advancement, and to be of all possible benefit in case of trade disputes, but if it is to be a potent factor in this work, our fellow organized workers should be taught to understand that if they expect to have a fund at their command in time of industrial war, they must prepare for it in time of peace. WITH the general introduction of the typesetting machine in the newspaper offices, the employers usually give union printers the first opportunity of employment. The union establishes different scales of wages for the ability of the workman to perform the duties required. The N. Y. Volkszeitung, the socialist organ, however, has discharged all old employes who failed to come up to the highest notch of composition on the machine; and still these people proclaim themselves friends of labor. ORGANIZERS are requested, when organizing a union, to prevail upon these organizations to also apply for charter outfit as well as making application for the charter. The outfit sent to the union for an additional five dollars exceeds that amount in cost to the A. F. of L., but we recognize that unless the union starts out with its seal, books, stationery, etc., it is not "in business," and our experience has shown that unions with simply a charter, without their outfit, are usually of a temporary character. The outfit enables them to transact their business in a business manner. The unions then take on a degree of permanency otherwise unknown. THE street car strike of Milwaukee, Wis., is is still on. The people are with the strikers heart and soul. President Gompers had a conference with the president, vice-president, and other managers of the railroad company, participated in by Governor Upham, of Wisconsin. The company expressed a desire for an adjustment by which the strikers could be employed, but offered no solution by which that end could be obtained. President Gompers proposed that the hours of labor of all should be reduced in order that all might be employed. This was rejected by the company's managers, thus exposing the shallowness and insincerity of their professions. A great meeting was held in the evening, composed of strikers and about three thousand of their sympathisers, which President Gompers addressed, making a report of his efforts at an adjustment, and appropriately criticising the company's hypocrisy. The attitude taken by organized labor was thoroughly endorsed, and the determination "to walk" again enthusiastically declared. WHAT a sight! Professor De Leon, alias Loeb, who never knew, according to his own theory, what it is to earn an honest dollar, presiding over a labor congress. These people want to dominate the American labor movement. We opine they never will. THE office in which the AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST is printed was burned out on the evening of June 14. As much "pi" resulted, this issue is a few days late, but we feel sure our readers will pardon us and the printers, who labored manfully to get to press as soon as possible. SINCE when has it come to pass that Mr. Washington Hessing, of the Chicago postoffice, has assumed the attitude of chief bogie and general scare-crow for the goldites? His predictions of blood-cold, warm, streaming, congealed oceans and rivers of blood-betoken either the weakness of a hopeless cause, the pricking of a guilty conscience, or the craving plea of cowardice for the behests of a master. JUST as we are about to go to press the glad tidings reach us of the victory of the brave fishermen of the Columbia river, Oregon. These men, members of Fisherman's Protective Union, No. 6321, American Federation of Labor, have been on strike since April 10 last for an increase in their wages to 5 cents per pound for salmon, and now victory crowns with glory the efforts of these able workers and warriors. TIME is fast flying, Labor Day will soon be with us. Don't delay in beginning your preparations and arrangements for its proper celebration. Labor Day, September 7, 1896, should be memorable in the annals of labor's cause. Every union man, every union and every central labor body should be up and doing, and from now on bend every effort to celebrate joyously and demonstrate emphatically that labor shall be free now and evermore. WE extend our thanks to our members who, in answer to our circulars, are endeavoring and succeeding in securing subscribers, as well as disposing of many copies at retail. We want more of the kind. We will forward any number of copies on liberal terms, so that, at least, our agents' time will not be a personal loss. Write for circular and blanks. There is no reason why our and your magazine cannot wield a powerful influence if you only will it. The attention of delinquents is called to the list of agents published in another column, Trade Unions Now and Hereafter. BY HENRY C. BARTER. Socialism stands for a social system in which the old form of representative government is to be retained, with the addition that the government takes to itself all functions now controlled by the individual. Trade unionism stands for a system in