Life — November 6, 1919 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

id S r 5 ] AND THEN WE AMERICANS WILL GO TO WORK one may wonder whether he is quite equal in his present state of health to the extra exertion of letting go enough even of the things that are unessential to save the face of the Opposition and yet the treaty ratified. If he needs help about that he ought to have it, but that is for him to say and he seems able to decide. That the achievement on which he has spent his strength should have the heart cut out of it because his strength is spent, would be intolerable. sculated treaty would not do. His helpers, if he is to have any, must be persons who be depended on not to accept a pack- age that the goods have been taken out of, but to descriptions of the con- tents of the package, written on the outside of it, there should not be too much objection. No safe vent should be denied to Senators who need one. Nobody’s p:ide, nobody’s temper, no- body's partisanship or personal aspir- ations, should be permitted to stand between an agon- ized world and the settled peace and resulting co. operation it needs so much. What can be done should be discovered. If it is enough, doit? If it is not ough and the treaty must is time that that should be known and that the world should know pre- cisely what men are re sponsible for the defeat of this great detail of itshopes. TN! strikers rub along more or less uncomfortably, and worry a lot of people very much, and cost a good deal, but on the whole the strike business is bad. It is not proving profitable to strikers. The steel strike is languishi the coal strike has been declared illegal; the longshoremen are mostly on the job again; the pressmen and other printers hereabouts have been able nuch trouble for the periodi seem not to have gained advantage for them selves. The Bol idea of a gen- eral seizure of the means of production hy Bolshevists and exaction of tribute from the rest of society, seems not to 787 be prospering at all. Mr. Foster has not yet been able to demonstrate that there is money in it for steel workers, nor is it likely that a considerable proportion of the steel workers would accept it even if it were profitable It got a body blow from the election in Massachusetts, recognized every. where as an event of National import ance, and so emphasized by the trans mission of the congratulations of a Democratic President to the Repub- lican governor who won. It looks as though folks in this country either were not advanced enough to be Bolshevists, or were too much advanced; probably the latter. The recent strikes may have helped to make people realize the urgent need of a true settlement of labor problems, and to prod them into activity about it, but in themselves they have settled nothing unless it is the fatuity of the Bolshevist theory that industrial labor is the supreme boss and only needs to sweep the straw king off of his throne and take it itself The pressmen’s strike which em- barrasses all periodicals in New York, is a bolting enterprise of two pres: men’s unions which have defied the authority of their national or; tion, violated the agreements made for them by that organization and struck for a reduction of hours and increase of pay which would add about sixty per cent to the cost of printing. They have rejected offers of six dollars a week increase with provision for read- justment of the wage scale every six months on the cost of living basis. Their action in breakis that bound them pediency of entering into any new agreement with them while they con- tinue under their present leadership. Concerns that have tried it found themselves still held up by the re fusal of other employees, loyal to their national organizations, to work with the pressmen who had those organizations the go-bye The demands of the coal miners probably have more merit t ay rs on the face of them, but in s miners violated an ag’ with the sanction of the U. S. Fuel Ad ministration, and also broke a law the Food and Fuel Control Act They will not be able to get their de mands considered until they cease to be law-breakers. yreement comicbooks.com