The Kennewick Courier Reporter

WHAT THE PRINTERS ARE DOING

Newspapers, of course, are especially interested in the achievements of that large body of their employes organized as the International Typographical union. But the operations of that union under war conditions are so noteworthy that they are a matter of public interest.

Here is an organization which has sent 5,000 members into army and navy service, that has paid death benefits of $22,000 to the relatives of the 75 members who have died in the service, and that at the same time kept up its pension system for members disabled by old age, and its home for printers at Colorado Springs.

It has backed its patriotic service at the front with patriotic service at home. Its officers, as they put it, "are volunteers in the army for the preservation of industrial peace for the duration of the war at least," and have pledged themselves to do their "level best to give full effect to the earnest recommendations made by the president in his proclamation creating the National War Labor board; there should be no strikes or lockouts during the war."

It is one of the great public achievements of the International Typographical union that in conjunction with the newspaper publishers it has been able to work out a policy of arbitration of industrial disputes to take the place of industrial war. Under the machinery which is always in readiness to take up grievances and settle them, the war involved in a strike has become almost unheard of.

In its comprehension of the problems, in its responsibility toward its own members, in its work for permanent industrial peace as well as in its service to the government in the emergency of war the International Typographical union has made an important contribution toward American life.--Kansas City Star.