Federation's 52nd

As dignified and well-behaved as bankers, seated around long tables below a marble dais in the glass-&-silver banquet hall of Cincinnati's Hotel Netherland-Plaza last week. 322 delegates of the American Federation of Labor were gravely deliberating the course of their 2,532,261 membership, the course of the U. S. Workingman. On the third day of their 52nd annual convention, the delegates were briefly but thoroughly shocked. Rumblings of disorder came from an out side corridor. Backed by 25 struggling colleagues, an excited man named Louis Weinstock, member of the New York City Painters' Union, shoved his way to the banquet hall door. Thrusting away police and detectives, he cried that he represented the "A. F. of L. Committee for Unemployment Insurance and Relief." recruited from dissatisfied unionists of New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Kalamazoo. Painter Weinstock's group had been lurking about Cincinnati all week holding rump sessions. They loudly demanded that the national convention come out for "immediate" unemployment insurance, a "hunger march" on Washington, recognition of the U.S.S.R., reduction of A. F. of L. officials' salaries.

"William Green refused to accept us, the representatives of the rank & file of Labor, who have come to present our demands!" shouted aggrieved Painter Wreinstock as he was hustled out of the hotel.

Remarked A. F. of L.'s unruffled President Green: "They represented nobody and had no authority. They are just a bunch who got together."

No Labor Party, Only other occurrence of Labor's convention which remotely approached excitement was a resolution presented by the tin, iron and steelworkers group that the Federation "abandon the traditional non-partisan policy and sponsor a genuine Labor Party." Bland Secretary Frank Morrison promptly pigeonholed it. Day later the convention politely cheered Charles Dukes of the British Trade Union Congress when he told its members: "We were forced to enter politics to protect the primary necessities for ourselves and for our dependents. We believe the day has come when Labor can no longer remain quiescent. Labor is entering into its might. When we have emancipated Labor there will remain no class to be emancipated." Laborite Dukes later amended his Labor Party remarks: ''Anything we'd have to say on that subject might not be in keeping with our position here."

"AllTime Crisis" Prime A. F. of L. statistic: by January, 12,700,000 people would be out of work, "thus the greatest unemployment crisis of all time is close upon us." The Federation noted sporadic business improvement, but found "no sustained forward movement."

Debts, The convention enthusiastically applauded Pennsylvania's squat Senator James John ("Puddler Jim") Davis, longtime Secretary of Labor now awaiting retrial for his part in a Moose national lottery, when he said that the debtor nations "could in a short time pay their debts without any discomfort to them" if they disarmed. But the convention leaned toward "readjustment."

Standbys. As usual, the A. F. of L. was ready to stand by its two legislative standbys: the 6-hr, day and the 5-day week, modification of the Volstead Act.

Barkeeps 6 Gangsters, Edward Flore of Buffalo, president of the Hotel & Restaurant Employes' & Beverage Dispensers' International Alliance, denounced as untrue the report that Capone mobsters had forced 20,000 speakeasy workers into his union in Chicago as a part of their program to control the liquor business if & when it becomes legal. "We are organizing in Chicago," said President Flore, "but no strong-arm methods are being used. We have about 250 or 300 bartenders and 800 to 900 waiters in our organization. The bartenders are earning their living selling soft drinks, but we are preparing to take advantage of the change. . . ." Others asked "the cooperation of all people to keep this industry out of the hands of gangland."

Sorest Spot in the side of organized U. S. Labor at present is the wound whence the railways extracted a 10% horizontal wage cut last year (TIME, Feb. 8). President Alexander Fell Whitney of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, speaking for the running crafts (engineers, firemen & enginemen, conductors, trainmen), served notice that while railway workers might agree to continue the reduced pay scale another year on Jan. 1, they would fight to the last ditch incipient demands for further reductions by railway management. Railway unionists will meet in Chicago Dec. 7 to consolidate their position before meeting with management representatives Dec. 10.

Bright Spot of the convention was the report of Matthew Woll, favorite colleague of the late great Samuel Gompers, showing that his Union Labor Life Insurance Co. (sponsored by the A. F. of L.), had recorded an 18% increase in business last year.

"Human Values" In a voice which matches in timbre and persuasiveness that of an expensive Park Avenue physician, President Green, whose right nostril is broadened from a scar received in an Ohio coal mine, delivered the Federation's keynote: "During the Depression the A. F. of L. kept the faith. The movement has kept intact so that when happy days come again we will do all in our power to see that the American worker will get back the wages taken from him during the Depression. . . . Our fight is for a better manhood, for a better motherhood, for a better childhood. We say, 'Let the heavens fall but let human values be protected.' "

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