ls This Still A Free Country? r . . ,

Last week The News carried an advertisement by the Lone Star Cement Company in which it presented its side of the strike in its plants here and elsewhere.' Among other things the management said:

"We believe in collective bargaining. We recognize the right of our employes to organize. We will meet our men more than half way in working out fair and equitable wages and working conditions.

"But we maintain that it is unfair, unsound, and unAmerican for the CIO to demand that we, as employers, compel our employes to join that organization' In a free country the right to work rests with the individual' This is still a free country-or is it?"

The answer is that America is in some respects less of a free country everv day. It is still a free country for some organizations. It is still a free country for some leaders' It is still a free country for some violators of our laws who seem to go undisturbed. But for the little, unorganized, unattached man, freedom is a shrinking shield rvhich gets thinner as it shrinks.

There are people who simply do not want to belong to CIO. For that matter there are people lr'ho do not want to belong to the Presbyterian Church. Maybe their reasons are good, and maybe they are not. We have long since forbidden churches to bring compulsion to bear on the fellow who doesn't want to be a churchman. Religiously we are free to go to the devil, if we choose. But in labor matters it is sometimes dangerous to life and limb to assert freedom of choice.

That is literally true. Men have had their skulls cracked for not joining CIO. Other men have had their skulls cracked for joining CIO. A man is not necessarily free either way. You may think CIO is right, and then again yotl may think it is wrong. 'But ans'iver this one; Is the skull-cracking right ? *

It is sad to learn that we have to work for what rve wear' The five-day rveek in the stocking factories doesn't make enough stockings to go round. The five-day week in the steel mills ancl mines doesn't give us enough fenders for