 39, 15 August 1921, Page 6

DEFLATION AND LABOUR

On the forty-one occasions on which the. American Federation of Labour has elected a president, Mr. Samuel Gompers has been defeated only once, in Dfenver ,in 1894. Miners are generally in the front rank of militant Labour, and it was their candidate who defeated Mr. Gompers at Denver, and this year again (as told in Tuesday's Post) it was the miners? candidate who stood as his opporie'nt, and whom he defeated by a two to one majority. t For an individual, the record is almost certainly unique. Stability of leadership is, as a rule, an indication of general stability; and it is surely not a meaningless fact that, whereas other Labour organisations evolve so frequently new forms, new methods, and new leaders, the American Federation of Labour has' been .persistently constant to a man who cannot be called either syndicalist or revolutionary, who is neither anti-national nor anti-constitutional, and who may perhaps best be described in political terms as a progressive democrat, using the phrase in its widest sense. If the 1 deflation temper of the millions of workers embraced by the' American organisation were revolutionary, surely the re-election of Mr. Gompers to the presidency would not be possible. If, on the other hand, his success argues a tendency to. deflate by process of negotiation, instead of per medium of strikes, the sooner will the United States regain economic buoyancy.

It is, of course, too soon to assume that the States will escape such paralysing^ straggles as that lately relinquished by the miners-of Great Britain. All that can be said is that the conduct of the organised workers' case appears to be in wise harids, and that Mr. Gompers's influence appears to be wider than the parallel influence exerted in the United Kingdom by moderates like Mr. Thomas and Mr. Clynes. At present the world is too close to the industrial-economic phases of the depressibn to be able to form, or even to begin to form, any considered judgment concerning it: but probably, Svhen the lean years are over, it will be recognised that the behaviour of employee and employer during the crisis is as much attest of national cohesion as were the sacrifices of the war itself. Statisticians will try to measure 1;o what extent the economic sufferings of the Great Powers respectively were the direct or indirect result of each nation's own internecine classwar. So far, the United Kingdom appears to stand low an the tally of national cohesion as tested by paralysing strikes, but %vho can say what is in store for other countries 1 First into trouble may mean first out; and if the industrial mobilisation of Germany proceeds uninterruptedly, neither Britain nor France, nor yet America, will be able to afford to waste much time in unproductive industrial warfare. If Germany is prevented by her late enemies from locking, up her money in armaments that do not produce, and if she is compelled to pay "reparation" in manufactured goods, the industrial pace she will set will leave no room for laggards, and in this respect the history of the next decade will be fall of surprises.