Although most of the Washington dispatches are voluble in their assurance that a firm administration policy will break the deadlock between the collective bargainers and industry. Name of them suggest just what that policy might be. The retreads, for instance, refuse to continue on any terms but then ten per cent reduction of contrast upon which the administration had agreed, while the railroad workers refuse to continue unless this temporary reduction is removed.

There has been much talk among the large employers, such as Mr. Knudnon, of an unwillingness to force their men into the American Federation of Labor, or to treat with the Federation in collective bargaining. The inference is that company anxious would come to more reasonable terms with the employers, and that they would more justly represent the particular interests of the bargaining group. But it is difficult to see this as anything more than a disingenuous stall for the time necessary to integrate the company unions with the administration. These unions have been, through the course of depression an d discontent, pretty manageable; Mr. Green's Federation, with its weighting in the Labor Board, cannot but bring the basic conflict of employer and worker into the open, and make compromise impossible.

The Roosevelt myth, that "system and "organization" and "planning" can enable a broken industrial structure to employ millions of men and to increase wages, will last just so long as the Labor Board can avoid facing the issue. One ounce of national collective bargaining, through the American Federation of Labor, is enough to upset the scales. The case against the Roosevelt myth has been drawn up by the employers, who show convincingly that they can no longer afford to make the concessions which the administration demands. It has also been presented by Mr. Harold Laski and Mr. John Strachey, who point out the same obvious fact. But the employers have nothing but a sterile and angry refusal; Messrs. Laski and Strachey can offer a solution. TERTIUS.