principle. By a small majority the employers' group voted against it, and thus the proposals were defeated and the conference failed.

The protection of the rights and interests of the wage earners in national, state and municipal service requires for them the right of organization. Since the interests of these workers can be best promoted through legislation and administration, their right to organize and affiliate with the American Federation of Labor must at all times be fully safeguarded.

The paramount issues that concern all the people of the United States, and in particular the wage earners, are the perversion and the abuse of the writ of injunction and the necessity for full and adequate protection of the voluntary associations of wage earners organized not for profit.

Government by injunction has grown out of the perversion of the injunction process. By the misuse of that process workers have been forbidden to do those things which they have a natural and constitutional right to do.

DENOUNCE USE OF INJUNCTION

The injunction as now used is a revolutionary measure which substitutes government by judicial discretion or bias for government by law. It substitutes a trial by one man, a judge, in his substitutes government by judicial discretion or bias for governdiscretion, for a trial by jury. This abuse of the injunctive process undermines and destroys the very foundations of our free institutions. It is subversive of the spirit of a free people working out their destiny in an orderly and rational manner.

Because we have reverence for law, because we believe that every citizen must be a guardian of the heritage given us by our fathers who fought for and established freedom and democracy, by every lawful means we must resist the establishment of a practice that would destroy the very spirit of freedom and democracy. Our protest against the abuse of the writ of injunction and its unwarranted application to labor in the exercise of labor's normal activities to realize laudable aspirations is a duty we owe to ourselves and to posterity.

Formerly injunctions issued in labor disputes were of prohibifive character. Within the recent past this abuse of the injuneon writ has been enlarged to include mandatory orders whereby en have been compelled to do specific things which they have a wful right to refrain from doing.

We declare these abuses in the exercise of the injunction writ are clearly violative of the Constitution and that this issue must be determined definitely in accordance with the guarantees of the Constitution of the United States.

Workers are free citizens, not slaves. They have the constitutional right to cease working. The strike is a protest against autocratic management. To penalize strikes or to make them unlawful is to apply an unwarranted and destructive method when a constructive one is available. To reduce the necessity for strikes the cause should be found and removed. The Government has a greater obligation in this matter than to use its coercive powers.

Legislation which proposes to make strikes unlawful or to compel the wage-earners to submit their grievances or aspirations to courts or to Government agencies, is an invasion of the rights of the wage earners, and when enforced makes for industrial serfdom or slavery.

We hold that the Government should supply information, assistance, and counsel, but that it should not attempt by the force of its own power to stifle or to destroy voluntary relations. and policies of mutuality between employers and employees.

ATTACK THE CUMMINS BILL

We specifically denounce the anti-strike provisions of the Cummins bill and all similar proposed legislation as unAmerican, as being vicious in character and establishing by legislation involuntary servitude.

The warning given by Jefferson that the danger to the people of this republic lies in the usurpation by our judiciary of unconstitutional authority, has been fully demonstrated. A judiciary unresponsive to the needs of the time, arrogating to itself powers which neither the Constitution nor the purposes of our laws have conferred upon them, demands that at least in our time Americans must insist upon safeguarding their liberties and the spirit of the sacred institutions of our republic.

We urge that the judges of our Federal courts shall be elected by the people for terms not exceeding six years.

We assert that there cannot be found in the Constitution of the United States or in the discussions of the Congress which drafted the Constitution any authority for the Federal courts of our country to declare unconstitutional any act passed by

Congress. We call upon the people of our country to demand that the Congress of the United States shall take action for the purpose of preventing the Federal courts from continuing the usurpation of such authority. .

We declare that the voluntary organizations of the workers, organized not for profit, are agencies of human progress and promote justice in industry and trade. Despite legislative declarations that trade unions do not come under the provisions of anti-trust legislation courts have not understood and are not now able or willing to understand that the organizations of wage earners are not conspiracies in restraint of trade.

We submit that anti-trust legislation has not only been interpreted to serve the purpose of outlawing trade unions, robbing them of their treasures and the savings of their members, and depriving them of their legal and natural rights to the exercise of normal activities, but that it has also failed completely to protect the people against the outrageous machinations of combinations and monopolies.

