V Editorial CHARLOTTE LABOR JOURN «L & DIXIE FARM NEWS ■. A Stalls, E '.tor and Pnblisher W. M. Wittar, Assaciata Editor Bn tar t-o as second-class mail matter September 11, 1931, at the Post Office at Charlotte, N. C„ under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1873 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: 82.00 per year, payable in advance or 5c per copy. The Labor Journal will not be responsible for opinions of corre spondents, but any erroneous reflecting upon the character, standing or reputation of any person, firm or corporation which may appear in the columns of The Labor Journal will l»e gladly corrected when called So the attention of toe publisher. Correspondence and Open Forum opinions solicited. _ Published Weekly at Charlotte, N. C. Were it not for the labor press the labor movement would not be what it is today, and any man who tries to injure a labor paper is a traitor to the cause. —AFL President Gompers. A REJUVENATED SOUTHERN LABOR PRESS The editor attended a meeting in Miami last Sunday of a number of editors of the Southern Labor Press, the purpose of which was to devise ways and means of re establishing and rejuvenating a Dixie Labor newspaper organization that has lain more or less dormant, so to speak, for some years. This, mainly caused by the war years when newspapermen along with other citizens had so many problems to solve. Although the meeting city was far away from many sec tions of the Southland wrhere Labor publications are printed, a goodly number of representatives were present to participate in discussions leading up to reformation of a healthy Southeastern labor Press Association, which in turn will become associated with the International Labor Press Association. Temporary officers were elected and plans made for holding the second of a series of meetings in Atlanta. Georgia. March 26 and 27 at which time every Southern Labor editor east of the Mississippi river will have been sent a cordial invitation to attend. There it is planned to establish a permanent orzanization which will begin functioning anew in behalf of labor publications in Dixie. Although the trip was a hurried one the writer thor oughly enjoyed .every . moment of it. The journey down was made by Eastern Air Lines. We left here at 1:50 Sunday morning and arrived in Miami at 8:43, going via Atlanta, Tallahassee, Fla., Tampa, and thence to Miami. Daylight overtook us a short time before we arrived in Tampa. The night flight had been smooth and uneventful, and dark, of course. We slept some during this time. When Old Sol peeped through the clouds after leaving Tampa the scenery was amazing and gorgeous. The ship had by this time climbed through several cloud layers in order to find the most favorable flying lanes and it looked as though it were sailing along just above huge moun tains of snow. Below the mists were as white as snow, while protruding from them and also hanging above them were other colors of clouds which were beautiful beyond this Labor scribe’s ability to describe them. The writer has been sightseeing in caves, both at home and abroad, and if you have ever been on one of those sightseeing trips that describes to some degree what we are trying to get you to see. We saw hills and valleys up there, we saiv mountains and lakes, rivers and oceans, white clouds, black clouds, blue clouds and grey clouds both sunshine and rain, and perhaps the most beautiful of all was a multi-colored cloud which put in its appearance just off the port bow as we approached Fort Myers. This glorious sight, some say, was caused by the extremely large sun’s rays shining through perhaps millions and mii lons of thin cloud banks Many red rivers and lakes were created in the same manner. We wondered if the angels could be dweller^ in this beautiful place. We wish we were a student of the ppper elements so we could under stand more about what we saw and describe them more vividly to The Journal's readers, but in concluding a de scription of our flight we apologize for not being able to do so. Our lifetime has been spent on the ground with the exception of an occasional diversion by air. As the Captain of the ship gave us his flight report about this time, telling us we would arrive in Miami very soon our thoughts descended to Miami, the hotel El Comodoro, and the meeting to which Southern Organization Director J. L. Rhodes had summoned us. Arriving at the airport after a low flight over the Everglades country we caught a taxi, arriving at the hotel only a few minutes before the meeting was scheduled to open at 10:00 A. M. A short six and one-half hours’ ride from Charlotte. The hotel lobby was buzzing with AFL men, representatives of many different unions, who had gathered there to equip themselves and their newspapers with ways and means of better serving the working people of our great Southland. The meeting was an enjoyable and profitable occasion and much good will spring from it. DIXIE CARPENTERS ON THE RIGHT TRACK The