Spites, Slights

Three years ago Samuel Gompers journeyed to the American Federation of Labor convention at Portland, Ore. (TIME, Oct. 1, 1923, et seq.). His little cloth bunny was his mascot, a raggedy image of Uncle Remus' Br'er Rabbit whose nimble wits were so like Gomper's own. At that convention he was jubilant, declared: "On my honor as a man and as an adopted citizen of the United States,* with all sympathy for other people in their struggles toward realization of an ideal of freedom, I declare that I believe the Republic of the United States of America is the best form of government on the earth today." There were some dissidents to this credo among his fellows in the A. F. of L., but he held them all tightly in the press of his will, as a cigarmaker squeezes hand-made cigars between the grooved boards on his bench. Then he added: "But it is still not good enough for us nor good enough for those who are to come after."

Two years ago Samuel Gompers died on the Mexican Border. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise performed the ceremony for the dead at the Elks Club in Manhattan. Then they buried him in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, at Tarrytown, N. Y., where the Very Rev. Oscar F. R. Treder, dean of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, at Garden City, L. I., draped his coffin with the white lambskin apron of a Master Mason. As the frozen lumps of earth clumped down on his coffin they seemed to boom up a phrase he once cried: "I have almost had my very soul burned out in the trials of life." William Green, mine worker, Odd Fellow, Elk, Baptist, was at once chosen his successor as president of the A. F. of L.

A year ago the annual convention, in Atlantic City (TIME, Oct. 19 et seq.), with William Green, President, with Samuel Gompers gone, was as though without vitality. President Green showed himself wary, not one to alter or elaborate the philosophy of U. S. labor that Samuel Gompers formulated.

Last week the A. F. of L. opened its 46th annual convention in Detroit with the similitude of calmness maintained during the two years of President Green's regime. There were no great advances to report. It was significant that the only issue of the first week was not forced by Mr. Green. It came, unexpectedly, from without.

Religion. On the eve of the convention, the Detroit Board of Commerce sent a letter to Detroit church members. This letter urged that invitations to labor leaders to address congregations on the Sunday of the convention be withdrawn as inimical to local industries.

The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America has sponsored such church talks at the past seven meetings of the A. F. of L., as an efficacious means of applying Christian ethics to industry.

Nevertheless the Detroit church invitations were withdrawn in accordance with the Board of Commerce's admonitions. Further, the local Y. M. C. A. canceled President Green's Sunday talk before a Y. M. C. A. mass meeting, because his presence might hamper the collections of their $5,000,000 building fund subscriptions.*

The rank and file of the A. F. of L. were bitter. President Green did his best to avoid issue, perhaps realizing the value of the situation to his cause. Editorials throughout the U. S. condemned the heavy hand of industrialists upon the Church.

In church committee rooms there was great prudent discussion. Pastors like scholarly Dr. Lynn Harold Hough of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, president of the Detroit Council of Churches, and Dr. Gaius Glenn Atkins of the First Congregational Church, both sincere advocates of the Federal Council's social program, have long been restive under Detroit conditions. They refused to evade the issue: it is the duty of the Church to concern itself with social questions. So in good time the labor men were again invited to talk on Sunday, at 18 churches. They accepted.

The day gave Dr. Hough opportunity to call the actions of the Y. M. C. A. and the Board of Commerce an insult to the churches. Never in history, he said, has anyone asserted: "I am the Church," as Louis XIV had cried, "I am the State."

Father John A. Ryan of the social action division of the National Catholic Welfare Council, preached: ". . . [Commerce and employment] all come within the Church's province as teacher of morals. . . . They are either right or wrong. It is the function of the Church to say when they are right and when they are wrong." James Schermerhorn, of Dr. Atkins' First Congregational Church, said: "This is the first time in history that I ever heard of labor or any one else having to fight to get into a house of worship. As a rule, the average big industrialist leaves plenty of room in all churches for any one to fill."

*He was born, the eldest son of Dutch Jews, in 1850, in London; emigrated to the U. S. at 13, a cigarmaker by trade; at 14 he helped organize union labor, at 31, assisted in the formation of the American Federation of Labor. He was its president continuously from 1882 until his death, save for the year 1895.

*This was Y. M. C. A. President Charles B. Van Dusen's explanation. He is general manager of the S. S. Kresge Co. has donated $100,000 himself to the fund. Other large donors are Henry Ford and Edsel Ford, each $750,000, and Fisher (motor car bodies) brothers, S. S. Kresge and Mrs. Hannan (real estate exchange). each $500,000.