Portal-to-Portal Pay , ! r , An Editorial in

Considerable mystery attaches to this portal-to-portd pay system that our labor union brethren have discovered. Apparently, the contract signed between the boss and the worker has nothing to do with it. Even the intentions of the parties, as well known to both sides, have nothing to do with it.

It seems that a man who changes his pants before he goes to work does not change them to save his own pants. Under the new theory, he changes his pants for the benefit of the boss, and the boss has to pay for the pants-changing at the regular rate for repairing watches, or whatever the job may be.

Now, a 6-year-old boy can change his papts and walk from here to there. It doesn't sound like a very technical job to the amateur investigator. But it appears that for the business of walking from the boss''front door to the enrobing chambers, as the Supreme Court calls them, and changing there to working, clothes, and thence for walking to the work bench, or forge or whatever it is, the worker is entitled to pay at the skilled rate to which he attained before he found out that changing his pants was work.

This must be a part of the more abundant life that thc new deal discovered. Of course, a watch would be just as sound if repaired by a man who wore his Sunday Pants, while repairing it, and a ton of coal would be just as satisfactorily dug from its seam and loaded into its coal car if it had been handled in the top-ground clothing of the miner.

As to the miners, however, portal-to-portal pay is a legitimate item. Descending into the pit and walking long distances over wet and slippery footing are a real part of the hazards which make the pay of miners high, and if the workers and the boss bargain and contract to consider portal-to-portal pay a part of the agreement, justice has been done and the payment is a proper part of the cost of coal to the consumer.

On the other hand, in hundreds of industries, where the work has long since been done at an agreed rate of pay, where the pay has been tendered and accepted as payment in full, and the transaction has already been forgotten, it is no part of justice to go back and demand retroactive payment, on a penalty basis, for the portal-to-portal service which nobody involved ever intended to be a part of the

The Dallas News by Lynn \fl. Landrum

work day.

The decision of labor leaders to go after this sort of back pay and to ,collect what amounts to a penalty against the boss for a fault which wasn't his in payment of services never rendered is a decision which betrays a bad attitude of mind. It is a decision which says, for one thing, that the labor leaders regard all bosses as their natural enemies and fair game for any sort of attack that offers remote promise of success.

For another thing, the attitude shows no unwillingness whatever to demand as wages what is actually a form of racketeering, even if it has the apparent warrant of a Supreme Court decision. Demanding pay for work not performed looks no better and sounds no better for its documentation at the hands of the Supreme Court.

If'portal-to-portal pay on this exaggerated basis is right' why not extend the principle? Bus riding and streetcar time could be figured in. In New York commuting takes two to three hours out of the worker's day. And then there is shaving and hairdoing, shoe-shining and so on and on.

As a matter of fact, while we are mulcting the boss, we might as well charge him for a full day, from the time we get up in the morning until we get into bedtime gear and stretch out between the sheets again. Sheet-to-sheet paythat's the ticket !

If you take the Marxian doctrine to heart and believe that the boss is the natural enemy of the worker, if you believe that the wage system is a slave system, if you believe that the worker is compelled to surrender a part of his life substance each working day in order to obtain (in the form of wages) the privilege of remaining alive-if you believe all that, then you are the slave of the boss during every waking moment, and you can see your right to take from him all that you can manage to take.

According to Marx, the hired hand is a miserable wretch' Only in his dreams is he free. And if he has bad dreams, the boss ought to be made to pay for them, too. This is the sort of moonshine and madness which go to make up M.arxian Socialism. And this is the favor of the'labor leadership which would saddle upon industry a retroactive demand for a wage that labor itself never heard about until lately. And the trebling of the pretended back pay as a penalty is quite in the spirit of the whole mad business.