Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-10-06

tremists In Industrial Disputes
TN THE steel regions, in the British
railway strike, in Russia and even in
the drawing rooms where bolshevism
succeeded jazz in ne list of fads the
tides of red frenzy are beginning to re-
cede.
Pittsburgh, it now appears, was to
have had a soviet with milionares
cleaning the streets and begging plain
lively for bread while ecstatic Lithuanian
puddlers rode in their limousines and
heaved objets dart at the police.
That sort of thing will not be. 1t
would do nobody any good. And, be-
sides, it wouldn't be fair to the Pitts
burgh millionaires, who, no matter what
you say about them, have worked harder
III their day than any Lithuanian with
red leanings ever did or ever will.
Practical boshevism has given Russia
some pleasant dreams. But the popula
ton cannot supply itself with the neces-
sites of life. Lenine is feeling for peace.
The silent opinion of intelligent people
in and out of trades unionism is defeat
ing radicalism in England just as it is
defeating Foster and his associates in
the United States.
The pendulum, everybody is saying,
has begun to swing backward. How far
will it go? That it may not swing too
far in the opposite direction everybody
with good sense and decent regard for
the common welfare will devoutly hope.
Iuhilnp+ bt-r, Of ,,raiu, urp llIaaI,r
gathering volume under the white vests
of the world. 1t is already clear that
some of the loudest of them will carry
note of hatred. 1t is not bolshevism that
we have to fear III this country. 1t is a
violent and extreme reaction after the
futile and troublesome demonstration of
amateur revolutionists.
If the present hubbub is to bring about
a revival of the brutal and defiant ma
terialsm that in years before the war
left communities depressed, bewildered
ignorant, overdriven, desperate and dis
illusioned, then we shall have learned
nothing in the costly experience of the
last four years. We shall have pro
gressed not at all.
There is a vanishing type of would-be
industrial baron who plainly anticipates
with a sense of victory some such culmi-
nation as this. He is not representative
He crowds to the front at intervals to
speak for a world of industry that,
though it shares none of his delusions, is
too busy to speak for itself
They are the odd fish of the period
The oldest thing about them is that they
are sincerely convinced of their own vir-
tue. You probably would find that each
of them feels somehow assured that ulti-
mately, in heaven, he will be able to
show them how to care for their desti-
tute and keep their poor in order.
Industry in America has often been
as unfortunate as labor in its choice of
spokesmen. Schwab, Hoover, the younger
Rockefeller with his new social conscious
ness, Rea and Atterbury, of the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad, and Mitten, of the P. r.
T., suggest in their various ways the
actual trend of opinion now dominant in
the industrial life of the country. Their
views are far nearer the views of the
active working army of American indus
trial leaders than are those of an occa-
sional conspicuous reactionary with
more time for the spotlight.
Men and women who actually do rep
resent the rational aspirations of labor
and industry and the people and the
country will try to make themselves
heard above the turmoil at three confer
ences to be held in Washington during
the present month.
The work of the industrial conference
that is to open today and of the Woman's
Trade Union Congress and the great In
ternational Labor Congress which will
assemble later will be quite as impor-
tant in general way as anything at
tempted recently in the House or the
Senate.
1t will be the aim of these conferences
to formulate a new philosophy of indus
trial relations, to dismiss the conflicting
doctrines of the divine right of money
and the divine right of strength with
which capital on the one hand and labor
on the other have been deluding them
selves for years. Industrial relation
ships are to be minutely surveyed in
eliminating effort to find basis for
fixed peace between forces that are quite
as potential for good or i'll as any two
mutually suspicious nations in Europe.
Representatives of labor, of industry
and of governments are assigned to the
task of protecting the country at large
and civilization in general from hard
boiled employers and infammable neu-
rotics who would like to rule the world
with the assistance of organized labor.
One of the inexplicable phenomena of
American politics is the attitude Of
aloofness which official Washington has
maintained toward the plan to relieve
the economic processes of the country
from the influence of extremists of op-
posed types. ..,..
Mr.. Wilson, Mr.. Taft and Mr.. Hoover