The Sentinel=record., 1911-12-30
LABOR COMMISSION
 URGED BY SOCIALS
ASK PRESIDENT TAFT ITO HAVE COMMISSION APPOINTED TO RE.
 GuLATE LABOR MATTERS.
Believe 1t Would Correct Many of tbe Ills Now Caused by Non-
 Regulation.

Washington, Dec 2s.-Using the Me- Namara case as an illustration of what might be expected again in this country if labor conditions are not improved a delegation of social workers today urged President Taft to create labor com mission.
 Such a commission, the deIeeation told the president, should have powers co-extensive with those of the interstata 1 commerce commission. and should be able 10 compel testimony. It should investigate and make a preliminary re- port within six months of labor in the structural iron @ade. during the last six years "guage the breakdown of our machinery Of industrial government, the economic and social cost of strikes to employees, to workmen and to the pub lic', and investigate rules and records of unions. It should also examine the legal status of the labor union and study the practieability of schemes of econo- mic government. such as the trade leg islature in the cloak suit. and skirt industry and similar boards.
 President Taft was greatly interested and promised to do ali possible to create such commission. 1t WIS sa,1 tonight he might incorporate u sI.,g 'stton for a al oi commis sion in cne cf h's pest ol,day messages
 Rabbi Stepnen s. Wise, of New York, read the petition ', the pr, slisat. Miss Jane Adams of Chicago, and other prominent social workers, went 10 inc White House with 'lim. Among the signers of the petition were Lyman Ab bolt George L. Barnett. Louis D. Brandeis, Irving Fisher, Paul U. Kellog, Samuel McCune Lindsay, Owen R. Love- joynd, Henry Morgenthau. George Eos ter Peabody, James B. Reynolds, Edwin R. R. seiigman and w. F. Wilcox.
 "A house divided against itself can not stand. said Rabbi Wise. We have yet to solve the problems of democracy in it's industrial relationships and to solve them along democratic lines.
 "In order to arrive at the workers point Of view, 1t Is necessary only to review the long list of occupational diseases, the failure of both employers and the state to prevent them or miti- gate their effects, the lack of employers liability laws. the failure to provide adequate safeguard against accidents in dangerous vacations, the attacks upon the constitutionaiity of laws to shorten the hours of women and of workers in certain trades; the reluctance of legis- latures to abolish child labor-st is nec- essary only to contrast this dead center of the social machinery with the speed at which it acts to prevent picketing and rioting during strikes.
 "The workingman sees the club of the officer, the bayonet of the militia dir ected against him in the defense of property and he believes the hand of the law. strong in the protection of property, often drops Istless wherever measures are proposed to tighten labor's heavy burden.
 There is profound restlessness among large groups of labor who feel that there are no organic ways open through which they can act collectively with respect to the things that most concern them that they are thwarted when they get together for common strength and when not as mutual benefit socitles, but as aggregations of men, they set out to mind their business"