, 1921-05-06
WANDERED FROM TRUE COURSE.

For many years Samuel Gompers was a power Tor
good in the promotion of the rights and interests of
organized labor. For what he has done in legitimate
and proper ways he deserves the commentator ct la
Dor, ~rght-minded employers and the public.
In recent years, however, Mr.. Gompers has devet-
oped traits of arbitrariness, prejudice, autocracy, in
tolerance and plain unreasonableness that do not COM
pact with the leadership of n great cause like the up
lift of human toll. He seems to have become a con-
vert to the MARKHAM theories.
The more recent attitude of Mr.. Gompers has
rather tended to counterbalance his previous good
work, through the pursuit Of prejudicial policies. He
has undertaken to commit workmen of the country TO
policies which their own good judgment will not per-
init them to support and in which they recognize the
fundamental evils involved. Evils which are a menace
to the ~well-being of the nation and which IL fostered
will prove destructive to labor itself.
Mr.. Gompers supported and backed the policemens
strike in Boston, strike which left the good pco-
pie of that city-men, women and children, personal
and property rights-open to violence at the hands
of 4 mob. Because Governor Coolidge refused TO re-
instate the striking policemen, Mr.. Gompers sided
with those who strove to defeat the governor for re-
election. The result was a demonstration that the
better class of labor does not sympathize with the
radicals in their ranks, for Coolidge was reelected
governor by a record plurality. Moreover, the Issue
in Massachusetts, caused the nomination of Coolidge
for vice president and his victory in n record break
ing presidential election.
Mr.. Gompers gave his moral support to the Adam
son act, the passage of which by a method common
ly described as holding a pistol at the head of the ma
ton and commanding the peoples congress to pass
the bill within a specified number Of hours. The pro-
ponents of the Adamson act won a temporary vic
tory-a victory that was heralded as a triumph for
organized labor-but the administration which COM
piled with the demands of the four brotherhoods was
retired from power in disgrace. Scarcely anywhere
outside the ranks of the four brotherhoods can any
one be found to defeud the methods adopted in plac-
ing the Adamson law on the statute books.
Mr.. Gompers IL honorary president of the Plumb
Plan League which proposes that the government shall
issue bonds to raise money with which to buy the
railroads and then turn them over to a body con-
trolled by the employees to operate. Accepting as ap-
proximzrely correct the valuation estimate of the In
t~erstste Commerce Commission of SIS, 500, 600, 900,
and assuming that at least the latest interest rate
annual interest charge of nearly a billion dollars, still
leaving the country to pay freight and passenger rates
on the high scale of costs the railroad employees seek
to maintain. This is a scheme that has no support
among laborers outside the group of rail employees tc
be benefited thereby.
Now Mr.. Gompers allies himself with those who arc
seeking a general amnesty for that class of Grim
inals called political prisoners"-mcn who did al
in their power, short of risking their own lives, t.
bring about the defeat of America in the war. Thi
is another scheme that will not have the support o.
labor, organized or unorganized- Labor in genera
performed Its duty in the great war with a full meas
ure of devotion. There were many instances. 1t i
true, where, under the guidance of unpatriotic lead
ers, there was striking on jobs of vital Importance
but labor in general was guilty of no such treason
Gus acts. The millions of men who work with thei
hands furnished their full quota of loyal fighters a
the front, and they have no sympathy with those VIII
strove to bring defeat by obstruction and delay.
In his latest move Mr.. Gompers will find himsel
out of touch with the true sentiment of the grea
body of American working men and wage Garner
either organized or unorganized.