Today in Washington By DAVID LAWRENCE

Washington, March 19, 1934.

If there is a general strike in the Automobile industry or any other major disturbance of the industrial peace of the country, the Government will be largely responsible for the beginning and end of the fight.

Ever since the now famous section 7A in the National Industrial Recovery Act, the crisis has been coming. The showdown, however, will not this time be between capital and labor but between political expediency that has guided the NRA politics thus far and another kind of political expediency which may recognize that unemployment increases cannot be tolerated because they add to Uncle Sam's relief bill.

The issue in the automobile situation is not wages or hours. These are being met according to the codes, as the industry, feeling the first real effects of a returning prosperity, is working full blast to meet production schedules. The cause of war is the question whether the American Federation of Labor, with its system of control over local labor unions, shall be "recognized" by the automobile companies or whether the latter shall deal with unions of employees all of whom are directly employed by them.

The law says explicitly that employers must deal with "representatives" that the workmen themselves choose or elect. But in the case of the employ organizations, created within a shop or wholly from employees of a certain company, with no outside spokesmen from National Labor Unions, the question arises whether the election was fair and whether these same unions, if really left to themselves, without influence from the employer's side, would join the A. F. of L. system or retain their own spokesmen.

The cry of the A. F. of L. is that "company" unions are really company controlled. General Johnson has in his public speeches made the same accusation. This has encouraged the labor leaders. It ought to be a simple matter to determine whether a group of workmen want to be represented by walking delegates from the outside or by some of their own number. But many a dispute has arisen as to how the election shall be supervised. Then comes the all important problem of campaigning. Shall the employer be denied the right to put before his own employees the case as he sees it, the advantages of a union freed from outside domination?

It really is not unlike the question of political campaigns. Democracy would not last long if in our election s only one side of the story could be heard and if, when the election is held, the side that lost could insist on another election and another until it had converted the minority into a majority of its own way of thinking.

The labor leaders realize that workmen have been persuaded to join company unions; in fact, there are nearly four times as many workers in that type of organization today as in the A. F. of L's National Unions. This, however, in being used by Senator Wagner and of here to prove that the companies have been more active an organizers and auaders than the A. E. of L.

So far as the law is concerned, it merely says that employers shall recognize representatives chosen by employees. It doesn't say how the choice shall be made. The NRA made its first mistake by assuming the power to regulate elections be postponed from time to time till the A. F. of L. organizers could get in their work.

There is not the slightest blame that can be attached to the A. F. of L. They have a big national organization to support and they need the members, so that dues can help pay expenses of all manner of things needed in waging industrial war or threatening it. The A. F. of L. simply took advantage of what in football would be called an "opening" in the opposition line.

The real responsibility rests on the Government, which has thus far sided almost entirely with the A. F. of L. and has encouraged its leaders to believe that the Government wants to see the A. F. of L. supreme and no other employee organizations except thost affiliated with the National Union. Indeed, the organizations claim this openly in their missionary work. There was a time when the outside organizers were not permitted on the premises of companies which had shop unions, but with the help of the NRA, the electioneering has been more or less legalized.

General Johnson in his last speech tried to discourage the employers from standing on the issue. He failed. Now the A. F. of L. is going to fight it out, and judging by the word aching here from the automobile industry, the latter is ready for the flight, too. Other employers are interested in seeing a showdown. There will be some talk of a general strike in other industries.

How all this is going to help the Nation back on its feet is hard to determine, but it has always happened that when the United States has started to climb out of a depression an outbreak of strikes has occurred. It happened in 1879 and again in the '90's and only the Government by the use of troops was able to quell the disturbances. The right to strike is sacred to workmen.

Compulsory arbitration, with the government as mediator, has always been the theoretical answer to labor disputes: but labor has been unwilling to yield the right to strike, irrespective of an arbitration. So the administration will have to find some way out of a dilemma which has been largely produced by the uneven way the NRA has administered the law.

For there can be no doubt that the outright partisanship by General Johnson of the cause of the A. F. of L. in his speech to the assembled code authorities last week was a straw that broke, the camel's back. If the Government is to take the side of labor, and determine the method of dues paying and organization, industry is willing: but it wants the Government to supervise the labor unions for their financial affairs and every detail of the work now being done by the local organizers. In fact, Government control of labor unions may be the answer, and this would compel adherence by all employers. Everything else is controlled by code law except labor unions themselves.