Senator Couzens's Conversion

...It was bitterly cold and under these conditions I saw the hose turned on them...

...Couzens has also happened to other industrial leaders, is hardly to be expected...

...Royal Meeker, who was Commissioner of Labor Statistics from 1913 to 1920, upon the reliability of the unemployment figures issued from Washington as based upon the last census...

...Labor leaders, however, will also have to be converted to a wider vision, one broad enough to see and to sympathize with the workers not included in the unions...

...The word we have in mind was not conventional, and it strikes a note which opens a* depth of meaning not usually touched upon...

...Any such course will be a short-sighted and disastrous one for the country to pursue...

...I got converted right there...

...England has been forced to the highly dubious expedient of the dole, because her industrialists and labor interests so far have failed otherwise to solve the problem of employment, or of adequate provision for the worker in time of unemployment...

...Exactly how many people are now out of work perhaps nobody accurately knows, but that unemployment is more severe than ever before, except in the midst of a nation-wide panic, seems to be true...

...SENATOR COUZENS'S CONVERSION AMIDST the flood of words—of speeches, radio addresses, statements of labor leaders and of legislators, editorial articles and sermons—which Labor Day has called forth, there appeared this year one word which (symbolically at least) deserves our special attention...

...The despatch recalled the incident sixteen years ago which, he said, "converted him to the principles which caused his political opponents to call him 'radical and irresponsible.' " The incident happened long before Mr...

...In other words, they too must be converted...

...The word in question was "conversion...

...Before we try to explain what we have called the symbolical importance of the word used by Senator Couzens, and which apparently so startled the headline writer that he was compelled to put the word itself in quotation marks, it may be well to glance at a few other items appearing in the papers of late, and concerned with the labor situation...

...Green, however, considers the situation as being even more serious than it was last winter because of the large percentage of union members who have been out of work throughout the summer, while the high winter level of unemployment of last year lasted for only one month...

...After forty-eight hours of discussion Henry Ford agreed to a raise of wages from $2.30 a day to $5.00 in the hope that such men as we could retain might save something out of the increased wages for any contingency of lay-off in the future...

...Others make the same statement...

...Lehman strongly opposes the tendency of cutting wages "or a lessening in our labor standards...

...And, as Mr...

...That a very slight change for the better took place in the employment situation during August was the opinion expressed by Mr...

...I stood in the office window and saw these men milling about outside the gate...

...But that effective measures will be taken, however, to remedy their lot, until what happened to Mr...

...Meeker, the main fact is that he considers the estimate of 2,508,151 persons reported out of work by the census office as being far too low a figure...

...Leo XIII laid it down authoritatively that "wage earners, who are undoubtedly among the weak and necessitous should be especially cared for and protected by the government...

...Couzens says, unless, having thus been converted, our industrial leaders add good works to faith, and do something practical to stabilize the workingman's income, the government will be forced to do so...

...Couzens became a Senator, one who, as the despatch informs us, "startled a group of manufacturers by assailing as careless and thoughtless their present employment methods, and who warned them that unless business does something to stabilize the workingman's income, the government will...

...Lieutenant Governor Lehman of New York, in an address before the New York State Federation of Labor Convention, said that he had been "greatly disturbed to hear rumors and reports of actual or threatened wage cuts in some of the industries of our country...

...Since Pope Leo XIII, looking out upon the society of his time, declared that "by degrees it has come to pass that workingmen have been surrendered, all isolated and helpless to the hard-heartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition," few except convinced social revolutionaries would deny that labor legislation has done much to promote and safeguard justice for the workers...

...We find a very strong attack being made by an authority well qualified to speak, Dr...

...William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor...

...The public administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and comfort of the working people, or else that law of justice will be violated which ordains that each shall have his due...

...It would react no less unfavorably on the interests of the manufacturers and merchants than on the workers themselves...

...Unless American industrialists and labor leaders solve the American problem, here too the government may be obliged to step in...

...It figured —quotation marks and all—in the headline of a news despatch in the New York Times sent from Detroit— our national Motoropolis so to speak—dealing with the birthday anniversary of Senator James Couzens...

...They must see the working classes not as great masses of statistics: as a "percentage of employed," or a "percentage of unemployed," or as "the working classes," organized or unorganized : they must see them as men and women, unjustly suffering hardships when left without work to do when they are willing and able to work...

...Without going into the technical aspects of statistical science which are relied upon by Dr...

...Similar sentiments have been fervently uttered by many great newspapers, although the force of such utterances is slightly impaired by the fact that these journals have cut their working staffs drastically...

...They must be converted to ordinary humanity...

...But we do mean that merely conventional utterances, and the repetition of stock phrases, tends to obscure the real meaning and value, of the best of principles...

...Couzens related the incident of his "conversion" as follows: "I confess there was a time when I was not so keen about the rights and interests of the workingman...

...That a very great deal remains to be done, however, particularly just now, when millions of men and women (the larger number of whom are outside the ranks of the organized minority of workers) are without employment, is equally obvious...

...They must—as Pascal said—recognize the reasons of the heart, as well as those of the head, or of the purse...

...In common with many others who are striving to deal with the present situation, including President Hoover, Mr...

...It was uttered only coincidentally, it is true, with the Labor Day oratory and it was not given particular stress by the one who spoke it, nevertheless to our mind it possesses a significance which is far to seek in the tremendous mass of generalities and platitudes which Labor Day, for the most part, annually calls forth...

...I recall a winter day in 1914 when with the stroke of a pen I ordered the discharge of several thousand workers of the Ford Motor Company of which I was then general manager...

...We do not mean to say that these generalities and platitudes are not for the most part true enough, and that they do not need to be repeated over and over again...

...It is to be hoped that neither the industrialists nor the labor leaders will put off the day of conversion until the idle workers milling at the gates are sprayed with water-hoses or machine-guns...

...And for that I want to pay my compliments to Mr...

...Ford...