The Daily Alaska empire., 1947-04-02

they are anti-labor, of course only in the marrow sense that the antitrust laws anti-business or the Securities Exchange Act was anti-Wal Street Con- gress frequently found to redress the balance of power among the economic elements of society and the process requires taking excessive power imposing obligations and responsibilities in the where the need for such acton indicated But legislation of this kind is not action against any particular group it is action behalf o the people as a whole. It reflects theme which runs through the entire history of the country, beginning with the Constitution itself with the atters judcious disr- button of political power As applied in the economic field, it rests the sound and firmly established doctrine that group element in the nation should be permitted dictate the terms and conditions of living and working of the rest of the people
 In their recent study made for the Brooknes Institution, titled "A National Labor Policy Harold w Metz and Meyer Jacobstein rote that:
 Over many centuries Anglo American law
 has sought to limit the areas in which private
 warfare is permitted. Even where no legal
 remedy exists for wrong, force and violence
 are not regarded proper means of securing
 satisfaction Private warfare involves the pos
 sibty of injury to innocent third persons
 who are in no way parties to the dispute, and
 also society a whole. Only in the field
 of industrial relations is private warfare still
 permitted.
 In this passage the authors are thinking in terms of the damage done by such weapons of industrial warfare sympathetic strikes, boycotts and Jurs- dctional strikes But more important, perhaps, is what be termed the invisible damage that results when any one group in the economy is in position arrogate to itself special privileges and immunities which add up to monopolstic power
 Labor under the charter of the Wagner Act, has risen to just such dominant position since the early Thirties-assisted by Government intervention on the one hand, under which almost every issue between the unions and industry has been resolved in favor of the former and the other, the new philosophy of with respect to the independence Of admin istratve agenciesa philosophy which has given the National Labor Relations Board extraordinary latitude in interpreting the Wagner Act In this period union membership has grown from less than four million to than twelve million, and labors power to make economic decisions of vital importance to the natlo% has risen correspondngly
 If were possible to conceive state of affairs in which leaders of union labor pursued policies that were totally unselfish and dsnterestd and always adapted to the requirements of tEe free enterprise syS tenn this might not have led to an intoerable condl- tion. Unfortunately, union policy has reflected no such spirit of enlightenment It has been simple, and dictated the most part completely by political and economic selfnerest It has consisted in CD seeking high and ver-inc1easing wages for the union mem- bers and (2) in all too many cases regulating and limiting production steadily widening scale. This is. of course neither more nor less than the economic philosophy which all monopoles have erected And it's results, with all monopolles have been benefit limited groups of workers at the expense and to the very real injury, of the com munity a whole
 It seems clear that the committees now consider ing remedial legislation fully conscious of the nature of the problem There has been little or no suggestion of anything that could be described as punitive legislation. No one apparently has pro- posed legislation calling compulsory arbitration of labor disputes the outlawing of strikes we are to judge from the of agreement announced re gently by the House Labor Committee what that group seeks is not legislation which would outlaw strikes, but legislation which would make them un- necessary. It's objective, should be- is to provide the means of peaceful settlements in disputes and impose upon parties concerned the legal obligations to use these means