The Connecticut labor news., 1924-07-12

With a national political campaign already we'll under way many eyes are turned in the direction of Labor's efforts i'll that struggle.
 Various so-called third party move ments are under way, none of them of any particular promise, but all more or less confusing in their locality.
 Those who turn to these so-called third party movements proclaim the1r profound disgust with what they term the reactionary policy of the Amerl- can Federation of Labor. They are inpatient And they fail to see that their impatience is leading them to the kind of haste which makes only for delay.
 The political policy of the American Federation of Labor will Dear exam ination at all times. An examination at this time may be helpful to some who do not fully comprehend its mean ing. or who have been beguiled by the phrases of the experimenters and dreamers.
 It is the belief of the American Fed eration of Labor that the greatest re- suits are to be achieved i'll politics by a devotion to principles rather than to parties and that the surest way to ad- vance principles is to support those candidates who accept the principles and to oppose those who reject them.
 There is nothing involved about this belief; nothing complicated about the practice. And it is the only way by which Labor can avoid the dissenslons and schisms that inevitably must come from party partisanship- Parties must take) positions on matters that are not in any sense purely Labor questions. For example, they must deal with the tariff. a matter on which Labor has taken no position for a great many years for obvious reasons.
 The American Federation of Labor is a Labor organization. Its principal object is to protest and promote the interests of the toiling masses. It must, in the field of politics, press for those men and measures that advance the interests of the toiling masses. Labor has its broad interests of C1t1- zenship and general progress, but its first concern is solely with the wei fare of the great masses of wage earners.
 Principles for which Labor contends cannot be the private property ot any other political party. These prlnc1- ples have to do with humanitarian and libertarian issues. They are neither Republican nor Democratic, neither socia1istic or populistic. Not any more than they are Presbyterian or Bap- tist.
 These principles must be considered by men and either accepted or re- jected by men. If a whole political party organization wishes to support any or all of Labor's principles, that is entirely agreeable to Labor, but such an act could not put the party label on the principles to the exclu- sion of any other support.
 Principles which Labor supports may, on the other. hand, be rejected entirely by an entire party organiza- ton, but that cannot, signify that there has been any change III the principles. Politically, they remain as non-partisan as ever.
 Representatives of all parties have espoused measures for which Labor has contended Witness such meas
 ures as the Seamen's Act, the Eight
 hour Act, the Clayton Act, the Sui
 frage Amendment, the recent Immi-
 grafton Act, and the still more notable | Child Labor Amendment to the United States Constitution.
 In each case larger percentage ot one party voted for these measures
 than was mustered by the other party, but that did not make them party measures Nor could it. Labor was interested in the success of the meas ures, not in the fortunes of a party. Seldom has a Labor measure been fought through Congress as a strict