Evening star., 1934-03-18
PROGRESS UNDER n. X. A.
SEEN VICTORY FORLABOR
New Deals Handling of Industrial Re-
lations Praised in Address by
DIR. Leo WOlman.

program. This development Is all
the more unprecedented and amazing
because it has taken place in coun-
try notoriouSly and traditionally
backward in the acceptance of modern
labor legislation.
Conflicting and competitive State
Jurisdictions and our tough individual
ism combined to make the passage
of laws regulating the wages and
hours of labor of men almost total
impoSsibility. Now. within less than
nine months, some 10000, 900 of work
ers. men and women, manual and
white collar, working for employers
engaged in intrastate as well as in in
terstate business, have been brought
under the provisions of a labor law
which has daily become more COM
prehenSive. Whatever the original
purpose of the recovery act may have
been. the labor terms of the codes have
become more and more elaborate and
have departed widely from the simple
measures designed to establish min
imum wages for common labor and
maximum hours of work, and to stop
at that.
Process Tentative.
The offer of the cotton textile in
dustry to end the use of child labor
and to set up joint agency for the
investigation and correction of the
stretch-out was the first step in the
process of extending the application
of codes to the multifarious problems
of labor. This process has OF neces-
sity been tentative and experimental,
but under its influence the labor sec
tions of typical codes determine over
time rates, the length of the work
day, define apprenticeship, fix the
number of apprentices and learners
and establish their rates of wages. de-
fine the relation between wages and
hours, limit the labor of minors In
hazardous occupations, and In these
and other respects make the labor pro-
visions of the latest codes more and
more closely resemble, in form and
content, those collective agreements
between employers and employees,
which it has always been the purpose
of organized labor to achieve. For
the first time, then, in the history of
American industry, working conditions
of labor employed in nearly all of pri-
vate industry have become subject to
collective bargaining between repre-
sentatives of industry, labor and the
Federal Government.
For contrary to some opinion, labor
has from the outset been afforded in
fluential and responsible representa-
ton in all of the activities of the Re-
covery Administration affecting the
problems of labor. In the making OF
codes, in fixing the labor terms of the
Presidents unemployment agreement,
in passing upon exemptions to this
agreement, and in setting up and ad-
ministering the compliance machinery
of the administration, the particular
and general interests of labor have
been served by the temporary and
permanent appointment OF the desig-
mated agents of various groups OF
labor.
In this procedure, the afhliated
unions of the American Federation OF
Labor, independent labor organizations
of all types, and even Communist
unions have participated. I can think
of no important code which has been
adopted without going through this
process, during which the representa-
tives of labor sat with those of indus
try and made efforts to improve the
labor terms of that code. In most in
stances a period Of at least months
elapsed while the labor sections un-
derwent drastic revision, and in most
cases the completed code showed vast
improvement over its original terms.
Only Method Available.
If it be said that the results of this
method were often unsatisfactory to
labor, this is only equivalent to say
ing that the method OF negotiation
must finally terminate, and can do so
Continued on Fourth Pase.)