Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-11-17
BY CLINTON w. GILBERT
n Correspondent Of the Evening Public Ledger

Copyright, 1913, bU Public Ledger Co.
Washington, Nov. 10.
FTNHE defeat of the anti strike amendment
l. to the railroad bill in the House of Rep
resentatives marks the limit to the most
amazing outburst of public opinion that has
been seen at Washington in many year
Senator Cummins quite unintentionally re-
duced it to an absurdity the other day when
he announced that he would propose not
merely to forbid strikes among public serv-
ice corporation employees, but among pract-
cally all other employees as well.
There are some men who don't know
about the adage not to hit man when he
is down. Labor is down. 1t is away down.
II is fat on its back. Congressman Cooper,
Of Ohio, who holds union card himself
and yet is almost as conservative as Mr..
Cummins spoke scornfully the other day of
the downfall of labor"
The House of Representatives knows that
it is down. The House has put away its
club. The Senate may continue to brandish
it's club for a while, for the Senate pays
less attention to adages like Don hit a
man when he is down" than does the
House, which thinks more popularity.
Gentlemen of the Senate will continue to
get up and solemnly denounce the attempt
to 'sovietize'' the U. S. A. They will offer
the last drops of their blood in defense of
has never been accepted: They will keep
alive the anti strike proposals in the upper
house throughout the next session, but il
labor knows enough to stay down now that
it is down. those proposals will be splendid
inspiration for patriotic rhetoric, but nothing
more.
If railroad legislation has to be passed in
the next six weeks, and it has to be, such
contentious subjects as the anti strike will
have to be left out of it, first because the
House will have more time and, second, be-
cause the President will probably veto any
which has Suph nrOViSiOU if. The
will of the House has been made plain. The
maiorities against the anti strike amend
ment were large. And the political unwis-
dom of giving the President chance to re
gain the favor of labor by vetoing a bill
depriving it of what it has come to regard
as its rights has struck lot of Republican
congressman, whose hearts are set upon
coming back next year. The relations of
labor and Mr.. Wilson are strained; why
restore them to their former amity, they
argue. The President is the one man who
has been carried into an extreme position
by the outbreak of public sentiment? Why
should the opposition follow him there?
Men will explain for a long time that
wave of feeling which eliminated in the in
junction against the coal strikers, and in
Mr. Cummins' remarks of the other day, and
which began to recede when the House re-
fused to forbid strikes. 1t was amazing ;
it was unexpected. Congress did not see
it coming. Mr.. Wilson from Paris laid the
labor prODlem on lne uOOTstep Ol SouSreSs'
1t sent the bundle to the foundlings home.
1t was looking for a chance to do something
popular, but did not see it,
MIR. Wilson walked calmly up to the door
of his industrial conference without know
ing what a ruction was inside. If he had
known the state of the public mind, he
would never have called just the conference
he did
Labor. ITSELF was fooled bitterly dis
astrously fooled itself. 1t did not know what
the public was thinking, or it would have
moderated its raptures and instead of
pigeonholing the Plumb plan in November
it would have locked it in a safwduring the
summer
| suppose the best explanation of what
happened is that the country had become
class conscious and did not really know it,
1t is not so much that labor had become
conscious of itself as a class, with certain
interests sharply out of harmony with the
general interests, but all the rest of us had
become conscious of this class division.
During the war our attention had focused
in Europe. 1t had taught us much. We had
seen how labor was tending in England and
in Russia. When labor here began to
initiate labor inSEngland. the trouble started
And we not only said that 1t was class,