Evening star., 1938-12-11
By John Lear,
Associated Press Stan Writer.

U'SNS f>S~' ~~'''S r~oo
The minimum is popular. Thus far no
unit has asked the maximum.
The national Offices share Of this in
come is now cents per month per men,
ber: beginning in March, it will be 3
cents. Two cents month from 400 900
members would be $1,000. If that we're
correct, Mr.. LASER says, I'VE would be
rich" But, he says, it is not correct;
the 2 cents a month can be reckoned
regularly from only 100000 members.
But what of the remaining 100000?
They are on the dues books" he says
"but they do not pay regularly. They
will go along for while. letting their
dues slide, until they lose their jobs or
something happens that they need U.S.
Then they pay up so they can ask our
help. After getting what they want
they backslide again until something
else happens, when they pay up again.
And so on"
100000 Sign Blanks.
Lest this create wrong impression of
strength, it should be pointed out that
in addition to the 100000 who pay their
dues regularly and the 20O 900 who pay
as need dictates, there are 100000 more
who have signed application blanks with
out yet having reached the dues paying
stage.
To its critics, the alliance is vast
army fighting to perpetuate the Govern
ment relief on which it feeds. This. Mr..
LASER denies. He says the union wants
not relief, but jobs for all its members
in private industry. Until those jobs are
available, he adds, relief must be con-
tinued on a scale to care for them all.
The cost, he says, should come from taxes
on incomes over $4,000 year because if
you take the money from people who
spend all they have for necessities you
are merely robbing Peter to pay Paul"
From there on, this 36-year- -old who
leads an organization of 100000 men on
a salary he says is only $50 week,
speaks in the terms of a management
engineer. He can do it with aplomb, for
he is an engineer by training. He was
graduated from the Massachusetts, In
stitute of Technology in 1924, and fol-
lowed that up with three years of busi-
ness management.
He first took up the cause of the un-
employed in 1929, when he was writing
technical stuff for the New York Edison
Co. He wrote letter to the company
president, Matthew Sloan, protesting
against dismissal of 1900 employees as an
economy move. Two weeks later Mr..
LASER lost his own job. He got another
and held it until 1888, when he was
again discharged.
Goes From Job to Job.
That was the last straw. All his life
he had been shifting about, from the
time his family had moved from his
birthplace in Baltimore to Newark, N. j.,
when he was years old. He had got
his first job, as clerk, at H. He had
worked on railroad, in shipyard and
as bank runner before he went to
France with the A. E. F. to be. gassed
at the opening of the Argonne offensive.
He had left high school as a freshman,
but had returned to studies under the
Governments rehabilitation program
for veterans. He had tried law but gave
it up due to stammer he brought back
from the war and he had turned to engi-
neering. Now that had failed him. He
talked to an old man selling apples on a
street corner and decide dhe should help
organize the unemployed.
He began with the Workers Commit
tee tor Unemployment. in Greenwich
Village, with . $7S . week salary paid