Page:George Soule - The Intellectual and the Labor Movement.djvu/25

 Engineers' Cooperative National Bank of Cleveland has grown to nearly $20,000,000 in resources in two years' time. Other banks have also shown a remarkable growth. The cooperative movement is making headway among the railway workers and miners. So also is group buying. The last election showed the possibilities of a labor political movement in this country. In the central and western states the forces of organized labor were mobilized as they never had been before. They worked intelligently and with a generous spirit of cooperation. The labor vote should be mobilized in our cities' elections. That is probably where labor will begin its real political salvation. From that it will move on.

Editor's Note: Labor banking in this country has been one of the most interesting and significant of the recent developments in the labor movement. In November, 1920, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers opened a bank in Cleveland with a capital stock of $1,000,000, all of the stock being subscribed by members of the union. In the previous May, the International Association of Machinists opened the Mount Vernon Savings Bank in Washington, D. C., although this bank is in part owned by outsiders. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America followed suit in May, 1922, forming the Amalgamated Trust and Savings Bank of Chicago,—a 100 per cent labor bank. Labor banks have also been established in Philadelphia and in other parts of the country. The Locomotive Engineers have purchased a considerable block in the Empire Trust Company of New York, and this organization, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' and the Central Trades and Labor Council of New York are all going into banking in the Metropolis. There is here, therefore, a growing field for the technical trained banker with labor sympathies.

Labor has not as yet developed in this country a strong independent political movement as in European countries. In Great Britain intellectuals of the type of Sydney and Beatrice Webb, J. Ramsay Macdonald, Philip Snowden, H. N. Brailsford, et al., have given their energies and talents to labor on the political field. Thus far labor has sought to elect to office in this country men more or less friendly to labor in the older political parties. The Conference for Progressive Political Action, formed in February, 1922, as a result of a call of the machinists, railroad brotherhoods, etc., may later develop a powerful national Labor Party. In the meanwhile, the Socialist Party, the Nonpartisan League, the Farmer-Labor Party and the Workers' Party are functioning as parties of labor and the farmer. In some states these groups have combined into a local Labor Party. They have elected numerous congressmen, senators, state legislators and municipal councillors.