The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1946-10-17
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' ]df.1{|'(44EsRsREY II

ton.
Many things distinguish thi!
convention from all previous con-
ventions.
But there are two matters thai
top the others. One is the largest
membership ever represented by 6
labor convention in the United
States. The other is that the Min
ers are "back home".
Not many of the delegates will
take much time to think back tc
the days when an American FEEDER
alton of Labor convention repre-
sented men struggling for primary
rights. Those days are actually
gone. But there was time when
those struggles were very real and
very serious.
For example, there was the long
fight to outlaw the labor injunc-
tion. The labor injunction was a
frightful thing, about which many
new union members have perhaps
never even heard, or but dimly un-
derstand.
The best general understanding
of the nature of the labor injunc-
tion, it's history and it's cruelties
came when John P. Frey wrote
a series of scholarly articles for
International Labor News Service
and then put those articles into a
book which he had privately print
ed.
Then came the Clayton Act and
the Norris-LaGuardia Act and the
labor injunction was laid away in
moth balls.
You see, under the law as it
stood in those old days men could
be ordered by a Judge, in an ex
parte hearing to cease doing
things that it was perfectly lawful
to do; or to do things which men
had lawful right to refuse to do.
In one notable case the Molders'
union and it's members were even
ordered by judge not to even
mention, by spoken or written
word or in any other way, that a
strike existed. If they did they
could punished for contempt of
court.
But that's all over now. The
parade has moved along and men
ponder other issues.
There was the yellow dog con-
tract, under the terms of which
workers were required to contract
not to join union. That, too, has
passed into the limbo of institu-
lions that have perished. 1t was
vicious thing in it's hey day.
And there was the company
lnion, which got it's start toward
real prominence when the then
young w. l.. Mackenzie King
,ame down from Canada to help
John d. Rockefeller put a new
'front.' on his industrial structure
after the ghastly shooting of min
ers in Colorado and, if memory
gets the timing right, after Wood
'ow Wilson's Industrial Relations
Commission had put the young
[ohn d. through a marvellous
sweating literally, for it was a
lot day in New York; regarding
he labor policies of the Rockefell-
r empire.
There were among labor lead
rs a few bold prophets who fore
aw that eventually the company
lnions would turn into real unions, /
'ut it took section IA of the !
Roosevelt National Recovery Act |
o end the career of the company
lnion as an institution of conse-
uence.
The delegates now assembled
rent worried about those obsta-
les now. Men bled and surely
weat to overcome them. And the
Office of today rests upon the
uins of those old evils.
Today there are new issues, but
here they concern the rights of
IAN and new ones are no more
nportant.
Today we have initiation and it's
ossible growth; we have the
'nited Nations and labor's job on
ne world stage; we have the awe
ome fear of coming and utterly
evastating war. At least the fear
xists among enough people to
lake it matter calling for
fought.
This labor convention can and
ossibly will make noteworthy
toward the building of ;
nal happiness, based on justice.
The opportunity is magnificent.
he need is tremendous.-CMW.