Unity Unity Unity

Walter Reuther's plan, the merits of which are now almost universally recognized, shows what progressive labor unions can contribute to the nation. Labor's cooperation with the war effort has been singled out in the little-publicized annual report of Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, who blasted Big Business and patted labor on the back. Even the Truman report praised labor with faint damns.

This morning organized labor appears closer to the unity that it has long needed for even more effectiveness than at any time since John L. Lewis started building up the C.I.O. on the industrial organization theory of unionization. The craftsmen of the A.F. of L., considering themselves as the skilled aristocrats of labor, have never been able to stomach the idea that the vertical union was here to stay. On their refusal to concede the necessity of industrial organization in order to attain bargaining power in large, mass production factories, has rested the blame for the failure of the half-hearted atempts at combination which labor's two great "houses" have held.

Such a combination, long urged on both parties to the dispute as a means of strengthening the bargaining power of the workers and increasing their capacity for good will probably be based on a mutual agreement of the need for both industrial and craft unions. Now that Murray has proven himself to be no stooge for Green's personal enemy, Lewis, the old man of the A.F. of L. may sacrifice himself on the altar of unity and cede the leadership of the new American Council of Labor to the younger C.I.O. leader. As a compromise the job might even go to Alexander Whitney of the railroad brotherhoods, which may be drawn into the proposed alliance. The gain in strength which will accompany the cessation of jurisdictional arguments, factional fights, and inter-organization personal feuds will more than compensate for whatever sacrifices each side is forced to make to secure peace.

However, every increase in power must be accompanied by an increase in responsibility. A powerful, monopolistic labor union which permitted in its ranks the racketeering, profiteering, and petty tyranny which plague organized labor under the present setup would be more of a drawback than a help to the nation. Although labor is on the road to democracy, it is at that stage in the road which is rife with crookedness and graft, phenomena which appear in union life as thugs and "goons," irresponsibility and dictatorship.

Not only must the evident forms of venality be stamped out but the less notorious and more pernicious forms of minority rule will have to be done away with before labor can reach its full effectiveness in national life. Unions exist, especially in the older and more established A.F. of L., which have not held elections in years. Some are merely the personal property of their executive officers, who carry on a policy not for the good of the membership but as the owners of a vested right. The executive council of the A.F. of L. itself exerts an autocratic power which is little compatible with the ideal of democracy.

A unified organization with a progressive leadership can do a great deal to destroy the evils which blind the Pegler type of thinker to the vast possibilities for good which exist in unionism. With the change from division to unity labor will have a chance to throw out the entrenched powers and to approach more nearly the ideal of democracy. Strong and self-governing, only then will it be able to utilize all its powers for the advance of democracy in this country.