Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 244, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1916 — Organized Labor, as Well as Capital, Must Be Regulated to Protect Public [ARTICLE]

Organized Labor, as Well as Capital, Must Be Regulated to Protect Public

By HOWARD ELLIOTT

President New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company

Jt lb trite to say that capital cannot get along without labor and that labor cannot get along without capital —and yet capital and labor both, at times, forget this all-important fact. Both also pay too little attention to the fact that neither of them can get along at all without brains brains to plan, brains to supervise, brains to direct, brains to be fair and 'brains to see that the great public interest in these large industrial corporations must be constantly considered. Capital has been~mobilized fn This country,'and in the main with great benefits to all. It has been constructive, not destructive, because innoother wav could it eafn~a return. It has psade its mistakes, because it has been directed by human lyings, who at times have failed to give due weight to the public good. As a result, public opinion was aroused, and this irresistible force decreed that organized capital or capital in a mass must subject itself to certain regulatory measures. A natural sequence to the organization of capital was the organization of labor; this in order to present in forcible and concrete form its views of the industrial situation and also to record the natural desire of every healthy man to improve the conditions surrounding himself and his family. But just as organized capital was forced to be controlled and regulated in the interest of the organized labor must be controlled and regulated. No one can object to organized labor unless its acts injure the general welfare of the public. It, too, must be constructive and not destructive. When it tries the strike in an effort to stop the wheels of progress, to be unfair in its demands, to be unwilling to have those demands considered calmly by unprejudiced people and to abide by the decision, then the naighty will of the people win he aroused and a means will be found to retain the good features of organized labor and eliminate the bad.