The Connecticut labor news., 1922-09-01

 wage determination Some employ
 CTS freely recognize this.
 l The two outstanding industrai1
 crises of the year-the coal strike
 and the railway strike-have grown | in the main out of inadequacy of
 earnings. The plight of the coal
 miners, due to scant employment, is
 at last receiving public recognition, ! The reductions in the earnings of
 railway workers have placed many of
 them in almost desperate situation. This Is especially true of the main tenance of way workers. That the
 finances of certain of the roads may have made such reductions appear desirable only adds to the serious
 ness of the problem. One of the
 most significant developments of the year has been the publication of sta tistics by eminently competent and impartial authority which show that ! our industreis as at present managed are not producing enough wealth to 1 raise this income of the working people to the level of health and com fort This is challenge to our en- tire industrial regime.
 It IS most unfortunate that no more general effort has been made to approach settlement of disputes in a cooperative spirit and to ap- peal to justice and to fair play rather a moral world, force can settle noth- ing permanently. The conferences by which most disputes end, would contribute much more to the stabil-
 ity of industrial relations If they were
 held at the beginning rather than at
 the end of the controversy. The
 railway shopmen's strike has taken
 the form of battle for the preserva-
 ton of the union against the host1l-
 ity of powerful roads. For a policy
 of extermination there can be only
 ultimate moral defeat.
 The widespread tendency to disre-
 gard contracts which has been fea-
 ture of our commercial life during this period of business depression, has extended to the industrial field.
 Agreements have been broken on both sides, frequently under such cir cumstances and involving such com plications that 1t has been difficult to ming of the open shop campaign, many employers have sought to take advantage of technicalities in order to set aside agreements and substitute an arbitrary regime for the method of joint agreement in the settlement of labor questions. In not few cases, agreements have been set aside by employers on very slight pretext, The present coal strike involved the violation of pledge to enter into conference for the negotiation of a new agreement In few, if any, of these cases can it be said that the l blame falls exclusively on one side. l But the tendency to regard an agree ment as sacred and binding when 1t IS ] to do so, and to seek l everyf means of repudiating 1t when | the greatest economic advantage IS to | be secured by such a course, indi l cates lack of fundamental integrity | which Is all too prominent in the in | dustrial world, and which augurs i'll l for the future.
 Another serious aspect of the labor situation is the growing hostility of labor to the courts. A large number of injunctions of the most contrary character against strike activities have been issued in the past year, which have been strongly resented by labor as aimed at depriving the unions of their chief method of defense. The strike is in it's nature SO drastic a weapon and it's grave possibilities are so far that it IS difficult to secure on the part of the public or of the a balanced judgment in time of crisis.
 The attitude of the courts, how ever, has been by no means uniform y hostile to labor. In number of strikes the courts have allowed much reedom in union activities. The re- ;ent decision handed down by MT. Chief Justice Taft of the Supreme Court in the famous Coronado case, while 1t maintains the responsibility ,f labor unions for acts of violence committed by their authority and nay work great hardship to unions whose officials pursue rash course, las made 1t clear that a labor or should not be held respon- ib1e for the unauthorized acts Of in Iivduals belonging to it. That de- ision, by a very scrupulous inter ,retation of the law, denied the laims of a formidable array of legal ounsel and spared the United Mine Workers the payment of a huge in emnity which the operators demand d. The annulment of the Federal -hild Labor Law has grave conse- fuences for one of the most import mt social movements of our day, but turned on the interpretation of the Constitution and cannot be said to rave any flavor of partisanship.
 Nevertheless, labor finds its posi- ion rendered insecure by the 1lnDre-