JOHN LEWIS LOOKS AHEAD

With the opening of the C.I.O.'s official campaign to unonize the Ford Motor Company and the news of the ensuing riots and bloodshed the reading public will feel, in all likelihood, a wave of resentment against John Lewis and his group. When a country topples slowly into economic chaos no one thinks to improve his condition by refusing to work. Work and the chance to earn an honest living appear as the greatest benefits to mankind and woe to him who willfully throws up this Godsend to baggle for more money or shorter hours.

With increasing prosperity, however, sentiments changes. Wages which seemed lavish during the dark hours now appear too small; normal hours--hours which generations of workmen have deemed right--now appear oppressive. The result--strikes. Strikes are not, in themselves, wrong. Many strikes are normal, just and reasonable forms of protection against employer-exploitation and they serve a fair and worthy purpose. But strikes which are organized and financed by a group of publicity experts, labor pirates, professional trouble-makers and highly paid agitators, sitting in richly decorated offices hundreds of miles away; strikes which are planned for months in advance, in which every exigency is carefully provided for and in which the goal is not better conditions for the working men but increased war-chests and amplified political power--these strikes are supremely dangerous, flagrantly illegal in every sense and potential tinder-boxes for they will result in a desperate industrial war sooner or later. The Ford Company from the first day of the depression maintained its policy of exceptionally high wages for all, fairness toward all employees and better working and living conditions than has ever been seen in the history of industry. The Ford Company cannot be accused of discrimination, oppression or intimidation of its employees. Rather it has been traditionally cited as a high spot in the relationship between employee and employer.

The C.I.O. is not trying to organize the Ford Company from any motives of bettering conditions:--conditions cannot be bettered beyond the Ford standard for some time to come. The important fact is that organization of the Ford employees will mean approximately $6,000,000 additional dues for the C.I.O. and the complete control of the automotive industries of America--an immense and dangerous amount of power for any man or small group. That John Lewis is looking ahead to 1940 is a far more disquieting thought than that he is promising the contented Ford employees even better conditions under his own rule-of-thumb and the aegis of his C.I.O.