William Bauchop Wilson to Woodrow Wilson

Referring to the telegram from James L. Davidson, Secretary of the Alabama Coal Operators Association, which you handed to me Friday, in the absence of more definite information relative to the exact language used, care should be exercised in making reply to avoid any statement that might be construed as either an approval or disapproval of the activities of the organizers referred to.
The desire of workers to organize will undoubtedly manifest itself more strongly during the period of industrial activity growing out of the war than at other times. It would be folly, in my judgment, to undertake to repress it. It would be screwing down the safety valve to the point where an explosion would be almost certain. The desire of employers to prevent the establishment of unions and avoid collective bargaining will be just as intense as heretofore, though the unusual demand for labor makes it more difficult for them to enforce their own will.
Because of the war emergency through which we are passing, the Government is vitally interested in these differences being composed in such a manner that a stoppage of work will not take place. In adjusting labor disputes in the Tin Plate Mills at Wheeling, West Virginia, and in the copper mines at Jerome, Arizona, I took the following position: In the present emergency capital has no right to interfere with labor organizing into unions, just as labor has no right to interfere with capitalists organizing capital into corporations. If you can get a condition where efforts to organize the workers are not interfered with and where a scale of wages is recognized that maintains the present standard of living, it occurs to me that for the time being no stoppage of work should take place for the purpose of forcing recognition of the union. Of course, that would not interfere with the employers and the workers entering into any arrangement for recognition that might be mutually agreeable. My judgment is that where our workers have been unable to force recognition of their unions in normal times, they should not take advantage of the country's necessities to force recognition of the unions now, if the workers are left free to organize and conditions of employment secured which will maintain the standards of living existing before war was declared. For the same reason employers who have heretofore recognized and dealt with trade unions should not take advantage of the country's necessities to force abandonment of collective bargaining.
As a result of this attitude, settlements were reached in both cases by the workmen withdrawing the demand for recognition of the union on the one side, and the employers removing the discrimination against employees for belonging to the union on the other.
Beyond these statements, I do not know of any expression on the subject matter by any of the Departments of the Government.The President,The White House.