COTTON ASKS LABOR DRAFT

British labor has gone on a full war basis, according to Richard W. Cotton, an American businessman who has returned to this country after five years in England. From the beginning draft deferment was on the basis of value to the war effort, not on family or personal situations. He believes that it was a mistake not to apply that rule earlier here, as the labor draft law now proposes.

Labor Draft Needed

Mr. Cotton feels that it is time to draft labor over on this side of the Atlantic. In England men are shifted from job to job as the production schedule works out. Men are not only moved from such industries as toys to bomb casting, but also shifted to shell cases if bomb production is extremely heavy, one month and shell production under par. Thus the labor situation has a certain flexibility which is lacking here. Women are also drafted, being switched from position to position as the men are.

Labor has agreed to give up its rights with the specific proviso that it receive all its former privileges at the end of the war. It takes the position he said, that if the Nazis win, it can be certain it will have no right at all, and so has thrown all its weight behind the war program. British labor feels that it is one the firing line fully as much as the troops, and draft legislation treats it that way.