The daily monitor. (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1940-1942, 1941-04-24
NO WAR WITHIN A WAR

gram will foil.
Mr. Knudsen does not believe that
legislation to suppress strikes is nee
essoy or enforceable. But he does rec
ommend addition of two provisions to
the present machinery of mediation:
(o) to place all strike votes under
supervision Of the Department Of
Lobor, and (b) to require certain
minimum wait for possible conciliotion
before strike vote may toke effect.
These ore moderate recommended
tons. They should be put immediately
into practice and, if necessary, into law:
The usefulness Of q "cooIing-off
period is ottested also by William n.
Davis, Vice-Chormon Of the National
Defense Labor Mediation Board, in tes-
timony before the House Military
Affairs Committee.
With competent mediation and any
reasonable ottitude on the two sides
most strikes are ovoidobIe. It may toke
q greet deal Of searching to find the
line of agreement, but thot effort is
far better than the botterine Of heads
and the delay of production. So vitoI is
the need today thot if strikes knock
out even per cent Of potential de-
Tense output, the loss is more than can
be spared.
Moreover, the blame for that loss,
whether rightly or wrongly placed at
the door of labor, is more than organ
lied labor can Oxford. And public senti-
ment tends inevitably to blame work.
ers mainly for strikes since the spec
tocle Of several thousand men leaving
their benches is more visible and dro-
matte than q manufacturer possibly
holding out for high profit and turn
ing deaf ear to grievances.
People are asking intently today if
Communism is at the root of the minor
wave Of strikes in America during the
lost three months. Probably Conmu-
nism is only q small foctor-on irritot-
ing one, but not q controlling one. An
overreoching on the part Of SOME labor
leadership, an effort to exploit q period
Of. industrial and union prosperity, is
probably q larger foctor.
But the most damaging influence of
all is plain, simple opothy-indffer-
ence to the world holocaust that threat
ems to swallow up all the things men
are Pettily fighting over in America.
1t is this blindness, this obIIvous,
ness to danger, thot enables Conru-
nism, rocketeerne, Bourbonsm, or
what have you, to get in it's work. If
workers and business men we're fully
awake to the situation, nothing could
keep them from getting together. They
would make sacrifices on either side
to understand each other, to cooper
ote, and at least to bury their differ
ences for the time.
Mr. Davis, the mediator already re-
ferred to, speaks from experience as
head Of the New York Stote Medic
ton Boord and with the honor Of hov-
ing settled the AIIis-ChoImers strike
probably the most serious interference
with defense production that has taken
place He believes that for the United
Stotes to stop the. process Of collective
bargaining by passing O compulsory
onstrike law would be coIomty"
But he makes q trenchont analysis
Of employer and employee responsible
ity in this crisis:
If all industrioIists in America will
do what most Of them have done-thot
is to accept without reserve the spirit Of
the National Labor Relations Act and
its inplicotons-the problem would be
eosier
On the other hand, think that the
labor organizations. having this Act
and having this machinery, ought to
fight it out before the Labor Board and
not use the resort to force.
Relations between copitoI and labor
olwoys coll for give and toke, and ex-
perienoed men know that on either side
it cannot be all give or all toke But in
this present situation neither labor nor,
oopitoI can hold or gain nearly as much
from the other as it stonds to lose
is not in liberties under on jnDosed