THE LADY OR THE TIGER

If anyone thinks that John L. Lewis took a licking from General Motors when he had to back down on his "sole bargaining" demand, let him look about in Harvard College. For the strength, ambition, and prestige of the C.I.O. have jumped so high in the labor world since the automotive baiting that even undergraduate sympathizers are signing up for work with the union leaders. Indeed, the labor committee of the Harvard Student Union, after surveying conditions in a number of Cambridge factories last fall, is taking up the more practical task of direct canvassing on behalf of the C.I.O.

Doubtless such training will furnish a useful background of experience for anyone interested in industrial relations, whether as a capialist or as a devotee at the temple of labor. The actual technique of canvassing,--of buttonholing men on the street, ringing door bells, handing out information, collecting dues, and, most vital of all, of coming into direct contact with the laboring people as individuals and not as a commodity or a great unknown,--should give a new viewpoint to future Harvard industrialists. How the badgered workman may feel when a well-clad youth from the rich man's college starts dunning him for dues is open for speculation, but if a Harvard man can sell himself to the working population, he may be President some day.

Yet despite the opportunity for service to the cause of labor, the Student Union should make haste slowly when it comes to selling its birth-right cash down to the Lewis lieutenants. The exhilarating thrill of direct action should not dull the committee's mind to the principles for which the C.I.O. stands. Harvard labor enthusiasts would do well to make sure that the C.I.O. is not building up a vast organization of long-suffering people at the bottom of the pile just to glorify the vain and egotistical ambition of a few at the top.

The experience of organizing labor under a fast-moving group like the C.I.O. is a delicate feast for the fanatic, but labor sympathizers in Harvard should not shirk the responsibility that association with a great university implies. That responsibility is to think as well as act, and head-long flight into the Lewis camp, without seeing to it that the members of the union are to get some democratic check on the leader in Washington, may lead in the course of time to a destruction of those very civil liberties which the Harvard Student Union so ardently and sincerely espouses. And when the leader in Washington tries to throw a member out of his union for opposing his views, the implication of a future fascist dictatorship based on a labor army is as plain as Sinclair Lewis.

In short, while the Student Union of Harvard deserves every credit for its work in improving conditions in Cambridge, it must remember that those who sup with the devil must use a long spoon.