The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1941-04-03


ton Board, named by the President
to deal with the acute problem of the
strikes in defense plants, has begun
to function, nearly everybody will
wish it success. Because the situation
is very grave and the delay, due to
early Presidential insistence that the
strikes were unimportant and the sit
uation exaggerated, has been very
costly indeed.
Nevertheless, too much should not
be expected of this board too soon. If
it surmounts it's handieaps and
achieves it's goal of honest and impair
tial decisions, it will have demon
strated ability amounting almost to
genius. A good deal has been said
about the fact that the board can only
deal with strike after it has been
certified" to it by the Department of
Labor. That could be a very real han
dicap, though not if the department
"certifies" as promptly as it did in the
four cases now before the board.
@#M
Very much more serious obstacles
to success are, first, the fact that the
board has no power to enforce it's de-
cisions; second, the presence on it of
four professional, paid labor leaders,
1t is to the latter that attention is
here directed, because Mr.. Roosevelt's
practice of putting these paid, pro-
fessional labor leaders on every de-
tense board and commission, in the
minds of many thoughtful men, is the
fundamental misconeeption which en-
feebles the whole defense effort. 1t
is particularly bad in the case of the
Mediation Board In that case it is
like putting the counsel of the de-
PENDANT in law suit on the Jury. 1t
is an absurdity to appoint men to end
strikes whose business it is to pro-
mote strikes.
:s##
This is not said is disparagement of
the individual labor representatives
Some of them are good men. 1t is said
in criticism of the theory that the
paid Representatives of one side in a
controversy should sit on a board
charged with the duty of reaching the
"honest, impartial and non-political"
decisions which, DR.. Dykstra asserts
is the aim. Probably, it will be con-
tended that this is an argument that
labor should not be represented at all
and mediation conducted only by in
1t, of course, is nothing
of the sort. There would be Just as
much objection to putting on the Me-
diation Board the paid officials of the
plants in which strikes were in prog
ress as there is to putting on paid
representatives of the strikers.
The same objection applies equally
to both. Mr. Roosevelt would not
think, for example, of putting the
president of the Bethlehem Steel
Company, Mr.. Eugene Grace, on a
mediation board as a representative
of industry. Why, then, should he put
on Mr. Philip Murray, head of the
CLIO, which is striking against the
Bethlehem company? There would be
no more difficulty in getting out
standing friends of labor, strong sup
porters of the labor point of view and
battlers for labor's rights to serve on
such a board than there is to get men
sympathetic with the industrial view
s. *
The big point is that the paid Off
cials, neither of the defense plants
nor of the strikers against such
plants, should sit on the jury to hear
and decide the case. That seems hard
ly to admit of argument. Yet the paid
representatives of the strikers are sit
ting on the jury. 1t is natural and in
evitable that their minds should be
closed on the issue, concerning which
they are supposed to reach an "hon-
est, impartial and non-political" de-
cision. The truth is that the presence
of these paid labor leaders on these
defense boards particularly the Me-
diation Board-clashes with a funda-
mental rule of law which prohibits a
man from being on both sides of one
transaction.
One man, as Mr.. Mark Sullivan
points out, must not hold two trusts
which conflict with one another. 1t
all goes back to the old Biblical in
junction that one man cannot serve
two masters. 1t is sound enough to
have on a mediation board represen-
tatives of labor and representatives
of industry, but it is thoroughly I'M
sound to assign the job of mediation
of strikes in defense plant either to
the paid officials of the plant or the
paid officials of the strikers. To bal
ance one against the other obviously
makes for futility. To put one group
of paid officials on and not the other
group makes loaded board.
II *
1t is easy to get industrialists who
are independent of the defense plants