Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-03-17
FROM TRENCHES AT HOME

DETER, perhaps, than any other man
ID now conspicuously in the public eye,
Samuel Gompers, chief Of the American
Federation Of Labor knows how it feels
when a feller needs a friend.
1t would be foolish to deny that the
strategists directing the campaign for the
open shop have been outmaneuvering the
federation leaders and that the advantages
of the situation are, temporarily at least,
on their side. The strikes and lockouts and
lay offs of the last eight months have been
wearing on the nerves of the unions and
destructive to their moral as well as their
financial resources. The movement Of the
railway companies and other large employers
toward a system of arbitration and adjust
ment in which federation influence receives
slight recognition, when It receives any, has
been progressing slowly but steadily. The
plant democracy" and the American
plan" of which so much is being written,
represent, as any one familiar with the
technique of labor organization knows, eff
forts Of the employers and employees to deal
directly with each other rather than through
boards and investigators and delegates Of
federated unions.
BY such means the power Of the A. F. Of
L. would be vastly diminished, for by col
lective bargaining labor does not mean only
the collective bargaining of individual
unions. 1t means bargaining in an emer-
gcncy by the collective force Of allied unions.
That is why leaders like Mr.. Gompers and
others in the directorate of the federation
fight the plans advanced for what they call
employers unions"
For the moment they are on the defen-
sive. And it is at this juncture of affairs
that new and unexpected troubles have come
to the federation leaders. Spokesman for
all the radical and semiradical labor groups,
as we'll as the rapidly growing crowd of
theorists who write and speak in the name
of what they call economic liberalism, now
extend neither aid nor sympathy to the
trades unions. Indeed they are rejoicing
openly at the discontinue of Gompers and
his associates. And, oddly enough, they
are repeating and stressing charges pre-
ciSely similar to those which the out and
out enemies Of labor never tire of crying
from the housetops.
The extremists among advanced editors
and labor leaders are even more bitter in
their antagonism to the A. L. of l.. than the
most active proponents of the open shop.
They hate Gompers because he Is not radical
enough. They dislike the trades unions be-
cause they see them as organizations formed
solely with view to elf-interest and ex-
elusive advantages. Thus, while the open
shop campaign is inspired by the belief that
labor has been asking too much, a new cam
pagn against Gompers is animated by the
belief that the unions asked too little. All
radical minded labor men insist that the
federation never aimed to be force for the
common good; that it was content to look
out for its own welfare and to let the masses
and the unorganized get along as best they
could.
What they mean-and what they do not
SAYS that the Federation of Labor should
have thrown all its energy into the move
mPnt for internationalized labor and for the
thiny veied dictatorship Of the proletariat
suggested in some of the recent programs
of radical labor conventions. Gompers has
resisted every effort made to ally trades
union opinion and influence in the United
States and Canada with any of the plans Of
international radicals. So it is he who Is
the storm center of attacks now directed
from the front and the rear.
He has other worries of novel sort.
Investigations made recently in the in
terest Of organized labor indicate the ex-
istence of corruption in some of the high
places of his organization. Elaborate sys
tens Of espionage, organized in the interest
Of a few employers who suspect and resent
what they call labor domination in industry,
have been uncovered in some branches Of
the federation and exposed even in the
courts. The espionage system has been de-
nounced repeatedly in the federation jour
nails