What Does Labor Want? What Does Its Power Portend for the Economic Future of the Nation?

Undergraduates in Professor Malcolm Keir's course in Economics may agree with him or disagree; few fail to become stirred. It is one of the most influential courses because it is one of the most illuminating. For he is no bookish theorist; he has studied labor conditions in industrial cities throughout the United States; he knows labor conditions in them far better than the undergraduates who hail from them and attempt in class to tell him the "facts" about their home towns.

And so the ALUMNI MAGAZINE asked Professor Keir for an article in which some of the management-labor questions might be treated, such as:

1. How "downtrodden" has labor really been in America from the middle of the last century to the middle of this?

2. What is the future of the A. F. of L. and the C.I.O.?

3. Are union leaders "foreign born agitators"?

4. Are the unions revolutionary in their philosophy?

5. In general terms, what does labor want today that it has not got?

6. Can the unions eventually challenge successfully the power of management?

7. If another depression comes, who should be blamed?

It was the editors' plan to present this month, along with Professor's Keir's article, another personal point of view written by a representative of management, but unfortunately circumstances beyond our control have made it impossible to carry out that plan. We expect to be able to present this other article in a later issue.