Atlanta Daily World

Fighting Together

PERHAPS NO MORE colorful group has been seen in the Gate City than was witnessed last week end when several hundred white and colored labor delegates from the Southeastern region assembled for the beginning of a drive to consolidate and extend the forces of the American Federation of Labor.

Some 250 or more colored representatives were present and "had a say", though they heard their president by "remote control." That is they were several city blocks from the banquet table before which Mr. Green delivered his address, which is radio chain transmitted to the far corners of the continent.

But, the fact is that it was a colorful throng. Representatives from the mines of Alabama, the steel mills and the varied types of factories dominant in the Southern region were present. They talked with earnestness about the living situation as it affects them. They talked of improving their plight of collective bargaining and co-operation.

MAIDEN SPEAKS

It was Cornelius Maiden, the lone AF'L colored organizer, who warned the assemblage that "Both races are fighting together for the same cause." It was this hint which brought one of the most expressive applauses from the great throng of representatives. In it lay the crux of success or failure of labor organization in the South-a region said to be a stronghold of longer hours and lower pay.

The AFL which has been notably outstanding in excluding from its ranks colored workmen or at least being conspicuous by their absence, must surely reckon with the "out of rank" brother or "run him off his job." It is this latter possibility which vitally concerned the colored representatives to Atlanta's labor meeting, whether or not they were directly entirely cognizant of it. Labor organization sometimes produces both desirable and undesirable results to a minority group.

Once upon a time the new generation of those who fought to retain the Confederacy would not lay their hands to the common tasks of our civilization. That time is far removed. More and more have we viewed the taking of th jobs once classified as "Negro's work." with the economic situation growing worse for the masses of both majority and minority groups there is a rumbling, such as was never before imagined, and a scrambling, unheard of previously, for any work that pays money.' It is no more a disgrace to work at certain occupations.

WILL GROUP BE 'SHELVED'?

The question then naturally arises: Will the Negro be 'shelved' in the entire Southern labor organization and consolidation? This scribe thinks not. that is, if h can get in on the ground floor and mix efficiency with cooperation in his endeavors. It is natural that the AFL, like the CIO, has realized that the South is the section to enter at present. It has the greatest future of any section of the nation, since it only recently began to clamor for the things that the North and East have enjoyed so long.

Thus, that throng of workers and representatives constituted SOMETHING that one doesn't See every-day in the South. When workers get together and cheer the warning that "Both races are fighting together for the same cause," you may rest assured that the South and the nation will go forward in one great phalanx.