C arpenters of the Southeastern States are pioneering in an idea which no doubt will meet with a heartv re sponse from not only members of the Carpenter Unions but from all organized labor in the South. They are to be congratulated for inaugurating an educational program for their members. The initial meeting was held in Chat tanooga last fall at which time preliminary committees were appointed and other plans formulated for the holding of a conference in that city on December 4-5. This meet ing was held under the auspices of the Tri-State Carpen ters and Joiners District Council of Chattanooga and vi cinity with General Representative J. C. Barrett in attend ance. M. A. Hutcheson, general vice president of the Brotherhood, together with the general representatives of the area, and Roland Adams, executive board member from the Fourth district, were also in attendance. Delegates from local unions and district councils of car penters in the States of Alabama. Arkansas. Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana. North Carolina. South Caro lina, and Tennessee participated in this important meeting, which announced its purpose is to further promote the interest of all branches of the trade, to cultivate friend ship among the members of the Brotherhood of Carpen ters and Joiners in the area, to promote an educational program, and to encourage the use of the Union Label. All of these are laudable aims. Many other unions should take note and follow the lead of our brothers who wield the hammer and the saw. Sec. Tobin Urges Minimum Pay Hike Washington.—Secretary of La bor Maurice J. Tobin urged Con gress to up the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour and to extend the coverage of the Pair Labor Standards Act to in clude approximately 5,000,000 ad ditional workers. In his first appearance as s wit ness before a congressional com mittee since he took his cabinet post, Mr. Tobin called upon the House Education and Labor Com mittee for the following major changes in the nation’s wage 'and hour statute: (1) An extension of the wage and hour and child labor provi sions of the existing act to cover not only those whose work was in interstate commerce, but those whose work ‘‘affected” interstate commerce. The administration’s intention here, the secretary said plainly, 1 was to extend the wage floor “to j the farthest reaches” that Con ' gi+s« and the Constitution would allow. Neither Mr. Tobin nor his i fellow witness. William R. Mc Comb, the present Wage-Hour Administrator, estimated just how many workers would be added to those now under the law’s guar antees, but some of the details of their testimony, taken togeth er indicated that the aggregate would hardly be less than 5,000, 000 and might be considerably higher than that. (2) Raise the permissible wage floor to 75 cents but encourage procedures through which indus try committees, made up of rep resentatives of employers, labor and the public, would set higher rates wherever possible, up to $1 an hour. { (3) Give the administration the authority to issue a clear and final definition as to how the “reg --— alar rate” of pay was to be com puted, thus ending long argu ments, especially among the long shoremen and shipping men, as to what would hereafter be allow able overtime and what would be “overtime on overtime.” (4) Give to the Secretary of Labor the power now exercised by the independent Wage-Hour Administration, in a general cen tralizing of responsibility under Mr. Tobin. (5) Knock out many existing exemptions from the minimum wage standards, as for example those in the food-processing in dustries and in large retail stores. (6) Tighten the existing act’s protections against child labor by making these more effective even in the case of children working on farms. The basic exclusion of farm labor, children or otherwise, from the wage standards of the act would be retained. Mr. Tobin told the committee that the great majority of work ers under the Wage-Hour Act already received more than 75 cents an hour. There were still about 1,500,000 of those under the act who earned less than that, he said, and had, at the moment, no legal protection beyond the present floor of 40 cents. When Representative Wingate LuAs of Texas suggested that . the Secretary of Labor was after all “a representative of labor,” Mr. Tobin said: - “I represent the 140,000,000 people of the ynited States—all of them. Whatever I propose will always be in the interest of the whole economy of this coun try.” The new wage-hour bill, he as serted, was “just another insur ance policy ' for this country against any depression.” Something Doin' In South San Angelo, Texas— I Employes of the Lone Star Gas Company in Ran Angelo voted on January 18. for the American Federation of Labor to represent them in collective bargaining, the vote being 22 to 17. Organiser Lester Graham was proceeding to establish a local union of these workers. * • • Wichita Falls, Texas— An organizing campaign among the employes