LABOR: Small Sign

The biggest unsettled labor question in the U. S. is whether A. F. of L. and C. I. O. shall remarry or else forever go their separate ways. The matchmaker, Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins, last week merely wisecracked as she parried questions.*

The match, however, is getting to a turning point. Next week John L. Lewis assembles his C. I. O. in Pittsburgh for its first convention. Object: to establish a “permanent C. I. O.” Last week, however, A. F. of L.’s William Green printed in his American Federationist an offer to resume negotiations with C. I. O. where they were dropped last December. To canny labor observers this was a small sign that Administration matchmaking is having effect behind the scenes.

*When a newsman suggested: “Maybe C. I. O. has put on long pants” (i.e., grown up so that it will not go back to A. F. of L.), Frances Perkins cracked: “Do you want to see them sans culottes [pantsless]?”