Arizona republican., 1921-07-30
SATURDAY MORNING. JULY 30. 1921.
Life IS not SO short but that there is alsUays time enough tor courtesy. Emerson.
Strange HedfeIIows


 The Consolidated Coal company has already protested against Henry Fords application to the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to cut rates 10 per cent his newly acquired railroad running from Ironton. Ohio. to Detroit. via Toledo. Now the American Federation of Labor is regarding MT. Fords application with suspicion.
 We do not think the Interstate Commerce Com mission will allow MT. Ford to put in the cut rate. The structure is like pile of jack straws one of which disturbed without the disturbance of all the rest The proposed by MT Ford would affect aversely all the coal carrying roads of that region and in degree all coal carrying roads in the country and would affect the coal mining tors who notwithstanding preventive legislation on the subject have abandoned their alliance with the coal carrying roads,
 In many ways MT. Ford has made himself the enemy of big business because he has made his the biggest business and within the last year many at- tempts have been made to encompass his ruin. He has only grown and expanded the more prodisously. But so little likelihood there that the rate of MT. Ford will be allowed that feel concern in it. But the .espisode and its accompani ments far revive interest in the peculiar att titude of organized labor toward MT. Ford for years and notably within the last four or five years
 In all this time he has enjoyed the favor of the rank and file of labor but the leaders have been
 
 wages with growth of his great enterprises. be- yond regular wage scales; his improvement of work ing conditions beyond any demands which organized labor had dared to make. were alarming rather than gratifying labor leaders and also to large employers of labor The could foresee that if the methods of MT. Ford should be forced upon the whole country. there would be need of the ixation places for labor leaders, salar- les for presidents secretaries and business agents,
 No hioh in fhe ranks of to indulge in outward criticism the Ford pian But members the extreme radical. socia1istic element did urging that his influence on progress toward the millennium was reactonary: that he saving his employees filling them with satisfaction which would render them inert to take part in the great forward looking to the abolition of capitalism and employing and employer classes
 These agitators much preferred the methods of employers generally their oppression of labor tend ing to serve as a spur to workingmen to break the bonds of capitalism An enterprise so conducted as to be immune strikes furnished no fuel for the fire which to burn out capitalism.
 On the other hand reactionary employers in the Ford system something extremely revolutionary and which must be checked if employers to tinue hold their. grip their own affairs. To them 1t appeared to be movement toward com- nunism just the socialists 1t seemed rock in their path
 We cannot quite clearly what there is in MT. 
 Fords application lower freight rates his own road, any than see why he should want to put them in the suspicion of organized labor. He evidently does not consider the reduction of the wages of his railway employees below scale which is paid the employees other roads. That would only involve him in labor difficulties from which throughout his industrial he has been so free.
 Perhaps though the American Federation fears that if the proposed Ford rate should be allowed it would foreshadow general decrease of rates which would force down wages other lines whose jusd- cation of the extraordinarily high rates is the operation for the reduction of which they are trying to reduction of wages.
 Ford's railroads be much less expen- sively than others There dividends to be paid on watered stocks: interest bonded in- debtedness representing money which never went Into the road. And more thap all there is the saw ing effected by the Ford methods which secure the highest efficiency.