MANY a President of the United States has had to deal with industrial strife in the last half century or more, but in every case confidence in the fairness and even-handed justice of the Government of the United States has played a part in the conciliatory steps that have led to settlement.
No such confidence exists today, so far as the employers are concerned. It is difficult, therefore, for the Roosevelt Administration to propose a board or a commission, as used to be the formula for saving the country from the cost of a big strike. The reason is that the NRA, influenced as it has been by the chieftains of the American Federation of Labor, has weakened Mr. Roosevelt's position as a mediator and deprived him almost entirely of the influence he would have had under other circumstances.
Car Manufacturers Suspicious
The automobile industry in particular has reason to suspect the good faith of the NRA. After considerable discussion there was inserted in the code of the motor group a provision to the effect that collective bargaining would not in any way impair the right of the employer to promote or discharge on the basis of merit and efficiency. No sooner had this clause been approved when it was publicly repudiated by the NRA in response to the protests of organized labor. No other industry was later permitted to have a similar clause and for all practical purposes the famous merit clause now has become a dead letter.
The situation then turned to the American Federation of Labor, where the President is presumed to have considerable influence. If he pleads with the A. F. of L. to postpone or avoid a strike, it has been thought the labor chiefs would agree, for certainly the President and his administration have been doing more to advance the cause of labor than any regime in the history of our country.
But labor recognizes this is a crucial struggle and is anxious to gain some advantage. It is afraid to retreat or to appear to be yielding. Hence the search in the last 48 hours for the usual alibi to save everybody's face. Every plan thus far has looked toward some supervision of elections to determine who the chosen spokesmen of the workers really are. Labor gains by every such device because Government supervision of elections thus far has merely meant postponing local elections till the labor organizers are sure of a majority.
President Held Responsible
If the hand of the Government were to come down on labor unions as harshly as on employers and both sides really were prepared to believe in the mediation of a Governmental body, there would be an early peace. But it is unfortunately true that the NRA handling of the labor question has merely piled up troubles for President Roosevelt, so that now he is being compelled to take the responsibility for what happens.
The strike may be averted but the test will come again in some other way. The whole NRA policy toward labor has been a hodge-podge from the beginning and, while the problem is by no means simple, the role of the Government has until recently been that of a neutral and not a partisan. When the Government becomes a partisan in industrial warfare, only the resort to strikes has been the unhappy answer, with the public getting it on the chin in every instance in the form of higher consumer prices to pay increased costs of production.
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