FUNDAMENTAL WEAKNESS OF SOCIETY SHOWN BY PRESENT DAY STRIKES

Mr. Norman Thomas, Chairman of the League for Industrial Democracy, who spoke recently at the Liberal Club, when asked to state the attitude of the League towards strikes, said:

"I have never heard of an advocate of industrial democracy eulogizing strikes. That such things should exist shows a fundamental weakness in our present industrial organization, providing as it does that two classes--employers and employees--working against each other instead of in accord with the general good. That the latter state of affairs is the more desirable is self-evident.

In as far as strikes are a means to a good end--the betterment of the living conditions of the workingman--they fill, although crudely, a certain need, and are therefore in a measure instruments of good. That they are often justified is undeniable; that they sometimes serve selfish and corrupt ends is equally true.

Coercion Never a Solution

Whatever the situation, it will never permit of coercion as its ultimate solution. The recent injunction against the railroad strikers was a monumental piece of folly, for which payment must inevitably be made. It was far too sweeping in its character--so sweeping in fact that it was never put to the test. It remains an unwieldy weapon held over the heads of workers whom it has only embittered where it was meant to subdue.

There is evidently something wrong with the whole organization of the world's industry, and no patchwork methods are going to set it right. It is for a new system, a new universal institution that will do away with all the old cross purposes and selfish barriers in industrialism that the League for Industrial Democracy is working."