Salt Lake Telegram | 1937-12-09 | Page 6 | Labor's Opportunity

viewpoint of the senate committee's chairman is constructive and points to a peaceable solution of labor's problems. It deserves the earnest interest of America's army of workers. Labor's Opportunity RESPONSIBLE labor officials and the rank and file in both wings now involved in contention con-tention should hail the pronouncement of the newly elected chairman of the senate education and labor committee as pointing to opportunity. Utah's Senator Elbert D. Thomas, an avowed friend of labor, declared in an interview in Washington, according to an exclusive International Inter-national News Service dispatch published in The Telegram Tuesday, that labor must discipline disci-pline itself, rid itself of outlaw unions and racketeers and give assurance of responsibility. He recalled a previous proposal that labor onions should register with state authorities "in the interest of open and above-board dealing." Defending it, he declared he was speaking as a friend of labor and one in sympathy with the progress of the average working man. He called upon organized labor to recognize this as a golden opportunity to rid itself of policies which have in themselves "the seeds of destruction." destruc-tion." Citing advancement realized even in the present conflict between CIO and A F L unionists, union-ists, be warned of the danger that the contending contend-ing factions may "fight each other violently and cause loss of friends for legitimate aspirations of the working man." Senator Thomas has given organized labor the dispassionate? view of a friend involved in neither side of the argument By implication, at least, he has given a fair and honest cross section of public opinion. Outlaw unions and . their acta and gangsters and racketeers trading on the good will of established trade unionism have no public sympathy. They can generate none, and by this fact alone they are the worst enemies of the labor movement as a whole. The