which the decaying form of representative government is sloughing off and the new and organic state, or self-government, is forming itself through the different trades organizations and trusts. The socialists preach a doctrine of what should be, and try to conform others to their ideas. The trade unionists are content to find out what is, and conform themselves to the reality. The battle-cry of the socialists is the ballot; that of the trade unionists, organization. Trade unions are the employes' division of the organic state that is growing. They are the result of the working of the same principle that produces on the employer's side the trusts and combinations of what is called capital. The inevitable working out of this principle is towards unity, which means finally the merging of the trades union and trusts into one. Each trade or interest in society will have its single parliament where it now has several, and the relation of one interest with another, once it has reached this unity, will be governed by the fact in all cases. The interest of the individual will have become the interest of all public ownership, will have become a fact through organic growth, and the phantom of nationalization will have faded. This is the government that the trade unionist is building on earth. He pays no attention to building castles in the air, nor has he hopes of any millennium as the socialists have. He believes that the world cannot stop still, and that to reach perfection would be the greatest calamity. For where there is no progress there must be decay. The millennium, or ultimate of the socialist's dream, would rob man of the incentive to strive for better things. This taken away, human society starts on the downward grade. The socialists' chief outcry against trade unionism is that it is too slow. They clamor that the nationalization of all industries would bring about the desired freedom at once. Yet they offer no better solvent for the control of all things, than through the played-out system of representative government. Any sane man to-day admits that representative government has about passed its period of usefulness. The experience of the world with its truth, as absolute as the law of gravitation, that the moment a man is elected to represent the interests of a constituency, that moment his interest and the interests of those he is to represent cease to identify. You have got to get away from politics before any material progress can be achieved. The creed of the trade unionist, stated in its simplest form, is "Mind your own business." Discarding the current loose way of speaking of society as a conglomeration of individuals without synthesis, let us endeavor to speak of it as an organism, and to treat it in a physiological way. The thing to keep in mind is what St. Paul said to the churches, 'Ye are all members of one body." This was not meant as a precept to furnish texts to preachers. It was the truthful report of a man who saw and knew the world he lived in. What is true then of the world so scattered and separated, is a greater truth to-day in a world in which distance has been eliminated; a world bound together by the wire and rail where every interest stands out in clear relief. The key that St. Paul furnished in the likeness between the human and the social bodies must still be the tool by which we gain direction. We come to the knowledge of the human body only by knowing its members and their functions, and the social body can be known in no other way. Man has no other pattern than his own organism with which to build the state, and the social organism is the working out of this. Time will not allow to go extensively into the evolutionary side of this presentation. To bring this properly before the people the development of the human body would have to be traced from the primary stages of the semi-nerveless being to the full co-ordinating individual. Corresponding stages in the social body could be traced from its uncommunicating barbaric condition to the state that we live in, with the avenues of communication erected on every side. I will attempt to cover this by saying that the erection of the telegraph and telephone wire presents to my mind the likeness of the organization of the nervous system in the human body. We have just arrived at the stage that enables us to grasp the unity existing, and to see as a working fact what St. Paul knew only as an idea. With the physical fact comes its spiritual meaning. We find that this wonderful nervous system that has been forming around us is the organ of true government-the free circulation of intelligence. The difficulty in recognizing the new order of things is similar to the excessive labor of a mother and the struggles of the child at birth. The old womb-like or paternal form of government still clings to the form of the child or the new state, but it fights for its own individuality. The representative form of government, as we know it to-day, stands for the past and decaying; the trades union councils, and the organizations of merchants and manufacturers, stand