The Connecticut labor press., 1920-05-29
OVERTURN MUST HIT CONGRESS IS
 GOMPERS SLOGAN
Charges Present Incumbents With Responsibility for
 Conditions.

Under the signature of President Samuel Gompers the current issue of the American Federationist, the official organ, carries an indictment of con- gress and the executive departments for incompetence on the cost of living issue" and outlining program of "deep cutting measures" declares:
 There must be an overturn, i'll con- gress. Enemies must be defeated j; friends must be elected"
 Presenting an itenized list of cor poration profits similar to that recently introduced in speech by Senator Cap per of Kansas, Mir. Gompers declares that while q enumerated corporations last year received profits averaging 435 per cent above normal, the average cost of living increased % per cent. and the average union wage 55 per cent.
 The "deep cutting measures" that MT. Gompers writes will be necessary "to guard the nations distributing machin- cry against assaults from the pirates of trade and commerce" follow:
 Immediate adjustments of wages both in private employment and in gov ernment service, to at least meet the living costs that have outstripped in comes by reason of this era of frenzied prohteering and gambling
 Immediate effective action to pre- vent continued increases in the cost of living.
 An, end of the kind of legislation typihed by the Esch-C Cummings railroad law and the Kansas court of industrials relations law. There must be an end of legislative repression, restriction and coercion. Not only must there be an end to the enactment of legislation of this character but there must be re- peal of legislation already enacted.
 The congress will do well to give immediate and effective consideration to the proposal of the American labor movement that control of credit capital be taken from private financiers and placed in the hands of a public trust to be administered upon principles vol untary and cooperative in character. This will strike a vital blow toward eliminating the abuses of profteering and exploitation.
 Congress should provide immedi- ately for full publicity for income tax returns.
 There must be immediate steps to- ward equalization of wages and cost of living and effective steps to prevent a new margin from replacing the one to be dissolved This means that there must be permanent remedy for the high cost of living.
 ''The working people of the United States" continues MT. Gompers, "are speaking in mandatory terms. If those in control of the legislative destinies of the country do not understand the needs of the workers at least the workers themselves understand. They know the restraint which they have practiced They know the limit of their e.1dur- ance. Their demand to be heard is demand which comprehends the well fare of the country"
 President Wilson proposed measures for relief, Mir. Gompers writes, "but congress gave no heed" and since the signing of the armistice ''the American political and industrial Bourbons have laid a course of plunder, restriction and coercion"
 The recent unsanctioned strike of railway men MT. Gompers character izes as "a symptom of. what is the mat ter with America" Their methods he deplores as foredoomed to failure and in contravention of the discipline of the trades union movement, but, he argues, their appeals for relief from increased living costs were of long standing and that they suffered spostponement after DoStDonemento