Monkey Wrenches and Monkey Tricks

Labor unions don't want strikes. They want them less than capital, less than the public, less than the Administration. A strike is only the last resort of a union when any agreement with the employer seems impossible. Yet there is a strike wave going on, and it is interfering with defense work.

Senator Summers seems to think that Red agitators are behind these strikes, and that the only thing to do is to send them to the electric chair. Other senators and representatives favor compulsory arbitration laws. The administration, however, believes in voluntary mediation for the present, and it has received justified praise for staving off the extremists, by setting up a board not from the outset hostile to the needs and aspirations of labor. But even voluntary mediation is hardly the solution. Where arbitration is possible, strikes seldom occur. The causes of the present strike wave are a matter for action rather than mediation. Profits and prices have been going up in the war boom. Wages have not. The worker's dollar won't buy what it used to, and his employer won't raise his wages, so he goes out on strike.

The Government has been forced by the emergency to control priorities, prices, and even human lives. There is no reason why it should not step in now to raise wages. Such action would be far more efficient in quieting labor trouble than would compulsory mediation.