The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-11-13

Employers must recognize the right ! of employees to organize, says William Howard Taft.
 Employers must realize that em- pIayes have as full right to live, and as full a right to be heard as to the question of what they shall re- ce1ve and the terms of their employ ment, as employers have to earn req sonable dividends on their invest ments.
 Taft said this in his first public interview on the great industrial un- rest now seething throughout Ameri-
 He added that property rights will survive, that society will resume it's normal pre-war course and that thrift will continue to be rewarded by sue cess, and laziness punished by dis tress-
 The former president analysed the labor crisis in all its phases, econom- ic and political, and compared 1t with the situation abroad.
 He took up in detail the various stands of Ebert H. Gary, Samuel Gompers. William 2. Foster. John Fitzpatrick and John L. Lewis in the steel and mine strikes.
 He took no pains to spare either side, but struck out wherever he thinks blows are needed.
 In his office overlooking Yale cam pus, Taft began:
 The war which has just closed was one which may only be described as colossal, with the disturbances in | business and in economic conditions 1 as much greater than have followed l previous wars as the forces engaged 1 and destructive agencies used and i losses incurred were greater than in l any previous war.
 "The mechanics of this war were 1 more important than in any previous 1 war and this soon developed the ut ! ter dependence of each country upon | it's labor, skilled and unskilled, to 1 supply the absolute fighting necessi- 1 ties at front.
 "The war was in a certain degree, 1 fought in the workshops of the con i tending countries.
 This indispensable part which manual labor played in the war did not, of course, escape the attention 1 of working men, and it gave them such a sense of their power that, in case of any grievance, fancied or real, | they were anxious to exercise it.
 "The high wages they received i were contributing factor in the high prices they had to pay for living and 1 while I think wages probably in i creased in greater proportion than the cost of living among workingmen, i who could, through trades unions and com bfnatiOns, exert the power of which I have spoken, 1t nevertheless, 1 left them restless and anxious to use | their power to improve their condt- i tionse and to increase their share In 1 the Joint product of labor and capital far above what 1t had ever been be- 1 fore.
 Such a movement for constant i increase in wages, of course, met re- i sistance. That's what has produced 1 our unrest, and strikes, but these 1 strikes are not confined today to a mere desire to better terms of em-
 ployment. In the present highly
 sensitive condition of labor and in It's l new conception of it's own importance, l many workmen seem glad to seize on any difference between them and their employers which they can make into ] an issue.
 "On the other hand We must rec | ognize that employers, some of them, | have made enormous profits; others good profits, and that business has been generally prosperous. Doubt less profits have been exaggerated in
 solar as the reports of them have
 
 reports, in part true and in part un- l sustained, labor has been made to think 1t is not getting it's proper share, 1 and that it should use pressure and the strike, if need be, to increase it's
 share and proportion.
 Our close relation to other coun- 1 tries, too, has brought us into con | tact with Socialism and Socialists, and | we have found to our surprise that or T io1i ic+- +1oa eIE lo j,, ! France, Italy and in most other con- | tinental countries, are d very con- ! servative class, and that the real rad | ica1s there are of the extreme Social ist and anarchistic type, of whom Bol-
 shevtsm has taken complete hold.
 ''We have had enough of these ele-
 ments-eXtrene Socialists and an =, archists- into this country and
 preach their propaganda to float a lot
 of their ideas among our laboring ] people. Seeds sown in this way sprout quickly and especially in soil already stirred by grievances against
 employers and dissatisfaction at re-
 ported profits of capitalists without a
 comm ensurate division with labor. 1 Every strike in which lawlessness
 occurs, and 1t is difficult to have a
 strike without this, is a seed-plot for the growth of Socialism and more T has been sufficiently discussed now before the country to invoke decision one way or the other. I hope the