Denver labor bulletin., 1918-09-28
U MON MEMBERS WERE
DEPRIVED OF PARTICI-
PATTON IN ELECTION.
Chief Justice Clark of North
Carolina Supreme Court Estab-
fishes a Genuine Eight-Hour
Day in His Decision as
an Industrial Umpire.
BY LAURENCE TODD
Especial Representative The Denver Labor
Bulletin.l


WASHINGTON, Sept. 21.-So Sc
rious has become the situation at
Bridgeport, where the workers be-
longing to the Machinists Lodge have
appealed for another Interpretation of
the Eidlitz award which caused the
recent strike, that the national war
labor board has broken its date for
hearings in Minneapolis for Septme-
ber % and has gone to Bridgeport in
stead.
Under the Eidlitz award, the men
and women employed in the war in.
dustries in Bridgeport were to meet
IN the school houses and elect dele
gates 10 city convention, which in
turn was to name candidates for the
central appeals board. This central
board was then to arrange for the
election of shop committees for each
shop. During the strike the elections
were held. None of the strikers could
vote Az the voters and all the per-
sons elected as delegates to the con-
ventlon were non-union; the union
men were all out. But the shop COM
mittees are still to be chosen, and the
union men, who are in the propor-
tlon of about one to nine of the un-
skilled, non-union employees, are likely
to be elected to fill most of these shop
committees.
1t is unlikely that the war labor
board Will be able to so reverse the
award as to give the Machinists the
trade classification for which they
struck. but it will give them way to
secure the classification within a few
months.
Cnorganized and Unstable.
The most unfortunate thing about
the Bridgeport trouble is the fact that
the 80 per cent who are unskilled are
not now being organized, as they
easily could be organized, into the
American Federation of Labor. The
organized men in the town know just
what they want. The unorganized
have only the vaguest notion.
In the absence of the clear indus
trial thinking that comes with union
ism, the war labor board has started
new experiment. 1t has employed
community secretary for each of the
nine public schools in Bridgeport, to-
gether with general secretary for the
entire city. These secretaries have
charge of arranging meetings of all
sorts of groups, but especially of labor
groups, in the school buildings. All
the workers are to be brought in, so
far as possible, to these community
meetings, to discuss their industrial
conditions and to learn to work to-
gether in meeting them. At the first
of these meetings, the coming week,
Miss Margaret Wilson, daughter of
President Wilson, has been invited to
speak. She has been active for some
years IN the movement to open the
school houses, all over the country, to
community meetings of this kind.
Frank P. Walsh of the war labor
board has been leader in the same
agitation.
Justice Clark's Decision.
On its way TO Bridgeport the war
labor board made public in New York
City the award of Chief Justice Clark
of the North Carolina supreme court
as umpire in the case of the Wheeling
Mold and Foundry Company. Justice
Clark establishes in this award the
genuine eight-hour day. He provides
that the only way in which more than
eight hours can be worked is thru
the decision that an emergency exists
IN connection with a particular job
And that decision must be the decision
of a committee composed of the work
ers and the management, equally rep
resented.
This is pivotal decision. Justice
Clark was chosen by the board as UNI
pire in this case, and his ruling that
the elght-hour day must be an eight
hour day in good faith, and not ten
hour day with a few cents of over
time, is to be applied to all similar
cases as they shall come before the
board.
In the course of his statement, JUS
tice Clark points out that while the
principles on which the war labor
board was established do not require
Continued from Paxs OnrO