Tyranny v. Tyranny

Mexico's squarejawed, hard-eyed President Emilio Fortes Gil is an oldfangled rough-and-tumble battling lawyer with a newfangled humanitarian conscience. Last week he finished jamming through two thirds of Mexico's 28 state legislatures a Constitutional amendment. It permits enactment by the Mexican Congress of a law which Senor Fortes Gil declares will "create an equilibrium between the Tyranny of Capital and the Tyranny of Labor."

The lawyer-President personally drafted the law when he was Minister of Interior in the cabinet of bull-necked Plutarco Elias Calles, also a two-fisted idealist (TIME, Nov. 19, 1923, et seq.). Little was heard of it then. Printed on 160 single-spaced pages the Fortes Gil Labor Code is too complex for one Mexican in 1,000 to grasp. Basically it aims to displace the present ill-coordinated State labor laws with a sweeping Federal system of drastic potency. Passage of the necessary Constitutional amendment last week gives the President a free hand to railroad enactment of his pet Labor Code through Congress.

Code Fought. Never does prudent Motorman Henry Ford differ openly with the Chief Executive of a land where he is selling cars. All the same a large extension of the Ford Assembly Plant in Mexico City is not being proceeded with. Scare-heads in the Mexican Press declared last week that if the Fortes Gil Labor Code is enacted Senor Ford is resolved to pay off all his Mexican assemblers, keeping only a sales and service force in the field.

The General Manager of the British-owned Mexicano Railway--a $50,000,000 line connecting Mexico City with the major port of Vera Cruz--is close-mouthed J. D. W. Holmes. Last week he said: "We shall not have to wait long to see the complete bankruptcy of this line if the projected labor law is enacted."

Even more startling was a resolution adopted by the General Confederation of Mexican Workers, a potent radical labor group. Denouncing "restrictions on the right to strike and dangers to workmen in the so-called 'Labor' code," the confederation resolved "to exhort all affiliated labor groups throughout the country to order partial stoppages of work and finally a general strike if Senor Fortes Gil's project is insisted on."

Plainly the Tyranny of Capital and the Tyranny of Labor between which a humanitarian President is trying to establish "equilibrium" were both furiously suspicious, last week, of the Labor Code which Senor Fortes Gil and his huge agrarian following in the Mexican Congress can put through if they stubbornly so choose.

Code Analysed. In "federating" the labor laws of Mexico, President Fortes Gil aims first to set up a system of federal "labor courts" and "labor judges" with a "Supreme Labor Court" at Mexico City. Just as civil quarrels are settled every where today by ordinary court of law, so in Mexico industrial quarrels would be dealt with by the new Labor Code tribunals. A joint factory committee of employers and employed would first try to adjust each labor dispute, and only in case of failure would it go first to the District Labor Court and finally if necessary to the Supreme Labor Court. Naturally this system would curb the absolute right of Labor to strike and Capital to fix wages, much as civil laws and courts long ago curbed the once absolute right of anyone to go naked if he chose.

Flexible labor courts are the keystone of the Fortes Gil code, but secondly it aims to impose three inflexible conditions: 1) Employers of more than 100 workers to provide their employes with "comfortable houses" at a rent not to exceed 5% of the taxable value of the building; 2) Workers to be compelled to pay from 2% to 5% of their salaries into a national industrial insurance fund, and employers to match each worker's payment with an equal contribution to the fund; 3) The Government to be empowered to conscript workers for labor "in time of national emergency."

With the Mexican Congress convening Sept. 1 to debate and act on the Labor Code, observers foresaw a strenuous testing of President Emilio Fortes Gil's declaration that "this project satisfies a national necessity and will assure workers better conditions without . . . injuring the interests of capital."