Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-08-13
LARoR,S OWN CONGRESS

| THE international labor congress,
L which will assemble for the first time
| in Washington on October %, already is
established as an integral part of the
| league of nations. The invitation issued
yesterday by President Wilson was a
matter of form.
Arrangements for the first session of
labor's world parliament were COM
pleted weeks ago. Organized and unor-
ganzed workers everywhere in the world
will be fairly represented at the first Scs-
sion of a body of delegates which has as
its first purpose not the PRONUNCIATION of
radical doctrine, but the establishment of
a code under which social and economic
readjustments may be effected nationally
and guardedly and with a view to the
general welfare rather than to the inter-
ests of any one class.
If the labor congress were to be de-
scribed in a sentence as it appears to its.
own members it might be called melt
ing pot of economic theories. 1t will at
tempt to define, year by year, the rela-
tive rights of employer and employe and
to suggest methods of REIMBURSEMENT
which may be acceptable to civilized
opinion everywhere. Thus automatically
it ought to provide in the course of time
a reasonable basis for the consideration
of all economic questions now in dispute.
The need for new and enlightened
method Of approach to the general ques-
ton of relationships between capital and
labor was clearly discerned at Paris. 1t
is because the world is still without def
mite conceptions of the economic rights
existing on both sides of the eternal dis
cussion that unrest and uncertainty are
now general everywhere. Because deci-
sions that ought to be based upon reason,
morality and scientific knowledge are
still arrived at accidentally in a bedlam
of conflicting claims or through the
crude trials of endurance called strikes
and lockouts, such problems as that rep
resented by the claims of the railway
brotherhoods can persist in the United
States.
The program of the labor congress is
essentially moderate. 1t will aim merely,
through discussions in which govern
ment, labor and capital are equally rep
resented, to apply reason to the settle
ment of issues that now are decided by
chance or a temporary advantage on one
side or the other. 1t exerts no direct
authority. But its findings, once they
are formally stated, will have the sane
tion of the league of nations itself and
the force Of moral obligation in men,
Der nations.
One of the purposes OF the congress,
for example, is to restrain the unfair
exploitation of immigrants in any coun-
try and thus to find a method by which
fair employers in one country may not
be in competition with unfair employers
in another. The rights Of women and
children in industry will also be con-
sdered at length. In general way, the
labor congress is to be conservative and
constructive and far less radical than
the railway brotherhoods are at the pres
ent moment.
There is no earthly reason why the
United States Government should not be
officially represented by delegates at the
congress. The willful group in the Sen
ate made this impossible by refusing Mr..
Wilson authority to name represen-
tatives. The United States Government
is therefore forced into a position of
aloofness from a procedure which is in.
every way modern and constructive.
This is the price we must pay for the
Senate's instructive habit of opposing
every suggestion that happens to ema-
nate from the White House.