The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-02-09
LABOR AND HOSTILITIES.

The statement Dy GOmpeTS lHdt Labor was doing all in it's power to prevent an outbreak between Germany and the United States will be taken for what it is worth. Al lowance can even be made for the sincerity of the statement, and the fact that Gompers cabled Karl Legien who holds an office similar in Germany to his own in America may represent very earnest effort to prevent any actual war between the two countries. One can read and admire and smile at the same time.
 Obviously it would require to be successful that Legien possess more power in his country than Gompers holds in America, and certainly that has never been very much in evid- ence. It is not likely that any per son is possessed of any very inflated idea of the actual power which Gompers holds as the spokesman and the representative of labor. IL is highly improbable that any gov ernment official has any very seri- ous illusions on this score. But small as may be the power wielded by Gompers in America, it is far more real and tangible and exert able than that of Karl Legien in Germany. The powers that rule Ger many are not likely to consult Le- glen when deciding upon a course of action to adopt, and we need not imagine that Gompers or Labor is to he consulted when the adminis- tration decides that hostilities must he resorted to by the United States.
 Labor in the United States, and when speaking of labor those radi- cal political organizations associated in an effort to establish industrial freedom are also included, have no real power. That is lacking because Of the lack of real organization which can alone establish the main essential to an expression of power in such a national crisis.
 We can all easily realize that did Labor possess a system of organiZa- tion wherein economic solidarity through industrial union was an ac- complished fact, and if labor was determined that there would be no war, there would be none.
 It is a manifest fact that govern ment would reflect that power and If did not, it would be speedily brought to realize that it must.
 It is surely plain that war to be Varried on presupposes that it Will have an uninterrupted supply of labo to aid in the various military and naval movements and the different military and naval operations. The British are not the only ones among the belligerents who discovered ear 1y in the war that it is as well fought in the industries as in the trenches, and quite clear it is that if these industries were organized com pletely and thoroughly. the mere possibility of passive resistance would mean that to carry on the war in face of such would be an impossibility.
 Under a general strike carried by any sort of unanimous labor, world war would be so difficult to be proceeded with that it would have to be considered out of the question of practical things.
 We know very we'll that Gompers and his organization has no such power and we doubt very much whether he would use it even if he could. But it is because it has no such power all this balderdash about striving to prevent hostilities upon the part of labor is buncombe pure and simple.
 The government has the power to declare war. Further than this the government has power to carry out that declaration. and to subordinate every individual right and opinion 10 that procedure. That power Is unquestioned by Labor today and the main reason it is so unques- tioned is not because of individual loyalty, we can speak frankly. of the laborites. but because Labor has no power to question that superior governmental power which so de-