AMERICAN LABOR WAR.

Evening Star, Issue 18053, 22 August 1922, Page 4

AMERICAN LABOR WAR.

“Confusion and illusion and relation” formed the riddling of the bards in King Arthur’s day. If they had lived in there times, and been anything of economists, it would probably have run “inflation, semistagnation, stabilisation.” That has been the cycle induced by war s catastrophe, and the progress from the second to the third stage, which the world is suffering now, has been the hardest trial, for Labor. Inflation means high wages, if it means also dear commodities. It has been hard for workers to realise that the extreme wages payable in the first conditions cannot be continued in the second, and that something must ho sacrificed by them and others before the miseries of the lowest state can give place to a renewal of prosperity, founded this timet on a firmer basis. Labor generally has been prone to kick against the pricks of these economic laws; but the laws have proved inexorable, and defiance of them has had no other effect than'to make things worse for Labor and the whole community besides. The revolt has been made later in America than in most other countries, and, perhaps because of its long deferment, it has been’made there with a particular intensity. A general coal strike and a railway strike make a bad combination, even though the railway strike has been no more than a partial one and seems to bo ending now. Bad conditions in America must bo seriously protracted by this industrial war, which the coal owners and the strikers must fight out for themselves, President Harding having failed to settle it. The Federal Government will see that men who arc willing to work for less wages than they received in war time are left free to do so; that the ooal.yhich is produced is equitably distributed; and that murders foully perpetrated in the name of unionism are not condoned by it, though, as the State laws stand, it may have no power to punish them. It is nearly five months now since the coal strike began. It will last probably until the strike funds are exhausted and the strikers learn how much they have aggravated their ills. ■, A writer in an American number of the London ‘ Times ’ published on Independence Day (July 4) traces the history of these American strikes. In war time, he recalls. Labor in America, as in other countries, constantly demanded and received higher wages and shorter hours. Its extortions were made easier by the complaisance of the Democratic Government, anxious to win the war, and expectant also of the support of organised workers at the elections., A strong impression was caused, according to this writer, that “Labor had taken advantage of the war to hold up by the throat the great mass of taxpayers, and this belief engendered a hostility amounting almost to hatred.” ’There is no doubt, he admits, that many employers and a few of the railroads determined to break organised Labor as soon as a. diminished demand for services should make that course possible. Actual efforts, however, made with that intent did not amount to much, because it was soon seen that the design was impracticable. Railway workers were favored by Mr Wilson's Government beyond any other class. Their average earnings were more than doubled in war time, while new regulations required an increase of 151 per cent, in the number of workers. When “decontrol” was established two years ’ago, the Railway Labor Board was created to regulate wages and working conditions. The board consists of three representatives of the employers, three of employees, and three of the public. Its decisions have no actual force as law; they are appeals, really, to the public’s sense of justice. The Labor Board began to raise wages until increases of rates and fares, imposed to meet these by another Government body, were found too great to ha borne by the public. The railway finances were going from bad to worse, so the board made a reduction of wages, which was confined to unskilled workers of the maintenance branch, while a reduction was made in freights. The maintenance men lost no time in preparing to strike,' though they were stilt being paid more than other unskilled workers doing similar work, and a strike was soon threatened by the whole body of railwaymen.

Conditions in the coal industry are described as peculiar. The wages paid aro high, but there is a great deal of broken time, said to he largely due to the policy of tho unions, concerned for their fighting funds, in encouraging a much larger membership than the industry can support. There aro too many mines and too many miners, tho conditions in these and other respects being tho opposite of conditions which have caused trouble in past years in New Zealand. Mr Harding has suggested that a commission should bo appointed to investigate tho whole position of the industry. An alternative suggestion has been that a' permanent commission should be appointed for the regulation of its conditions on tho lin.es of the Railway Labor Board. That board Mr Harding would invest with direct powers to enforce its decrees against both Labor and Capital, instead of tho purely advisory powers that are at present possessed by it. But the enforcement of decrees against large bodies of workers who do not choose to abide by them has been always easier in theory than in practice. Owing to the number of non-unioni mines and the large stocks which the country contained before its commencement, the coal strike has not caused so much misery to the country as a whole as might have been expected of it. It is the strikers, apparently, by whom its chief rigors have been suffered up to now, which accord? with strike experience in every country.