Evening Post. A GRAVE RESPONSIBILITY

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 55, 3 September 1934, Page 8

Evening Post.

A GRAVE RESPONSIBILITY

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1034,

The last hope of averting the general strike in the American textile industry which may close 2781 mills, put a million persons out of work, and leave three or more times that number dependent upon public relief or private charity, is reported to have failed. It was but a slender hope that was centred in the lastminute interview between the Labour leaders and the National Labour Relations Board on Saturday, and it had vanished when, "after listening to hours of argument, pleading, and coaxing,'.' the Labour men emerged from the board's offices with nothing to report except that "the strike will goon." The -statement that the strike accordingly "became effective at midnight on Saturday" is doubtless technically correct, yet for practical purposes it may be equally correct to say that HJbas not yet taken effect, For Sunday is a day on which the striker and the non-striker are indistinguishable, and as today, being America's Labour Day, is a national holiday, they are indistinguishable still, -Till midnight today, therefore, there is still room for. more last-minute interviews. The hope may be immeasurably fainter than it was on Saturday, but flic way which even the most obstinate feuds have of getting settled at the very last minute, which means not the technically but the actually last minute, is notorious. / .

But if boards and Labour leaders have exhausted their resources of conference and 'conciliation, and the employers have nothing to add. to the .'peremptory rejection of Labour's proposals which might without injustice bo called their last shot, these extra forty-eight hours are giving a golden opportunity to the man whom his fellow-countrymen, without distinction of party, creed, class, or status, hay been accustomed almost from the moment of his inauguration to regard as their universal provider and universal referee. What is President Roosevelt going lo do about it? He will complete his eighteenth month of office today. During the last six or those months his mana has suffered slightly through'-.the; blundering of Congress and, to a smaller degree, of himself. But both in official power and in personal popularity he still stands [far higher than any peace-time President ever stood, and to describe him merely as the strongest man in the country today lVould be a mis- | leading half-truth; Not only is Miv Roosevelt the strongest man that America possesses; he is also her only strong man. There is. no other American whom even his own admirers would dream of ranking on the same level with the President or even in the same class with him. It is a case of "Eclipse first; and the rest no\yhere." So far is Mr. Roosevelt ahead'of any possible competition that there are probably very few members of either party who would not regard his removal before he has completed his job as a national disaster.

But power of course means responsibility. The President is now the only authority left who can help the nation past the hurdle which it has been contemplating with anxiety for more than a year, and with alarm for more than six months, and at which it is now, hopelessly balked. And his responsibility is something more than that of the greatest power iv the land. Most of the difficulties with which he has been wrestling j during the last eighteen months were none of his own or his party's making, for his party had been out of j power for eight years when the { slump began, and.Mr. Roosevelt did j not enter Federal politics till three' years later. But this National Recovery Act is the work of his own hands, and it is he who has been administering it ever since it came into operation on June 16, 1933. Even before that date the controversy | over the measure hod revealed' the difficulty which may be holding up one of America's greatest industries tomorrow, and it became acute during the drafting of the codes. If even a year ago he had recognised I that, if ignored or dallied with, the j trouble was bound to excite a fierce and nation-wide struggle, and taken a firm stand, a reasonable and permanent settlement might have been possible. But, whatever may have been the difficulties, they have been indefinitely increased by months of procrastinations and hesitations and patched-up truces. There is a double irony in the circumstances under which President Roosevelt is now called upon to make one of the most difficult decisions of his career. In the first place, the cause of the trouble is a fundamental defect in his own handiwork, which is particularly dear to his heart and has in many respects worked so well. Secondly, the trouble has arisen in the very industry which on July 17, 1933, gave the N.R.A. its promising start by being ready with a code ahead of all competitors—the cotton textile industry. The prohibition of child labour winch was provided by that code was a great triumph for

the President and the nation, but the j manufacturers who signed it were not equally ready to recognise some of the rights of adult labour which the draftsman of the N.R.A. evidently had in view, but seems to have expressed imperfectly. These rights are stated in section 7a of the Act of which the National Labour Relations Board, simultaneously with its failure to induce the cotton textile workers to call off the strike, has issued an official interpretation. The material part of this muchdiscussed section 7a of the N.R.A. is as follows:— Every corlo oi' fair competition, ugrnemojit, find licence approved, proscribod, or issued unrjor this titlo shall contain tho following conditions; (I)' That employees shall have tho right to organise and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall bo ft'oo from tho interference, restraint, or coercion of employers oi labour, or their agontfs, in tho'designation of suclrrepresentatives-or in selforganisation or in other concerted activities for tho purpose of collective bargaining or other mutunlftkl ov protoctionj (2) that no employee and no ono Booking employment shall, bo. required as c, condition of omploymoiit to join any company union or to refrain from joining, organising, or assisting a Labour organisaton of bis own choosing. Space will not permit us to discuss the highly important decision which is said to declare in effect that "where independent American Federation of Labour Unions gain a majority vote, company unions created by employers become illegal." This is eleventh-hour business with a vengeance. It is the very decision for which the workers of America have been struggling, but, as the industrialists will fight it through the courts, it is probably too late to avert the strike.