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Show Organized Labor in Fight to Put End to Industrial Wastage By FRANK L. MORRISON, Secretary American Federation of Labor. IT IS impossible to record fundamental funda-mental gains during the past year because of organized labor's agitation agita-tion or to individualize probable gains during the year to come. The best we can do is to observe tendencies. tenden-cies. Prominent among these Is the workers' seizure of the cry for "preparedness" "pre-paredness" to emphasize a danger In industry more deadly than battlefields. Government statistics show that 30,-000 30,-000 men are annually killed and 700,-000 700,-000 are annually injured for a period of four weeks or over. It has been stated that every year there are over 3.000,000 cases of Industrial In-dustrial illness, caused mainly by long hours, low wages, dust, bad air, fumes, smoke, poisonings and poor ventilation, and that through typhoid fever and malaria alone $900,000,000 is annually lost to this nation. Enough to equip the largest army and navy In the world, and then have a balance sufficient suffi-cient to pay the tuition of every boy now in college. A system of national preparedness that does not include recognition of this frightful and preventable wastage is the preparedness urged by big business. busi-ness. Another element among employers who talk of the scarcity of labor does so to entice a sufficient number of idle workers to their factory gates as a menace to those employed and who are liable to demand better conditions. These employers oppose restriction of immigration because restriction will defeat their policy of having two or more men for every job. Another tendency is the growing opposition op-position to labor Injunctions, which class labor power as property. The congress of the United States has voiced this opposition In amendments to the antitrust laws. Judicial interpretations inter-pretations of the term "property" In the fourteenth amendment to the federal fed-eral constitution are losing their force. What was originally intended to end slavery has hoen used to thwart the enactment of social legislation, hut courts have failed to check the swelling swell-ing tide of democracy. The trade union movement Is conscious con-scious of the part It has played in the tendencies above referred to and this consciousness will be an inspiration to greater effort during the coming jear. |