Denver labor bulletin., 1917-06-09
MUST MEASURE
WAGES BY BREAD
CONTINUED from Page one)

City to Boston. He reports the great
est unrest and bitterness among trade
unionists at the big decrease in their
wages-as measured in bread and
meat and groceries.
Carl Vrooman, assistant secretary
of Agriculture, says that a Polish
priest in Chicago has reported that
tive working women in his congrega-
tion have gone insane and killed them
selves, within three months, because
they could not buy food enough for
their children.
In spite of these facts, which seem
to typefy the situation at its worst
just now, the senate is delaying ac-
tion on the food control bill, prices are
going higher, and these hints are daily
repeated concerning a still further re-
duction of the standards of living of
the wage-earners.
The answer seems to be forthcom-
ing in the shape of resolutions to be
sent to the senators and congressman,
and to the council of national defense,
by the labor councils and the local
unions of the country, on these two
points standards of living and the
regulation of food prices.
Miss Rankin of Montana, the woman
congressman, who is pretty good
pro-labor member of the house, said
jim her first speech to that body, the
other day: 1--WE know that with our
unparalleled resources and improved
methods of production, there is no
need that anyone should go hungry"
Probing Street Car Strike.
The All-Western committee of sena-
tors that has been grilling the officers
of the Washington Railway & Elec-
trio company here for the past month
in the investigation of the street car
strike has shown up clearly two things:
That the pigheaded president of the
concern, one Clarence P. King, decided
to follow up the success of the big cor
porations in New York city in break
ing the Amalgamated Association of
Street and Electric Railway Employees
there, by the same method used in
New York-the individual contract.
And that in breaking the strike of the
LOO men who went out twelve weeks
the company lose about 1925, 900, and
they are still losing more than 20 per
cent of their former average receipts,
due to the boycott placed on the lines.
This man King has shown hos
tility and stubbornness equal to that
of young Rockefeller, with none of
Rockefeller's sanctimonious hypocrisy
Senator johnson of California has had
many a sharp run-in with him, during
the hearing, and has indicated that the
committee will probably recommend
municipal ownership as the best meth
cd of booting King out of the COM
munity.
Adjusting Labor Disputes.
Secretary of Labor Wilson has been
settling coal strike in Pennsylvania
this past week, but he has had time
also to call to the attention of this
senate committee his own scheme for
settlement of Industrial disputes on
the interstate railroads of the United
States and on the street railways of
the District Of Columbia. He sent to
the committee the draft of proposed
compulsory arbitration, but which
guarantees to the employees the right
to leave the employment, and the right
of the employer to dispense with the
services of the employees affected, af-
ter decision has been handed down.
That is, the bill appears to provide
compulsory arbitration of the affairs
of the industry, when an industrial
dispute has arisen. 1t does not en-
force involuntary servitude on any
man, because it permits him to hunt
another job
So far as has developed at the hear
ing, the committee does not consider
this a practicable scheme. The bill
was framed, Secretary Wilson says, to
meet the situation created by the rail-
road strike danger last February. He
believes that the industrial adjustment
commission, provided for in the bill,
will be able to give reasonable de-
cisions, and that these decisions, when
handed down in the form of orders
having the binding force Of law, will
be accepted by both sides in good faith
without danger Of the quitting of jobs
or the dismissal Of numbers of en-
ployes. .
At the office Of the Legislative bu-
reau of the American Federation Of
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