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Show THE AMERICAN WAY LET'S BE REASONABLE ny George "-1 1 i i v: - - .c 1 By DeWITT EMERY (EDITOR'S NOTE: DeWitt Emery is President of the National Small Business Men's Association.) Public opinion is now thoroughly aroused against labor unions, as well it might be after two coal strikes in the same year, not to mention the steel, automobile, packing house, electrical, railroad and hundreds upon hundreds of other strikes in 1916. The' new Congress definitely has a mandate straight from the people peo-ple to do something rather drastic about the big labor unions which have shown time and time again an utter disregard for everything, except their own selfish interests. For more than ten vears labor unions and leaders have been pampered, pam-pered, petted, appeased and encouraged en-couraged to run hog-wild in every conceivable way. Organized labor could do no wrong; the White House said so; so did the National Labor Relations Board, the Supreme Su-preme Court and a majority in Congress. Sit-down strikers took over plants; pickets stopped the United States mail; closed shops were established and millions of workers were forced to join unions and pay dues in order to hold their jobs. The unions had the country by the tail with a down-hill pull. Some of us raised our voices in protest against these excesses and abuses. Some of us even predicted j there would come a day of reckoning, reckon-ing, when labor would be forced to pay through the nose 'for its wild, reckless spree. Our voices were not heard, or if heard, what we had to say was not heeded. Now the day of reckoning is at hand and instead of goating, we are apprehensive, ap-prehensive, fearful that the penalty pen-alty will be too severe. Putting organized labor into a strait-jack- et of bureaucratic domination and regulation is not the answer, and will be just as harmful to our economy as was the mass of regulation regu-lation piled on business before, during dur-ing and immediately after the war. Yes, the Wagner Act has to be changed to take the labor bias out of it and make it fair and equitable to labor, to employers and to the public. Also, the same laws which apply to business combinations in restraint of trade, must also apply to labor combinations in restraint of trade. Still further, the "right to work" must be protected for non-union as well as union workers. work-ers. These things are right and just, and will be done. The danger lies in some of the other more or less punitive proposals, such as repealing re-pealing the Wagner Act and outlawing out-lawing strikes, which are being vigorously promoted by powerful, well-organzed groups. Let's be reasonable. Let's get down to bedrock and start from there. Bedrock in this case is that the best interests of worker and employer are wrapped up in the same package. Business kicking labor around when it has the upper up-per hand doesn't produce any more satisfactory results than it does for labor to kick business around when it's in the saddle. What employers, em-ployers, large and small, want most is stable conditions under which to plan and operate; and what workers want more than anything else, is steady work at good wages. The old-time, high-handed, ruthless ruth-less employer, who considered the "hands" as just so many cogs in his operation, to be -given no more consideration than a piece of machinery, ma-chinery, has passed on. There aren't very many,- if any, employers employ-ers these days who are not fully conscious that the producer and the consumer are one and the same person, and, therefore, know it's simply good business to pay the highest wages the productiveness productive-ness of his workers will permit. If the automobile worker is to buy furniture and the furniture worker is to buy automobiles, they must both be paid high wages. Also, Al-so, they must both turn out an honest day's work every day in order to keep the prices of their products down so other workers can buy. and they, in turn, can buy what the other fellows produce. And so it goes throughout the whole range of products and services. serv-ices. It's just one big interdependent interdepend-ent circle which touches all of us every day. Maybe if the rank and file union members were free to speak their minds and to vote in union meetings meet-ings as they wish they will when the Wagner Act is rewritten someof the high-handed ruthless labor leaders would be pushed onto the side-lines, P.D.Q. When this happens, more and more labor disputes dis-putes will be settled peacefully and far more satisfactorily to all concerned. This country has a labor-management team that can far outstrip anything which has been done to date, if that team will pull together. togeth-er. So let's be reasonable and really get to work. , |