Tomorrow The Bludgeon

Nearer and nearer draws the day when a Republican Congress, its gun loaded for big game, will have its first chance in fourteen years to deal with the nation's problems in its own sweet way. Its first target is likely to be organized labor and the U.M.W. in particular. Even in the unlikely possibility that the coal strike is expeditiously settled, there will be the desire to prevent its repetion.

Congress will be cager to do something about reducing labor-management friction, and the economic philisophy of the Grand Old Party makes it likely that whatever action is taken will consist of squashing labor's freedom of decision by Congressional fiat. The chance that such action will be blocked by Executive veto is lessened by President Truman's propensity for wielding a bludgeon in labor disputes. He and his advisers lack the time and tact to handle the labor question diplomatically and will be only too happy to be handed an even bigger club.

The Government will err sadly if it attempts a heavy handed settlement of industrial dissension. The problems is not one to be resolved over night, and when the solution is found it will be in the sphere of labor-management cooperation. Labor is still smarting from the searing humiliation of years of shoddy treatment. Like a Charles Atlas alumnus it is flaunting its new-found power; while management has not yet realized the full potentialities of accepting labor as a responsible and equal partner.

Time is the "sine qua non" for achieving industrial peace. Time and a sincere effort by both parties to understand the problems of the other. Vindictive, partisan legislation will only add fuel to the flames and postpone the day when the full industrial might of this nation can surge into action.