Denver labor bulletin., 1918-11-09
Continued from Page One)

Continued from Page OneD
will be so complex, so headstrong, in
the next few years. In spite of every
attempt to suppress it, the spirit of
social unrest grows and spreads and
breaks out in unexpected places, and
the politicians begin to wonder how
many years they will be able to keep
working class majority out of the
Congress of the United States.
Suicide of Autocracies.
1t is because the world is being
captured by the workers, thanks to
the suicide of European autocracies
by war, that the employers in this
country are all at once changing their
opinion of the national war labor
board and the department of labor.
Last month these institutions were
"bolshevik" in the eyes of organized
capital; today they are wonderful in
stitutions. safeguarding public order.
Last month the employers, within and
outside the war labor board, were anx-
ious for that tribunal TO die; today
they are determined that il shall re-
main, after the war, to protect them
and theirs against strikes.
There are few employing corpor-
atiOns, such for example as the
Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company,
which have not changed their minds
quickly enough. It was only last
Monday that the war labor board
served on that company its award
which ordered the company to rein
state all the union men whom 1t had
discharged. The company refused TO
obey the board. The men went out
on strike, yesterday morning. Last
night "A scab motorman ran "A train
off the track at curve in a tunnel on
the line, and hundred persons were
killed and more than that number
were injured. The president of the
company said that he was too sad"
to discuss the reason for this sacrifice
of life.
May Be Epidemic of Strikes.
More employers have appealed to
the board during the past week than
during the preceding three months.
Strikes are threatened in many parts
of the country, as the end of the war
is evident. Labor is steadily gaining
ground thru organization in the shops,
and thru application of the principles
laid down by the board. The employ
ers are afraid that any weakening OF
the authority of the board would now
be the signal for an epidemic OF
strikes which might cause general
paralysis of business.
That is one reason why the labor
department is going to be one of the
best supported departments of the
after the war, and the
war labor board and the war labor
policies board will be retained, with
the word "war" in their titles changed,
perhaps, to reconstruction
May Reverse Selective System.
In the reconstruction program, also,
we shall probably find the food ad-
ministration, the fuel administration,
the housing commission and the in
dustries board. Each one OF those VIII
have to play a part in re-establishing
in civil life the millions of men who
have put on the khaki or the navy
blue.
1t may be OF interest to say that
one of the plans now proposed, for
returning these men to civilian jobs,
is that the draft system be simply
reversed. That is, that men be "se-
lected" from the armed forces. with
their own consent, to fit into each OF
the hundreds of new enterprises that
will be launched by the government in
its plan of general industrial, agricul-
tural, transportation and commercial
reconstruction. This idea has not
been developed into definite program
as yet, but something of the kind is
likely to be recommended to Congress
when the time for rehabilitation
comes.
Meanwhile, the war labor board has