The Connecticut labor news., 1923-05-04
BY THE WAY
Comment and Criticism About Things Doing in
 the World.

Witnesses testifying under the suave guidance of Samuel Untermyer in a trial of plasterers' union officials in New York, said contractors had been fined by the union for trying to use stuck" cornices instead of rum cornices. ..
 Things were looking rather fierce for the union, when, To and behold, it was shown by the union that the state law makes 1t criminal offense to use stuck" work in such cases. The union was up- holding the law
 MT. Untermyer was rather taken aback, but he had to grin and bear it.. He thought he had the union in a trap, but he found them standing for the law, refusing to permit contractors to indulge in profitable violations
 Mir. Untermyer should be advised to wait yet little while before applying for a patent on his industrial cure-all.
 Sidney and Beatrice Webb have written another book. The Webbs fairly stagger under load of brains and culture. They are pleasant people, but they by no means under-rate their own profundity and authority.
 Sidney Webb has written a review of British labOr'S present parliamentary situation in which he betrays an un- usually patronizing superiority. The relatively satisfactory" present politi- cal outlook is ascribed by MT. Webb to "the intellectual development of the wage-earning class and this is because of the efforts of Ruskin College and other like institutions and ...the patient, help full cooperation with the manual workers of men and women of higher education and wider social experience" "
 An, yes. reaching down to he plelevate the lower classes!
 Thus does wisdom and broad social experience percolate down from above to enthraill and inspire. Thus are the workers put wise to what's really what.
 Four preachers, John Howard Melish, John Haynes Holmes, Norman Thomas and Percy Stickney Grant, defend the barbarious execution of the Russian vicar general This they do on the pre- posterous grounds that ''every govern against it's enemies. This means an ad- mission that every government has a right to conStrue religious teaching as an attack on the government This means an abandonment of the ideal of religious freedom.
 Holmes calls the protest of the civilized world "hypocritical indigna- tiOn."
 Meanwhile the Methodist bishops who were on their way to Russia to attend a conference for the establishment of an official Soviet church have stopped in their tracks, informed by the Soviets indefinitely. The new church was to be called The Living Church." but the Soviets seem undetermined as to whether the. time has arrived for it to begin living.
 Many Americans who contributed for Russian famine 1e1let will enjoy the official Soviet report that about 100000 tons of grain of the 1922 crop were exported. It IS estimated that during the coming year exports of grain will reach 300,000000 tons.
 It should be remembered in this con- nection that the first large shipment of export grain went from southern Russia, through Petrograd and Moscow, through the famine district of Finland. The Soviet stipulation was that payment should be either in gold or paper pulp and paper pulp IS not farm machinery
 Now comes another budget for wage earners, this time from Pennsylvania It provides for an expenditure of $1 300 per person. That is the amount these latest budgeteers fix as the sum required to sustain person properly for year.
 Now ding blast these budgeteers Why in the name of common sense and dencency have we got to have some all high sanhedrin get together and tell us all how much we ought to have for our living? Why has any high court of either well-1neaning people or bush whackers the right to sit in and figure out our lives for us?
 If our ideals in life don't surpass the budget fxers we ought to close our eyes and go to sleep permanently.
 Nix on budgets! Nix on anybody telling us what's the right amount of money for us to have. And above all, nix on anybody telling us how we are to spend it. Nix on the whole shebang