Green's Protest

For the first time since he took of fice after Samuel Gompers' death last winter, William Green, President of the A. F. of L., came to the front last week in an important Labor controversy.

The American Woolen Co., large New England textile manufacturers, had announced a 10% reduction in wages. Other smaller textile manufacturers followed their leader. President Green sent off two identical letters, one to Andrew G. Pierce, President of the American Woolen Co., the other to Robert Amory, President of the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers:

It seemed strikingly strange and most difficult to understand why manufacturers who are the beneficiaries of such a high protective tariff as those engaged in the textile manufacturing industry would be the first to attempt to impose a reduction in the wages of their workers. . . . Reduction in wages are not proposed and are not being forced upon the workers in other industries. . . . Existing economic facts make their position unjustifiable and indefensible. . . . How can the workers in the textile industry sustain a reduced purchasing power through the imposition of a substantial reduction in wages and at the same time maintain and enjoy a standard of living commensurate with American citizenship? . . . The reprehensible feature of it is that it is a forced reduction in wages. The workers have not been consulted regarding acceptance or rejection. It is a reduction in wages that has been imposed and enforced in spite of the opposition and protest of the workers affected. The representatives of the textile manufacturing interests cannot justify their position before the American people, either economically or morally. There are two factors that made President Green's letter very telling -- in matters of politics if not in the Labor situation: 1) Because it is an attack on the effectiveness of high tariff, dovetailing with the argument of Democrats that the Republican high tariff does not protect even those who are supposed to be its chief beneficiaries; 2) because Republican Senator Butler of Massachusetts is prominently identified with the textile business, and the reduction of wages in the textile mills is sure to react to his disadvantage next year when he faces ex-Senator David I. Walsh for election in the President's own state.

Mr. Coolidge thought the situation serious enough to give his own interpretation of the causes which forced the reduction in wages. He listed: 1) overexpansion of the woolen industry during the War, so that now, with Southern mills producing the coarser fabrics, and the finer ones being imported from abroad, the New England mills are in difficulties; 2) a change in fashions that made worsteds unpopular during the past season.