of the White Auto Stores has been arranged and Organizer Lester Graham of the American Federation of Labor re ports that more than 40 of these people have signed for the Union. • • • Crystal City, Texas— Americain Federation of Labor Organizer A. F. Cadena reports I to the Southern office of the American Federation of Labor that the Teamsters & Chauffeurs won a great victory among the employes of the California Pack ing Company at Crystal City when the Teamsters won the col lective bat-gaining for the jyo duction workers by a vote of 658 to 14. This company employes more J than 600 workers on a seasonal basis. Petition for an election was filed over a yat ago but due to the fact of seasonal in dustry election was not held un ! til this time. Winning of this ; election by the T'.amsters is con sidered a great victory for that organization in the Texas citrus industry. i Fordyce, Ark.— The Southern office of the Amer ican Federation of Labor in At lanta has received reports that ; during the week ending January 22, the United Brotherhood of i Carpenters and Joiners were suc cessful in establishing three new unions in the saw mills in Ar kansas. Organizer Phil Wells re ports that a new local was estab lished at Sparkman, one at Cal ; ion and one at Burden. With prospects of establishing many more in the near future. The campaign on behalf of the Unit ed Brotherhood of Carr enters and Joiners of America is in charge , of Charles F. Mendenhall, with headquarters in Little Rock. * * * Lake Charles, La.— President Lige Williams of the Louisiana Federation of Labor, installed Federal Labor Union of Auto Mechanics at Lake Charles, January 20. * * • Pascagoula. Miss.— Longshoremen’s International Union has granted a charter to a group of Longshoremen at Pas cagoula, Miss., according to re ports to the Southern office from Organizer W. L. Hines.. • • • Auburndale. Fla.— Agreements were reached with the Flori-Gold Company for their plants at Lake Alfred. Eagle Lake and Dundee, Florida. Separate agreements cover citrus workers in each of these plants. Some of The Things We * Lend Money on L/>ami>nai WltfllM Jewelry • Clot hint Tool. All Rlie{nAao I snrerwar* Shot Gan* Rif!** Pistol* Trunks Addins Marh:n*s /v_a. j_ Sait Cun Maniral In~troment» Kodak* Typewriter* -^ v uuuuciiiiai, n urn in iicm of Money We Never Fall You. ®** "* for «* 4i»BMn»d*. vatchM. Jewelry. riothiag. etc. RELIABLE LOAN CO. ; r T *•! EAST TRADE STREET Make Hans For Educational Campaign CARPENTERS’ COMMITTEE MAPS EXTENSIVE PROGRAM PROGRAM COMMITTEE—Reading fro* left to right, first row: W. A. Blake, S. R. Timmons, T. D, Harper (Atlanta), W. M. Crim (Atlanta), W. E. Lee, B. E Josey (Huntsville). Second row: W. O. Bennett 'Huntsville). J. C. Barrett (general representative), W. W. Orr, E. H. Davis, J. B. Hender son, T. S. Rone, T. W. Martin (Memphis.) Back row: J. A. Duncan, W. O. Bankston. H. M. Craw ford (Atlanta), B. T. Durham (Birmingham), Labe Jenkins (Knoxville). S. R. Thomas (Knoxville), H. L Ortwein (Rome). J. C. Kerr (Knoxville), Morton E. Crist (Sheffield), and F. H. May. —Labor World Photo AFL UNIONS LOCATED IN CARPENTERS’ HALL (Continued from Page 1) needs, but shortages of ma terials ,etc., prevented it from doing so. The action of the local Carpenters’ Un ion has filled a gap which has been open ever since the old Labor Temple on North Mc Dowell street was sold for church property more than three years ago. The labor movement had outgrown that property at the time it was sold. It is hoped the Cai penters’ Hall on West Trade street will be sufficiently; Uncle Sam Says [111! Ten year* ran muke a big differ* enre. That youngster, now in pig* i tail*, will be grown up anal ready fur : | college in 10 year*. Or you may be ready lo tackle that pet project of your*, a new home, retirement, or darting a *mall buxine**. Ye*, 10 year* ran make a difference in many things. Maine*, for instance. If you go about it right you ran make to day’s money grow, right along with those plans for the future. Figure, today, how nturh you'll need in 10 year*. Then pul aside the amount in U. S. Saving* Bond* each week, enough to equal the total you have in mind, always remembering that for every three dollars you in vest today, you will receive four dol lara in 10 year*. If you are on a ■ payroll, join the Payroll Savings Plan where you work. If you are self employ •partisan! START 4 MOl Scuu+Uf i ' I U tit/i &?/ THE COMMERCIAL NATIONAL BANK Charlotte, N. C. L J NOW large to meet the local de mands for a long time. The Charlotte Labor Jour nal will reproduce a picture of the new Labor Temple as soon as remodeling work has been completed. W. L. Byrum GENERAL MERCHANDISE Shopton Rood Tel. 39-9481 Route 3, Charlotte, N. C. t New and Reconditioned PIANOS y For the best value in NEW or t reconditioned pianos, ■elect l yours from our stock of nearly f 100 instruments. Setinway, Mathushek, Winter, Howard. ) and many others. Prices to suit everyone. 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