National Affairs: Showdown Postponed

Six and a half million subway riders in New York City last week faced the imminent threat of a strike in the underground transportation systems. City Government and labor leaders, howling bad cess at one another, had quarrelel themselves into a deadlock. The point at issue was fundamental to Government and union labor: have State or municipal employes a right to strike? The same question, in different terms, had been debated before—notably in Boston, Mass., when in 1919 Governor Calvin Coolidge called out the State Guard to break a policemen's strike. In New York City the situation was more complicated.

When the...