LABOR: Two Solutions

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In Homestead, Pa., where steelworkers and company detectives fought an historic, bloody battle in 1892, U. S. Steel last week opened a new $11,000,000 plate mill. At a Pittsburgh dinner celebrating the event, Big Steel's Board Chairman Myron Taylor cried: "I have faith that if patience is invoked, if all prejudice and ill feeling are discarded, if honest intention to cooperate predominates, if self-interest is subordinated to the common good, we can and must, through common effort . . . accomplish that equitable relationship between the owner, the worker and the public which will solve our existing economic discord. . . ."

A more concrete approach to solution of such discord as last week gripped the automobile industry and threatened Steel, was advanced in Battle Creek, Mich. by President Rich of the George R. Rich Manufacturing Co. (automobile valves). Taking his 158 employes into partnership, President Rich offered them $1,500 worth of stock apiece, the right to elect three directors to the corporation's board of eight. First dividends will go to employe stockholders. Employe directors will act as a permanent shop grievance committee, serve on a wage committee to keep pay in line with living costs. "This plan," cried President Rich, "offers an effective and perpetual solution to the capital-labor controversy."

Not among employes of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., of which he is board chairman, nor among those of General Motors Corp., of which he is a director, but among personal employes of ten or more years' service at his Longwood estate near Kennett Square, Pa., Pierre Samuel du Pont last week distributed $200,000 worth of du Pont preferred stock.