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sity of changes in our laws to encourage business groups to uniteto establish better systems of ethics, more intelligent supervision ofproduction, prices, credit, labor standards, and all the other featuresof competition.Many labor leaders began to be aware of the blessings of combinationif it would include the unions. Thus Mr. Matthew Woll, vicepresidentof the American Federation of Labor, came out around1924 for the repeal of the anti-trust laws. Labor leaders thoughtthey saw a condition favorable to labor in large combinations of employerson one side and large and powerful unions on the other. Gettingtogether would be easier. There were plenty of instances of employers'associations and unions entering agreements for mutual protection,labor getting recognition and the closed shop on one sideand employers getting complete control of the trade throughlabor's refusal to work for employers who refused to co-operatewith the combination.During the administration of President Coolidge at least twoscoreindustries adopted what were called codes of practice. Undercover of agreements to eliminate unethical practices, prices, production,and competition were controlled. This was done under theprotection and sponsorship of the Attorney General's office and theFederal Trade Commission. Herbert Hoover put an end to it whenhe became President.In all this we see the development of the syndicalist idea—thatthe economic system must be subjected to planning and control,that this planning must be done outside the political state, that itmust be committed to the hands of the producing groups. In theUnited States, as in Italy and Germany, employers through theirtrade associations and workers through their unions were approachinga common ground by different routes. They differed with increasingviolence on many points—wage and working conditions—but all the time were drawing closer together on the central ideaof syndicalism.After the depression of 1929 got under way a new school of reformersmade its appearance. They were known as the Planners andtheir theories appeared in books by George Soule, of the New Republic,Stuart Chase, and Dr. Charles Beard. Russia's Five-Year191