CONFORMITY BEHAVIOR OF LABOR NEWSPAPERS WITH RESPECT TO THE A.F.L.-C.I.O. CONFLICT.

The present investigation was concerned with whether or not the conformity of labor newspapers corresponds to a J-curve with respect to the conflict between the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. An analysis of 1,329 issues of 177 labor newspapers, for September, October, and November, 1939, was made in terms of four rather well defined positions on a telic continuum. Position 1 consisted of use of material in the newspaper from the national organization, with the addition of local comment derogatory of the rival organization and/or its leaders. Position 2 consisted simply of use of materials from the press services of the national organization. Position 3 was strict neutrality. Position 4 was represented by recommendations of cooperation between the two groups. Comparisons were also made between: local labor papers and those published by national unions; papers of A.F.L. affiliates and of C.I.O. affiliates; papers of A.F.L. nationals and of C.I.O. nationals; papers of A.F.L. locals and of C.I.O. locals; papers of C.I.O. nationals and of C.I.O. locals; papers of A.F.L. nationals and of A.F.L. locals; and papers of local labor organizations in a "nonconflict" situation and those in a "conflict" situation. In addition, comparisons were made between the labor organizations in terms of the mean value of all issues of each newspaper published by the organization. No J-curves were found in any of the situations studied. This means that there were no curves of institutional conformity to the philosophy of the national group. The fact that Position 3 was the mode in practically all cases would seem to indicate the inertia of large numbers of members in the national federations with respect to the philosophy of the national organization. Although no J curves were obtained, the J-curve analysis was valuable in showing that neither of two outstanding views is correct as to the causes of the division between the two national labor organizations, (a) The theory of institutional conflict between industrial unionism (C.I.O.) and craft unionism (A.F.L.) is not supported by the non-institutional conformity of the labor he papers, (b) Neither is the theory of "power politics" upheld, that the differences between the national organizations are between leaders only, with the rank and file as pawns; this is shown by the size of the percentages on Position 4. This does not mean that these two sets of factors are not important, but simply that neither of them is a complete explanation of the division between the two organizations. As a whole, the distributions indicate that the differences between the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. are so complex in nature as to have prevented them from becoming institutionalized. Institutional conformity might have been demonstrated, of course, had the continuum been in terms of community mores rather than in terms of rivalry with the other labor organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]