The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-04-25

01ced, the labor movement Of the
United States had two choices,-to
light or to yield. The American labor
movement chose to yield rather than
to fight.
Consequently, since 1922 there has
been no considerable labor struggle in
the United States. Labor has chosen
to yield, and this yielding has taken
the form Of investment and banking
activities.
WILLIAM GREEN, president of the
w A. F. of L., in speech delivered
at Harvard University on March 20, is
reported to have said that labor has
passed through the fighting period and
is now in period where it must con-
fer.
He said that workers must concede
"the right of employers to control,
direct and manage industry and to
receive a fair, return upon, invested
capital and that modern trade
u1ionism is opposed" to the two ex-
tremes Of hostile employers on the
one hand and "the workers revolu-
tionary group" on the other. Accord
ing to this statement, Green has be-
come an arbiter between capital and
labor.
THAT fact suggests the conclusion
= that craft unionism is in itself a
method of collaboration, and that
those of us who have looked to craft
unionism for revolutionary ideas have
been trying to gather figs from this
ties.
Wherever one goes in the United
States one encounters a lively in
terest in labor banking. The first of
these banks, the Brotherhood Of Loco
motive Engineers National Bank,
started in Cleveland in 1920 with
capital Of one million dollars; its de-
posits, to date, amount to 1856 million
dollars. 1t has property valued at
about is million dollars, besides other
important assets. There are. now
thirty labor banks In the United
States, all but two of which have
sprung w III lSl0-lSI4.
DURING the years of the steel strike
- of the injunction against the min
ers, and of the initial stages of the
open-shop drive (1919-192O), American
labor faced difficult crisis, and labor
leaders had to make a definite deci-
sion. One road led toward industrial
conflict and the other toward the en-.
trance of labor into business. The
labor executives decided that it was
better to lead their organizations into
the banking business than to fight.
I'VE cannot fight against the govern
ment," said Lewis, and so he became
the president of the Indianapolis labor
bank.
The arguments for labor banking
are very obvious and very old. If
labor organization deposits a million
dollars in a capitalist bank it DELHI
erately strengthens the hands Of its
economic enemies.
DUT if it organizes its own bank it
~ not only keeps control of its own
million dollars, but it has a loaning
power of four or five times that
amount, and when labor wants to bor-
row money in times of need and crisis
1t can go to its own bank
But going into the banking bust
ness ties up the labor banker with
other elements in the community.
First, the boards of directors Of most
of the banking organizations are COM
posed principally OF business and pro-
fessional men; second, the banking
officials are not labor men,-they are
In the banking business and must I'M
derstand the banking game; third, the
labor banker must conform to the va
rious laws and codes OF the banking
world. There are 10000 banks in the
United States, thirty of which are
labor banks; II these latter do not
conform they cannot bank.
TIME LABOR BANKER" contains