for the new order of things. Back of all legislation can be plainly seen on the one hand the bribery or influence of employer, and on the other the fear or influence of the employe. Instead of letting the men who are doing business, the employer and employe, get together and arrange their affairs, the old thing, the legislation, still clamors for recognition, and its rake-off by its unscrupulous laws and regulations. A brief comparative glance at the benefits achieved through legislation, and the benefits derived through organization, is all that is asked. It will prove the case. I therefore believe that in place of being a menace to law and order, the trade unions form an integral part of the social body, organic in its workings. Hip! Hip! For Eight Hours. BY EDWARD O'DONNELL. [Written for the American Federationist.] What tramp is that shaking our land in its sphere, From the vain Massachusetts to 'Frisco's far plain; And the lords of industry, why pause they in fear While straining each neck to the swelling refrain? CHORUS: As fierce as the tempest, as fixed as the pole, Despising obstruction and mocking earth's powers, The toilers, oppressed long in body and soul, In thunder tones take up the cry for eight hours. No vandals or pirates are we, by our troth! But the ploughers of oceans, the builders of lands, Whose limbs become weary, whose hearts teem with wrath, Through the unequal contest which science demands. Improvement and progress belong to the whole, Their blessings are curses when claimed by a few, For the workers grow lean on starvation's grim dole, And manhood is dead once you force it to sue. We've labored in silence, dear knows, long enough, While want 'round our homes threw a chill, painful air, And at times we checked protest-content with the rough'Til greed, drunk with power, bade us die in despair. The ring of the anvil should cease to vibrate, The ploughshare permitted to rust in the soil, CHORUS: As fierce as the tempest, as fixed as the pole, Boston, Mass. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. DELINQUENT subscribers are requested to remit without delay. BARBERS' Schools are annoying the union barbers in some places. THE National Brotherhood of Bookbinders has now a membership of 9,500. THE bakers union of Brockton, Mass., has voted to join the international. THE Table Knife Grinders National Union will meet in Birmingham, Conn., July 7. THE membership of the National Union of Brewery Workers is steadily increasing. THE Enterprise and Broadway breweries of San Francisco have been unionized. THE Stovemounters International Union issued four charters during the past month. THE immigration bureau is collecting data on the effect of immigration on strikes. LAND in the center of London recently sold at the rate of over £1,750,000 per acre. THE Stovemounters International Union will hold its convention July 7, at Chicago. THE engineers on the Clyde, Scotland, have secured an advance of one shilling per week. MUSICIANS UNION No. 5,579, St. Louis, voted to sever all connection with the Knights of Labor. THE waiters union of Indianapolis brought an obnoxious house to terms with a boycott of one day. ONE result of the street car men's strike of Milwaukee is that the fares have been reduced to four cents. PROF. SETH Low, of Columbia College, has been agreed upon as referee by Typographical Union No. 6, THE Eight-Hour Herald is valiantly supporting the Cigarmakers International Union from the attacks of the state socialist party. THE trade unionists of Virginia have issued a call for a convention to form a state federation, to be held the second week in July. SECRETARY ELDERKIN reports a general improvement in shipping and an increase in the membership of the Seamens National Union. JOHN TURNER, president of the London Shop Assistants, will speak in Indianapolis, July 2, under the auspices of the Central Labor Union. THE Elastic Goring Weavers Amalgamated Association has issued a circular asking that preference be given to congress, or elastic side, shoes. THE painters of Indianapolis doubled their membership in June. Fertig & Kevers, antagonizing the union for over a year, unionized June 17. SEVERAL able articles have been crowded out of this issue, and among them one by Adolph Strasser on "Permanent and Growing Trade Unions." THE Garment Workers Union of Cleveland, mainly composed of women, resolved to give one day's pay of each week for the benefit of the striking machinists. THE United Labor League of Allegheny county, Pa., has begun a crusade against Sunday labor, and will make the Carnegie Steel Company the first example. PRESIDENT GOMPERS, in company with Vice-President O'Connell, attended the meeting of the Cleveland Central Labor Union, June 10. Both made short addresses. THE Johannesberg, Africa, gold fields are overstocked with men, as well as all trades and professions, yet thousands from all parts of the world are flocking in. THE ninth general convention of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners will be held in Memorial Hall, Cleveland, O., beginning