UPHOLDS COAL MINERS

The United Mine Workers of America did all in their power to avert an industrial controversy in the coal industry. The autocratic attitude of the mine owners was responsible for the losses and sufferings entailed. While the miners have returned to the mines and have only now been afforded the opportunity of having their grievances and demands brought to the light of reason, it is our hope that a full measure of justice will be accorded them, even at this late date.

It

There is a widespread belief that wages should be fixed on a cost-of-living basis. This idea is pernicious and intolerable. It means putting progress in chains and liberty in fetters. means fixing a standard of living and a standard of life and liberty which must remain fixed. America's workers cannot accept that proposition.

They demand a progressively advancing standard of life. They have an abiding faith in a better future for all mankind. They discard and denounce a system of fixing wages solely on the basis of family budgets and bread bills. Workers are entitled not only to a living, but modern society must provide more than what is understood by the term "a living." It must concede to all workers a fairer reward for their contribution to

society, a contribution without which a progressing civilization is impossible.

No factor contributes more to industrial unrest and instability than excessive costs of necessaries of life. It is a demonstrated truth that the cost of living has advanced more rapidly than have wages. The claim that increasing wages make necessary increased prices is false. It is intended to throw upon the workers the blame for a process by which all the people have been made to suffer. Labor has been compelled to struggle desperately to keep wages in some measure up to the cost of living. The demand for higher compensation to meet new price levels has made industrial readjustment necessary.

THEIR IDEA OF HIGH PRICES

Existing high and excessive prices are due to the present inflation of money and credits, to profiteering by those who manufacture, sell and market products, and to burdens levied by middlemen and speculators. We urge:

The deflation of currency; prevention of hoarding and unfair price fixing; establishment of co-operative movements under the Rochdale system; making accessible all income tax returns and dividend declarations as a direct and truthful means of revealing excessive costs and profits.

The ideal of America should be the organization of industry for service and not for profit alone. The stigma of disgrace should attach to every person who profits unduly at the expense of his fellowmen.

Labor is fully conscious that the world needs things for use, and that standards of life can improve only as production for use and consumption increases. Labor is anxious to work out better. methods for industry, and demands that it be assured that increased productivity will be used for service and not alone for profits.

Wage earners aspire to be something more than numbers on the books of an industrial plant, something more than attendants of a machine, something more than cogs in an industrial system dominated by machinery owned and operated for profit alone. The workers insist upon being masters of themselves.

Labor understands fully that powerful interests today are determined to achieve reaction in industry if possible. They seek to disband or cripple the organizations of workers. They

seek to reduce wages and thus lower the standard of living. They seek to keep free from restriction their power to manipulate and fix prices. They seek to destroy the democratic impulse of the workers which is bred into their movement by the democracy of the American republic.

Labor must be, and is militant in the struggle to combat these sinister influences and tendencies. Labor will not permit a reduction in the standard of living. It will not consent to reaction toward autocratic control. In this it is performing a public

service.

Only in high-wage countries is productivity in industry greatest. Only in high-wage countries do the people enjoy high standings of living. Low-wage countries present the least degree of productivity and offer to their people only low standards of living and restricted liberties. Autocracy always insists upon restricting the income and the activities of workers.

Creative power lies dormant where autocratic management prevails. No employer has a vested right to the good will of his employees. That must be earned as between men. It can be earned only when management deals with workers as human beings, and not as machines. There can not be a full release of productive energy under an autocratic control of industry. There must be a spirit of co-operation and mutuality between employers and workers. We submit that production can be enhanced through the co-operation of management with the trade-union agencies, which make for order, discipline, and productivity.

We hold that the organization of wage-earners into trade unions and the establishment of collective bargaining are the first steps. toward the proper development of our industrial machinery for service.

To promote further the production of an adequate supply of the world's needs for use and higher standards of life, we urge that there be established co-operation between the scientists of industry and the representatives of organized workers.

Credit is the life blood of modern business. At present under the control of private financiers, it is administered, not primarily to serve the needs of production, but the desire of financial agencies to levy a toll upon community activity as high as "the traffic will bear."

Credit is inherently social. It should be accorded in proportion to confidence in production possibilities. Credit as now