TRIPLE ALLIANCE

Richberg's favorable attitude towards the program of the United States Chamber of Commerce offers concrete evidence that the Administration at last desires the "cooperation of business and will in turn cooperate with business to revive trade and industry." But this policy is doomed to failure while labor assumes such an antagonistic attitude towards corporate industry, and while the textile workers threaten to inaugurate another paralyzing strike.

Since the opening days of the current Administration, Roosevelt has pursued a policy so radical in its implications that it has antagonized the leading business interests of the country and has precluded cooperation between Washington and Wall Street. In this mutual antipathy and distrust, many economists have found a leading cause of the failure of industry to respond to the artificial stimuli embodied in recovery legislation. With this obstacle removed from the path to prosperity, the government new faces again the barrier of labor hostility. But with 20,000,000 people on the federal relief rolls, it is impossible to understand the opposition of sincere labor leaders to a program whose stated objective is the reemployment of idle millions. Granted that in this process there may be infractions of the notorious Section 7a, granted also that wages may fall to rise as fast as labor might desire. But a plan whose ultimate aim is to put back to work as soon as possible every unemployed man in the country is obviously beneficial to labor as a whole and deserves its cooperation.

No program fro recovery can succeed unless the leaders of government, industry, and labor are willing to work together towards a common goal. And when that goal concerns the welfare of an entire people, the opposition of labor appears to be nothing but self-interested obstruction.