Evening star., 1948-09-05

his mission.
! Gompers laid down political
axiom for labor which has endured
the test of time when ne said, Re
ward your friends and punish your
enemies" am prepared to rest my
case with labor on that basis.
Gompers was against the Social
lst experimenters and Communist
wreckers of his day, and I believe he
| would be against them in their mod
ern guise of reformers and collec-
twists. With sharp insight, he rec
ognized them as the greatest men,
ace to free labor and free trade
unioniSnl
In the last six years the State of
New York has had no place in it's
government for ''party-liners" or
fellow-travelers. And your next ad-
ministration in Washington will not
make them any more welcome. The
new national administration which
takes office next January will never
make the mistake of assuming that
men like Lee Pressman speak for the
American working man. {.
Nor will that administration play
into the hands of such elements by
SO far forgetting the rights of all
our citizens as to propose that
strikes be broken by drafting men
into the Army.
In contrast with such policies.
there is the record of administra-
ton in the largest industrial State
in the nation during the past six
years. We have always taken pride
in the fact that the American labor
movement was born in New York
and has now been accorded a life
size place in the community. We
have got along we'll with the A. F.
of L. people in our State and. as
the annual reports of the New York
State Federation of Labor will show,
they have got along we'll with us.
Progress In New York.
More than once in these recent
years they have found occasion to
point out that New York State has
led the country in fields of social
progress in which labor has an abid-
ing interest. This progress has been
a co-opera tive undertaking in which
we all had common objectives.
In achieving this progress, we
have been ever mindful that if any
advance was worth fighting for it
had to meet the test of the public
interest. There is no class legisla-
ton on the statute books Of New
York. An advantage for manage
ment over labor or for labor over
the public does not meet that test.
When labor Is adequately insured
against the threat of Unemployment
and against the hazards of the job,
the whole community is stronger.
When labor relations are handled
in fair, impartial way, with
minimum of coercion and a maxi
mum of cooperation, and the re-
suit is fewer strikes and industrial
disputes, all the people benefit.
Measures to achieve these ends are
labor policies only in a technical
sense. They are, in fact, matters
of the broadest public interest.
1t is not only labor which bene-
fits in New York from the fact that
our state ranks second to none in
the peaceful settlement of disputes.
Every man. woman and child in the
State is better off because of 1t.
To Discuss All Vital Issues.
I look forward to the coming
campaign as an opportunity to talk
frankly to the country on all of
the vital issues before our people.
Not the least of these issues is
labor. And, although l know I will
be talking the working mans Ian
guage when l talk about the price
OF meat and how it got where it is
and how it can be brought down,
and when I talk about housing for
our people, and Nsace, and secur-
ity. I think I will be talking most
directly to the A. F. of L. when I
take up the question of organized
labor's place in our society.
There are some people who seem
to have lost their way in the dense
fog Of propaganda which has been
loosed on the labor front. Familiar
objects seem to have taken on a
strangeneSs; much that is true has
been made to appear false: some
things which do not exist have been
mistaken for reality. I want to dis
pei that fog and replace hysteria
with reason. Il
And I begin with the profound
conviction that the American labor
movement is bulwark of our sys-
tenn of freedom: that unless labor is
free none of us are free: and that
that freedom can and must be pre-
served. We must never let ourselves
forget that the first act of the Hitler
dictatorship was to destroy the Ger
man unions and that the Soviet
dictatorship has made the Russian
unions creatures OF the state. in
struments to terrorize and keep en-
slaved the Russian workers.
Against Union Busting.
With these awful lessons before
us. we must zealously guard against
any attempts at union busting and
against efforts to make the Ameri-
can labor movement political COM
pany union.
Knowing the AFL as do. I would
expect to find in it very few men
who would sell out the interests of
their members and their country
for political preferment. There can
be no such thing as a union COM
missar. He could only be a commits
sar of an organization of slaves.
1t is with men who share that
philosophy, not with those who ac-
cept foreign theology, that We will
work in Washington. That is why l
anticipate in the future what have
experienced in the pasta close
cooperative relationship with the
responsible leadership of the AFL