Denver labor bulletin., 1917-11-10
NEW ARRANGEMENT OF
INDUSTRY TO COME
WITH PEACE.
Greatest Problem Will Be Over
Taking Care of Thousands of
Women Workers Who Are
Filling Places of Men Sent
to the War Front.
By LAURENCE TODD
Especial Representative The Denver Iabor
Bullettu.)


WASHINGTON, Nov. 5.-Safely
returned from England, where he at
tended the sessions of the British
Trade Union congress and Inter-Al-
he'd Labor conference, James Lord.
president of the mining department
OF the American Federation of Labor.
IS giving out the word that THE Brit
lsh trade unionists mean business
when they speak of this being a war
Tor democracy; they are going TO
have a bread-and- butter democraev as
well as political democracy"
Lord found the British workers SOL
idly organized, and the women as a
rule joining the unions of their trades.
There were no factional divisions. and
no organization was outside the two
general bodies-the Trade Union Con-
gress and the General Federation of
Trade Unions. The latter. which be-
gan as a purely economic grouping of
the unions, now deals with legislative
programs, Just as does the Trade
Union Congress, which is affiliated
with the Independent Labor party and
the Cooperative Wholesale society.
The General Federation is affiliated
with the International Federation of
Trade Unions. But these two bodies
are only two parts of one great ma
chlne-the organized labor movement
of Great Britain.
British Labor Doing Well.
He found that British labor is liv-
ing well, on the average, and is form
ing great plans for the time after the
war. For one thing, it proposes to
abolish the great private estates that
are held out of cultivation. Labor will
see that these lands produce food for
the nation. 1t will also see that the
railroads and other industries now in
government hands shall stay there,
and 1t probably will extend very ra-
pldly the number of industries in
which the nation, rather than an in
dlvldual or company, will be the en-
ployer.
British soldiers, back from the
trenches, tell their former chums in
the shops that when they get thru
fighting on the continent they expect
to come home and help to establish a
new arrangement in industry at home.
They do not propose to go back to
the old relations between the employ
er and employed. There must be real
democracy in England. They have
not planned out the definite program,
but they are sure of that much.
Cripples Are Being Taught.
England has an army of blind and
crippled soldiers, who are being
taught the hand crafts, such as toy
making and basketry. There are
many thousands, too, of the pitifully
helpless victims of shell-shock, whose
nerve centers are destroyed or unre-
liable, and who must for the rest of
their lives remain public charge.
And there is the long, steadily in
creasing, breaking list of the
workers who have died in the war.
Women are taking the places of
these men. Almost a million of
them have put on shop clothes, and
are doing the work and getting the
pay-or very generally are getting
the pay-that went to the men doing
the same work.
Women in the Industries.
These women say that they will
| stay in industry, except as marriage
or more congenial work takes them
out. The democracy of this war has
done great deal for English women.
/ They are human enough to want to
hold fast to what good has come their
way.
| When the men come back from the
war. and the women trade unionists
by the hundreds of thousands see their
own livelihood threatened, the Brit
ish labor movement will, in Mr.. Lords
opinion, take steps to protect both
the men and the women. The opening
up of the land to cultivation will be
one of these steps. Enlargement Of
the industries will be another. Eco
nomic readjustments of every sort,
but all of them tending toward indu.-
trial democracy, will follow
Enrolment of Mechanics.
1t appears certain, just now, that
the anti-labor fanatics who have been
preaching industrial conscription for
the war work are to be disappointed
for long time to come. The De-
partment of Labo-, by establishing
(Continued on Pare FsurJ