With the passage of time the number of strikes which feature the newspaper headlines becomes increasingly numerous, Toledo being the latest storm center, where several thousand workers at the Electric Auto Lite Company have staged a walkout and picketed the factory. The Toledo strike, however, introduces a new note in the wave of protest by organized labor concerning wages, which has been sweeping the country with mounting force since the organization of N.R.A.

The Toledo strike, following hard on the heels of mob violence by the produce truckers' strike, in Minneapolis gives evidence that a new phase of the strike situation is rapidly coming into far among labor unions. Violence reminiscent of the Pullman and Steel strikes of the '90s, now bids fair to become the accepted method of protest among labor organizations. For the first time in many months the interventions. For the state militia has been requested by the local authorities, police being unable to cope with the situation. Yet whether or not the strikers are justified in their demands for higher pay cannot be accurately determined considering the lack of adequate information on the subject of company profits.

One thing alone is certain; the right of labor to organize as provided by the famous section 57a of N.I.R.A. seems to have proven the boomerang which the framers of the Act feared that it might become. By the irony of fate the very measures which were designed to forward recovery now seem designed to be instrumental in retarding it. While the recognition of the right of Labor to organize in the face of employers' organization must be conceded, it is apparent that this right may yet mean the destruction of whatever good N.I.R.A. has so far been instrumental in accomplishing. The crucial moment has now arrived which business, which has of late been clamoring for a return to rugged individualism, must prove whether it is capable or handling the strike situation. If business can, on the whole, with the assistance of existing governmental agencies, prove its mettle in this regard, its claims for further independence unhampered by governmental control will have secured a sound basis for recognition. If it falls, the only alternative will be compulsory governmental intervention in labor and business disputes alike, comparable to that which characterizes Fascism.