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Show Labor Warfare Destroys Industry Which .' Gives Life to Employers and Workers By ETHELBERT STEWART Chief Statistician, U. S. Bureau o( Labor Statistics j' ) There can lie no industrial peace until both sides to a labor argument argu-ment want industrial peace, and when both sides really want peace, and not a tight, a settlement is bound to come. There must be concession on both sides and a willingness on both sides to abide by a settlement. But. unfortunately, in America it seems that there is a large class of men. liy no means confined either to the laboring or to the capitalistic class, who prefer fighting, for its own sake, to industrial peace and all that eucli peace means. Hack in 1K.SI) the Stove Foundrymen and the Iron Holders' union locked horns with the manufacturers in the stove industry. It began with the Bridge Beach strike in St. Louis, and soon involved the entire country. coun-try. They fought until both sides were utterly exhausted and each had barely a single breath left. Finally both sides used that last breath to say, "Bet us forget it." They saw that if they did not stop then and stop 'forever, the stove industry would go to pieces, and 'or the salvation of the industry to which they all owed life they came together, settled their differences, appointed committees of arbitration from both sides, and established machinery for the settlement of all disputes that might possibly pos-sibly arise in the future. Each year since that time these committees have met and adjusted amicably all the differences in the stove industry. However, that is the only industry in the United States which has 'been at peace for thirty years; the only industry which apparently has learned that warfare is destructive, not so much to the individuals who participate in it, as it is destructive to the very industry itself. When that fact is once firmly grasped by all strikers and by all lockers-out, :tho labor disturbances will depreciate astoundingly. |