Evening star., 1941-12-18
The Political Mill
Wilson's Work or Fight Order Recalled
As Labor and Industry Confer Here
BY GOULD LINCOLN.

BY GOULD LINCOLN.
The outbreak Of war has given
labor and industry another
chance to come to some plan or
agreement to do away with
strikes and lockouts in national
defense industries-without the
enactment Of laws designed to
curb all such stoppages Of work.
1t remains to be seen whether
the representatives Of labor and
industry will be able to agree
and speedily, as demanded by
President Roosevelt when he
called them to the White House
yesterday. II no agreement IS
made, there Is certain to be
legislation by Congress. There
are members of Congress who
believe that legislation should be
enacted in any event-as q meas
ure Of preparedness If another
epidemic of strikes takes place.
The President, in calling this
conference, acted on the recon-
mendation of some of the labor
leaders themselves, and on that
Of friends of labor who wished to
make it possible to avoid legisla-
ton. Labor leaders have de-
nounced any legislative proposals
whatever, to curb strikes. The
President also followed a prece-
dent set by Secretary Of LABOR
w. B. Wilson in the first World
War days. Mr.. Wilson called a
similar meeting Of representa-
tives of labor and management in
March. ls1s-almost a year after
the United States had been at
war. Production Of essential
war materials was hindered then,
as 1t has been today, by strikes
and lockouts.
principles" Adopted.
This meeting was called the
War Labor Conference Board,
with labor having five represent
atives and industry five, and
two chairmen, representing the
public, one selected by labor and
the other by industry. The chair
men were william Howard Taft,
who had been President Of the
United States. and Frank P.
Walsh, q former chief OF the In
dustrial Relations Commission.
To the credit Of this gathering,
it may be said that within .
short time 1t had unanimously
adopted set Of principles" and
policies" to govern the relations
of labor and management during
the war emergency. The next
step was q proclamation by the
President, Woodrow Wilson, set
ting up . National War Labor
Board. The personnel Of this
board remained the same as that
of the conference board.
The principles adopted are Of
particular interest at this time.
Some Of them have been written
into law since then, in the in
terest of labor. These principles
recognized the right of labor to
organize and bargain collectively,
and the right OF employers to do
the same. They declared that no
employees should be discharged
for membership in trade unions,
nor for legitimate trade union
activities" They declared, too,
that the workers, in the exercise
Of their right to organize, shall
not use coercive measures Of any
kind to induce persons to Join
their organizations nor to induce
employers to bargain or deal
CnereWlth."
These principles also set forth
that in shops where the union
shop" existed 1t should continue,
and the union standards as to
wages and working conditions
should be maintained. In open
shops" where union men and
non-union men worked together,
it was stated that the continuance
of that situation should not be
deemed a grievance" This decla-
ration, however, was not intended
to prohibit efforts to unionize
such shops.
The basic eight-hour day-now