It was unfortunate that illness prevented Mr. Wilson from taking personal charge of the proceedings. The influence of his high office might have prevented the disagreements that occurred and held the Conference together long enough to enable the participants to arrive at some basic points of agreement. But this was not to be.
It was also unfortunate that the Conference took place during a big industrial dispute, probably the greatest the country had ever faced. For although it was obviously convened to deal with industrial problems in the abstract rather than in the concrete, Samuel Gompers and the other union representatives at the very beginning demanded that one of its first actions should be the settlement of the steel strike.
This might readily have been foreseen. The labor leaders undoubtedly, by the time the Conference came together on October 6th, realized that in their conflict with the Steel Corporation and the steel companies generally they had engaged in a losing fight. At the very time strikers in large numbers were going back to the mills and the operations of the steel companies were steadily increasing. The continuation of the fight meant a total loss to the unions while arbitration would have permitted them to gain some of their points, or at least to yield gracefully and save their faces. They saw, or thought they saw, in the Industrial Conference, a means to force the Corporation to accept arbitration.
Defeated in their efforts to end the steel strike without sacrificing prestige among their followers with the assistance of the Industrial Conference, the labor leaders then made another demand—that the Conference, before proceeding further, recognize the principle of collective bargaining and the right of workers to be represented by men of their own choosing. This demand, fair as it seemed on the face of it, was so presented as to make it clear that by “collective bargaining” was meant bargaining through unions, and that by “representatives of their own choosing” was meant union leaders selected not by the men but by unions, and the employers insisted that, while the right of collective bargaining could not be gainsaid, the unions must recognize the exercise of this right through shop committees, a form of collective bargaining which has proved successful in many instances but to which unionism is firmly and irrevocably opposed.
Coils of Red Hot Wire
And it was upon this rock that the Conference eventually split after several weeks of argument, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, who acted as chairman. In justice to the unions, however, it must be said that, on the last day, before organized labor withdrew from the Conference, giving it its death-blow, Mr. Gompers presented a final resolution for the recognition of the right of collective bargaining without restriction. Had the employers’ group accepted this resolution or had the union representatives given their opponents time to consider it, as the latter with good reason asked, even this difficulty might have been overcome.
Annealing Wire
And here it might be pointed out that John Spargo, Socialist and writer, offered a compromise resolution that was intended to satisfy all parties to the controversy. But unfortunately this resolution was presented while the Conference was in the death throes and never received the consideration it deserved. Mr. Spargo’s resolution read: