The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1940-02-23
TheCherry
i" Where with our
roo Little Hatchet we
tell the truth
about many things, sometimes pro-
foundly. Sometimes flippantly,
sometimes recklessly.

SOIueIiHHcS TcCkieSSly.
This is an age of fighting. Fight
this; fight that; fight every day, for
something, or against something.
Labor is-has to be-in most of the
fights.
The age-old fights, for basic rights.
Always they come first. They are by
no means finished.
Employers soak in education slowly.
They have their rights, but are slow
to yield to others.
The barons won their rights at
Runnymede, but long years were to
pass before the serfs and workers got
even the most elemental of theirs.
Even today the wars go on, for
rights, for freedoms, so that all the
decency of life may not go to the few.
And even within itself labor gets
tangled up on the same issue-to
whom shall go the rights.
We speak of the war in Europe;
actually there are several. And more
in Asia.
So, labor, resenting imperialism,
despotism, autocracy, joins to help the
victims of tbaco owls
Labor helps the Firms, helps the
Czechs, helps the Poles, helps the Chi
nese; raises great sums of money for
victims and refugees.
Labor fights infantile paralysis,
gives to the Red Cross, helps the un-
employed.
There is no good fight in which or
ganized labor is not engaged.
This is as it should be and as it
must be, for labor in unions is first of
all an idealistic movement.
The opponents of unions see only
that labor seeks better conditions of
employment, better wages, shorter
work-days.
The vast contributions of labor to
the social progress of the nation are
too often lost to view-but there
they stand, a growing series of monu-
ments to the idealism of organized
labor and its vital concern for the
betterment of human life on every
front.
Labor talks too little, perhaps,
about its far-sighted, constructive eff
forts to make America better land
"a free land, happier land
Just so, the critic sees the $12 wage,
or the $14 wage of the building me-
chanic, but doesn't see the long and
weary days when there is no work
Maybe the hourly wage is higher
than it should be, maybe there's a
way of forcing higher annual in
come out of lower rate per day, but
nobody has found it yet and those who
are the severest critics are the ones
who have given least to finding
better plan.
Against all the criticism stands the
fact that in every great national crisis
it has been proclaimed on every hand
labor is our first line of defense"
old &c II. ho 1,1yoc
to call himself, rather fatuously)
Hugh Johnson gave forth that acclaim
when he was busy with the draft in
the World War.
And if Westbrook Pegler, tainted
with certain mental jaundice, roots
out some evil with his bitter pound
ing, let that be to his credit (if and
when he does), but where is his rec
ognition of the great contribution of
the unions to the sound and solid well
fare Of the United States?
1t is a sad thing when men see only
with one eye.
In New England there are public
to labor's great contribu-
tions in the establishment of our pub
lie school system.
Whatever may have been the
slight and temporary alterations,
labor has come down from the
very first days of unions, fighting
over the whole broad field for
human rights, human freedom,
democracy and better life for
all.
If corporate wealth survives it will
be because labor has compelled mod
that make corporate wealth
serviceable and not purely an engine
of exploitation.
AS the warm days of spring draw
near, to warm the earth again into
new life, let these be things for con-
r ON nj al tion