DRAFTING LABOR

As a revenge for the defeat of the University at the hands of Yale, the 1921 debaters humbled their Eli opponents last night at the New Lecture Hall. No more interesting and vital subject has ever been the subject for an intercollegiate discussion. The labor question is second in importance only to the question of the equipment and training of our fighting men. The entire shipping problem comes under the head of labor. How best to get the maximum work from the laboring classes is the problem that we must solve and it is interesting to note that the anti-conscription team upheld their side. We congratulate the 1921, speakers on their victory, but it does seem as though a labor conscription policy would bring the most efficient results in spite of the opposition that the powerful Labor Party would be bound to make. Conscription is always odious, but it is the only fair method of selection and it would strike rich as well as poor. The man who is drafted for labor has very little ground for objection, compared to the person chosen for trench service and a labor draft is the one and only way to put the workmen, manual and intellectual, in the places where they would do the most good. In the higher intellectual classes a type of conscription is already in force, only this selection is done under the guise of an invitation to do Government work elsewhere. Schwab, Ryan and even Hughes are examples of such cases.

The main difficulty with such a conscription is that it might start labor troubles in the country. It is a delicate proposition and would have to be handled in an extremely tactful way. One feasible method would be to draft these men for military service, give them uniforms, put them under martial law, divide them into regiments of engineers, and just as we have the Railway Engineers in France today we could have shipbuilding and munition regiments, farming regiments scattered in squads or platoons where they are most needed. Such an arrangement would satisfy the pride of the laboring classes and simultaneously improve the situation manifold. The present situation makes such or a similar reform essential.