Monday, September 21, 1896. HENRY WISEMAN, general secretary of the bakers, visited Indianapolis, May 30, and addressed a mass meeting of the bakers, as well as attending to other trade matters. THE label of the Amalgamated Wood Workers International Union, a cut of which which will be found in another column, has been endorsed by the American Federation of Labor. THE Hotel and Restaurant Employes National Alliance is making giant strides. General Secretary Frank A. Egger writes: "We have issued ten charters since we took charge, April 15.' THE Greenbottle Blowers of the United States will hold their convention at Streator, Ill., July 14. One of the subjects under discussion will be affiliation with the American Federation of Labor. THIRTEEN thousand members of the London Building Trades Union struck for 1⁄2d extra per hour and a new code of working rules. The demand was conceded by the Master Builders Association. IN compliance with the suggestion of the New York convention of the American Federation of Labor the Metal Polishers International Union and the Brotherhood of Brassworkers have rendered their votes to the office of the Federation in favor of a joint convention at Syracuse, June 30. Both organizations have elected delegates, and it is expected that an amalgamation will be effected. Third Vice-President O'Connell will be in attendance. THE strike of engineers at Aberdeen, Scotland, has ended, the employers having agreed to grant an immediate advance of one shilling per week in wages and a similar advance on the first pay-day in August. THE clerks are rapidly forging ahead in the work of organizing. General Secretary Ed E. Mallory writes: "Our record this year will eclipse that of former years, and we are greatly indebted to your general organizers.' WHAT is known as the "Loud" bill, which proposed to restrict certain kinds of second-class mail matter from passing through the mails, has been before both houses of congress this session, but has failed to come to a vote. A FEW months ago there were two unions with less than 250 members in Biddeford, Mass. To-day there are nine unions with a membership of over 2,000; with an exceedingly live central labor union, just organized. DETROIT carpenters are well pleased over the manner in which their big strike was settled. The employers pledged themselves to inaugurate the eight-hour day January 1, and pay a minimum rate of twenty-five cents an hour. ON June 2, 1896, the United States senate passed a bill prohibiting the secretary of the treasury or other executive officer of the federal government from issuing bonds without the authority of congress. It has not yet passed the house. IN a speech before the Chicago Bar Association on June 7, Justice Brown, of the United States Supreme Court, said: "The gigantic_trusts and other forms of financial combinations are the cause of the discontent and uneasiness of the people. Trusts must go." THE Indianapolis Labor Leader appeared June 18, with Organizer J. P. Hannegan as manager. There is always need for more labor papers, and it is the experience that upon their advent the daily papers give more space to labor news. Such is the effect of competition. THE National Association of Steamship and Railway Employes of Germany held a congress on the 24th, 25th and 26th of May, at Halberstadt. A number of very important relief measures were adopted, looking towards the improvement of the condition of the workers. WHAT threatened to be a very great strike of the Longshoremen and Mineral Mine Workers at Escanada, was happily avoided through the thorough organization of the men and the timely advice and tact of our energetic organizer, Frank J. Weber, of Milwaukee, Wis. THE first number of the Longshoremen appeared June 4, issued from Detroit. Publishers, Henry C. Barter, secretary of the international union, and John R. Burton. The men of that calling will, no doubt, find it a valuable aid in organizing as well as a means of communication. THE Jewish Volkzeitung, a new weekly published in the interest of the Hebrew trade unionists of New York by members of the Garment Workers Unions, reached a circulation of 12,000 the first issue. Evidently the would-be trade union wreckers will not have it all their own way. SUNDAY, June 7th, the Central Labor Union of Cincinnati held a monster demonstration at the Ludlow Lagoon, in honor of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Cincinnati Arbeiterzeitung, which, was started as a result of the eight-hour movement among the printers, May 1st, 1886. President Gompers was the speaker of the day, and delivered an address before 5,000 people. The demonstration was in every way a success, and the large surplus over the expenses went to the treasury of the Central Labor Council. THE twenty-third annual conference of the National Organization of Charities and Corrections was held in Grand Rapids week beginning June 7. On that date John D. Flanagan, organizer of the International Typographical Union, delivered an able address on the beneficial features of trade unions. AN international congress