The Connecticut labor news., 1923-07-13
LABOR FINALLY PUTTING ITS MONEY
 TO WORK WHERE IT HAS COMEBACK

failed, principally because there was too much doctrine and too little bank. They mostly started out to give free credit and eventually made the sur
 prising discovery that Santa Claus, although a splendid fellow, was never a bank president.
 This current movement has some
 of this stuff in 1t, but the leader of the whole enterprise, the man who is
 responsible for turning the Brother hood of Locomotive Engineers into a financial power, has no banking de- lusions. He has few delusions of any sort-although he has aspirations. He is an A. J. Cassatt, but instead of heads a great organization of railway workers. His name is Warren $. Stone. If you know something of
 him, you will know how union labor
 can be a constructive force-how
 what he is doing will benefit the
 country as we'll as the particular
 workers he represents. For if he were engaged in just another class
 movement, the story would not be
 worth telling.
 To know something of MT. Stone IS to know the bank and the financial operations of the brotherhood gener- ally. For MT. Store is the father of all of them. First of all, he Is an American. Practically all our looo- motive engineers are Americans. He IS just this much of a revolutionist- when Liberty Bonds were down and many banks were refusing to lend on them, Stones banks speculated. It is the only time they have speculated They publicly advised against any ones selling Liberty Bonds, and they offered to lend more on the bonds than was then the market price in Cleveland for the small denomina- tions Of course Stone had to run the risk of the banks being entombed in a glacier of slow-moving assets, but he was willing to take that risk and he saved many thousand dollars for those holders of bonds who least of all could afford to lose their say ings and who, furthermore, could not be made to understand why secur- ity of the United States should not always be worth it's face value. That Is how much he believes in the future of the country.
 The Man They Call Czar.
 He is an advocate of public owner ship, of cooperative enterprise, and of labor representation in govern ment Now and again he hitches up with the 'parlor iconoclasts, and he makes a strange figure among them, for-he is not of their kind, although he can partly talk their odd lingo. His is surging, restless disposition, and he likes new ideas and he likes to talk about them-but he is as careful about putting new ideas into effect as is Henry Ford. He is by far the highest paid labor-union execu- tive in the country. He makes no secret of that He fails to see why a union executive should not be paid enough to permit him to give abso- lutely undivided attention to union af fairs. Once at wage conference al prominent but not too sane railway president said to MT. Stone: T am the highest-paid railroad president in the world. That's what my stockhold 1 CTS think of me-
 "I wish I had your stockholders" answered Mr. Stone "You are over paid three times, while I am just about that much underpaid"
 Mr. Stones total salary from all sources is in the neighborhood of i $3o,ooo a year, but he is the type of man who would earn at least $Ioo,- 900 a year if he were in business and he would be worth it. He Is a | despot. He has been Grand Chief of l the brotherhood for nearly 20 years l
 1~