The Connecticut labor news., 1922-06-23
(Specia1 to The Labor News. )

Cincinnati O., June 23.-"We think America is the country that will lead the way in working class progress was the message from British labor to American labor, delivered by Fraternal Delegate H. Smith, who with E. L. PoultOn de 1ivered the customary addresses from Britain Ernest Robinson represented Canada.
 British labor" said MT. Smith, "has since the Armistice of 1918, gone through one of the greatest crises in its history. To some extent this may also be true of American Labor. Unemploy- ment figures in America are bigger than those of Britain, although they are less in proportion to the total population than they are in Great Britain.
 The peace upon the battle field through the end of the greatest military struggle in history, brought no peace in industry. During the war 1t was be- 1ieved that the -comradeship of the trenches would be expressed in social life when the war came to an end. As both peer and peasant, aristocrat and artisan, banker and boilermaker went
 that those who remained would be en- unused with a new spirit of comrade- ship, and would jointly assist in the re- construction of the broken fabric of our national life.
 Alas! No such thing happened Business seemed to destroy brotherhood and last year and the year before, more industrial war was experienced III Great Britain than in many decade before. Employers seemed to take 1t into their heads that even the pre-war privileges and those that had been secured during the war must be taken away. They inn f0 Cho11 he important Trades Unions in the coun- try. The challenges were accepted and many bitter fight followed, the longest and bitterest of which was that waged upon the miners of Great Britain.
 For 13 weeks this war was Waged principally by the government; of course, aided directly by the coal own- CTS. But 1t was a Government war from beginning to end, arising from their de- sire to shake off any further govern ment responsibility for carrying on the industry. The government had con- trolled the industry for four years for the purpose of more successfully Waging war against the enemy, but later aban- doned the industry entirely when the need for war organization passed away.
 "The miners put up a grand fight but were defeated in the end, because they were not strong enough, either industrial lv or politically, to secure the great ob jects they had in view, namely. wage agreement which would provide as far as possible, uniform wages throughout the country regardless of the particular revenue earning capacity of a mine or a district or a country; an agreement by which both wages and profits would be pooled and divided in fixed proportions as between Labor and capital.
 "T1iC DrODOCa1 was SO far reachinC in its nature and involved such a radi- cal change in the structure of the in dustry that the fullest pressure, both on the part of the government and the cap italists generally was brought against it to defeat it, and defeated it was.
 An honorable and just settlement, however might have been arrived at earlier, had 1t not been for the fact that the executive committee of the Miners Federation, and it's officers were ham pered and embarrassed by people of the extreme wing who had neither experi- ence nor responsibilities in trades union- ism prior to the war.
 What IS true of miners is true to some extent of the other unions. Cir cumstances have compelled the trades union movement in Britain to accept for the time being, almost the inevitable consequences of the great war upheaval. Tremendous sacrifices have been made and much misery endured by our work ing people since 1918 and the worst had only just been reached We have had our army of unemployed in the neigh borhood of about two millions, with their families, making about one-eighth of the total population of the country for the last two years. The government is re- sponsible for starting a movement for absorbing the unemployed by cutting down wages of the employed. stupidly believing that the more wages were re- duced amongst those who are employed, the more quickly the wheels of industry would turn, and the more WOrkmen would be brought into production. This is the greatest fallacy that the British government has been responsible for since the war, but 1t has persisted in 1t and has been cleverly encouraged and assisted by the big federation of em ployerS of labor.
 ''In 1921 the workmen of Great Brit ain lost in wages five hundred million pounds, at the rate of ten million pounds reduction per week.
 'The government said this was good ii would bring down the cost of living ii would cheapen the necessaries of life.
 My brothers, when the purchasing power of those who are engaged in work is reduced 50 or 60 per cent. it creates unemployment, because these men and their families cannot go into the markets to buy their goods The less wages they earn the less they buy, and the unem- ployed army is swelled, day by day in consequence.
 "The men who have been through the fires and the mills before are sticking to their trades union. The younger gen. rration, though full of ideas and entf1u-