of miners sat in Belgium the last week in May, representing over 1,000,000 workers. A resolution that all female labor in mines should be forbidden was unanimously adopted, and that all mines should be taken over by the state was adopted by 737,000 to 126,000 against. THE machinists employed at the Brown-Hoisting Company, of Cleveland, O., have been on strike for the past five weeks, for a reduction of the hours of labor, an increase of wages and the recognition of the union. Grand Master James O'Connell and President Gompers addressed the strikers on June 9. THE granite cutters of Washington, D. C., celebrated the tenth anniversary of their achievement of the eighthour day by a social gathering on Saturday evening, June 13. General Secretary James Duncan (and Vicepresident of the American Federation of Labor) delivered an address appropriate to the occasion. PINKHAM & Co., Boston, have given up the Arena. It is now done by Skinner, Bartlett & Co., another non-union concern. Reports from Boston are that three houses refused the contract. If the Arena management is wise it will settle with the Typographical Union and organized labor before it is too late. THE Phillips bill has passed the House but not the Senate, where it will be presented upon reassembling of Congress. The status of the immigration bill is similar. The latter, however, has not been endorsed by the Federation, which, on the contrary, at the Denver convention declared against further restriction in this direction. THE Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers held the most successful meeting last month in Detroit that it has had in many years. The prepared scale has been generally adopted by the manufacturers. There are a few, however, with whom the organization will have considerable trouble during the coming summer. IN the Knox county, Indiana, circuit court, June 4, William Drummond, formerly a freight conductor on the Evansville & Terre Haute railroad, got a verdict for $3,550 damages against the railroad for being blacklisted by Superintendent Corbett, which had made it impossible to secure employment on any other road since the Debs strike in 1894. GENERAL SECRETARY THOS. I. KIDD, of the amalgamated wood workers, says: "Since the boycott was placed upon the Quincy Showcase Works we have succeeded in taking work away just as it was within their grasp." This is the concern that discharged a union foreman, as well as a committee which protested against such discrimination. ANOTHER Violation of trial by jury has occurred in San Francisco. On May 28, the Bee published certain testimony in the case of Talmadge vs. Talmadge, which Judge Catlin, from the bench, denounced as false. The Bee, in language as emphatic as it was justifiable, took exception to this charge, maintained that what it said was true, and expressed contempt for any court which would distort the truth. Thereupon, the editor of the Bee, Charles K. McClatchy, was ordered to appear before Judge Catlin and show cause why he should not be punished for contempt. He was ably represented by Attorney Reddy, who offered to prove the truth of the Bee's assertions, but the judge denied him the right, refused to hear any testimony whatever, and fined the editor $500, with the alternative of confinement in the county jail for 250 days. THE German Trade Union Congress had 138 delegates, representing fifty-six organizations, consisting of 236,000 members. The Congress lasted five days, and in that time adopted a large number of resolutions tending to place the movement upon a more clearly defined trade union basis. We hope in the near future to give a full resume of work performed. A THE third annual meeting of the Irish Trade Congress was held recently in Limerick. The parliamentary committee expressed satisfaction at the factory and workshop laws that had been secured. resolution was adopted that no efforts should be spared toward influencing parliamentary candidates to bring about a system of taxation that will press first on ground rents, or the "single tax." AT the recent convention of the Pattern Makers. National League, held in Philadelphia, the following board of officers was elected: President, L. R. Thomas, Pittsburgh, Pa.; vice-president, Wm. Jones, Cleveland, O.; secretary-treasurer, John F. McBride, 1012 South Twenty-second St., Philadelphia, Pa.; executive board, Hy. Frommann, St. Louis, Mo.; John Hill, San Francisco, Cal.; Geo. J. Clark, Erie, Pa.; Jas. Wilson, Chicago, Ill. ON Monday evening, June 8, a conference was held between the representatives of the Chicago Trades and Labor Assembly and the Chicago Labor Congress, presided over by President Gompers. An effort was made to adjust the differences, and it was resolved that the respective organizations be requested to resume negotiations for amalgamation. Evidence of the matters in dispute was taken for future reference. It is hoped that a final adjustment may be amicably reached. ONE A. H. Lee, a college graduate and secretary of the socialist party of Minneapolis, calls upon all workers, this political year, to