The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-07-03
Predicts Strikes
Will Give Way TO
Protective Weapon

Providence, July 3.-The prediction
that half a century from now would
find the courts overhuling their pres
ent approval of the strike as a labor
weapon and substituting for it a phil
osophy of industrial conduct that
would protect the public and the
working man without discouraging
capital was made by President Rob-
ert w. kelso in opening the National
Conference of Social Work here to-
day. Speaking on 1.-THE Changing
Work" he surveyed the progress of
service from its beginning with the
giving of aims to the poor to it's pres
ent day principle of striving to remove
the causes which lead to distress.
President Keiso stressed the i'm
portance of a sound physical basis for
society. at is easy" he said, ito
reason that a community which is
shot through with disease, which is
shorn of a high percentage of it's
working energy by tuberculosis,
which has not one perfect set of
teeth in a thousand, which musters
barely 60 per cent of a passable
physique in a war levy of its finest
mani ood-such a nation, except res
uScitating measures and preventive
measures be soon set up, is likely to
become morally rotten and in the end
Godless-likely to crumble as a pow
er in civilization. Wherefore we are
departing from our old-time negative
enforcement of the police powers in
matters of health and are heading
social necessity by requiring the in
dividua1 to guard his good health as
a guarantee that he may function bet
ter as a, citizen"
He noted a great awakening in pub
lie welfare departments. The audit
ing of doleS was giving place to de-
partment conferences upon the ade-
quacy of relief. Private agencies
were being called in and their CO.
operation sought. Requests for ap-
preparations for purposes of research
were coming in. Everywhere the
new egort was producing men and
women of power and devotion to their
service.
But if these changing concepts re-
vealed social progress he asked, what
could be said of the cry for justice
in industry? Was a new day dawning
for the laboring man?
The courts recognizing the the
mendous power of capital to control
the working people had gone to an
extreme eXpediency in placing in the
hands of labor the strike, a weap-
on which as now employed amounted
to conspiracy, he said. Leaders on
both sides now saw the fallacy of the
view that industrial justice was a
problem for capital and labor alone,
and recognized that business man.
agement and the public had a voice
in the question.
'tAnd seeing these things" he con-
tinued, I'VE see all too plainly that
the American laborer, bound by the
iron bands of modern unit machin-
cry is a slave to a few motions on a
single machine. From them comes
his hope of bread for his little ones
Through them must come his eman-
cipation into man hood; not capital,
but the economic trend of the world
makes him a slave in industry. And
seeing him thus, we say of him as
we said of the slave of 1850, that the
world may call him a chattel, but we
know that he has a soul. Possessing
that precious secret we can reason
that justice will not obtain until in
dustry recognizes his spiritual value.
The new fundamental in this
phase Of social work is that we rec
ognize as never before the social ne
cessities in the industrial riddle. Le-
gal contract does not explain indus
try; social necessity does. Let anoth-
er so years go by and we are likely to
see our courts overruling their blan-
ket approval of the strike, because
it operates as a conspiracy; and plac-
ing in its stead such a philosophy of
Industrial conduct as shall protect the
public and the working man without
denying capital its just encourage
ment. The correctness of the rea-