strike a blow at "fakirdom,” copying the slogan of the New York disrupters. How long since this upstart and his ilk were entitled to speak for labor? His economic ignorance is well established in an essay (and which took the university prize) by a direct placing of industrial ills at the door of machinery. What the college professor don't know about the economic problem would fill a balloon. T. C. Brophy, of Massachusetts, also remarks, "the wail of the pure and simple among the cigarmakers can be heard on every hand." This refers to the attack of the socialists upon the cigarmakers' union. A TRIAL Committee of Bicycle Workers' Union No. I, Chicago, has found M. J. Fox guilty of receiving money under false pretenses, and issuing working cards of a bogus labor organization. Last September Fox and three others of Chicago, and a man from Toledo, formed the Brotherhood of Bicycle Workers' International Union, and applied for a charter to the American Federation of Labor. This was never granted, but the leaders of the new organization began to do business without it. Fox was made general secretary-treasurer. Charters were issued to Bicycle Workers' Union No. 1, of Chicago, and to other unions in Marion, Ind., and Bay City and Grand Rapids, Mich. The money paid by them for cards, supplies, etc., is said to have been received by Fox. Recently the Chicago union became suspicious of the brotherhood and withdrew from the organization. Nearly all the officers of the latter were members of No. 1, and their resignations called attention to the rottenness of the brotherhood. THE Amalgamated Association of Carpenters and Joiners, according to its annual report just published, has 692 branches, with a membership of 44,155. The receipts were $597,650, and the expenditures $571,135, with a balance on hand of $407,113. The amount paid for "out of work" benefit was $193,232; strikes, $33,039; replacing tools, $6,844; accident benefit, $9,500; sick benefit, $140,895; death benefit, $21,005; donations, $6,148; superannuated benefit (pensions for old age), $54,828. This society was formed in 1860, and has paid out $6,509,315 in benefits to its members. THE only Chinese newspaper in the country, outside of San Francisco, appeared in St. Louis, June 18. It is called the Chinese Weekly News. The paper is four pages in size, printed in Chinese characters, on yellow paper. A translation of the salutatory says it is the only live Chinese newspaper in the United States-for the education of the Chinese in the Eastern and Southern States on Americanism. Advising them to adopt the dress of this country, and learn to be Americans as much as possible, and to demand equality of rights and the ballot for all Americanized China men. ON the evening of June 4th, the cigarmakers of Detroit, and their friends, celebrated the "first anniversary" of their strike, by a dance, which lasted until the small hours of the morning. These brave workers have been on strike now for more than a year, against child labor. On the 6th inst., President Perkins, of the International Union, and President Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor, together with John C. Durnell, the International agent, endeavored to effect an adjustment of the difficulty and reported to a largely attended meeting of the strikers, who in secret ballot, voted 242 to 87, to continue the strike until victory is achieved, or at least after the celebration of the "second anniversary." THE report of the English Land Restoration League is to hand. Five hundred and eighty lectures have been delivered during the year and 526,000 leaflets printed upon the taxation of land values. The British Trade Union Congress has declared in favor of the policy of the league, having adopted the following at its last session: "That it is of extreme importance to trade unionists that all the land possible should be brought under cultivation, and that we should have a more equitable basis of urban taxation. In order to attain these objects, the taxation of land values and ground rents should be made a test question at the next general election." The report speaks highly of the last report of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics. The league also defeated a movement to tax bicycles, the proceeds of which were to relieve the rural landlords of some part of their hereditary burdens. BEN TILLETT, London, Eng., in his annual address to the Dockers Union, says: "One of the most regretable signs of the times is that our judges appear to be governed by their class passions when hearing cases in which labor asks for justice. Political corruption degrades the bench equally as it debases society. The working class has lost all confidence in the integrity of our judges. In all cases that have come before our prominent judges adverse decisions have been given without exception. Insolence and mendacity have been the chief characteristic of all the summings-up, men have been imprisoned by the dozen, unions mulcted in heavy costs, the law so construed that what law was passed in the interest of workmen has |