is a failure. By the same token Teddy's efficiency-great word that efficiency-will be questioned, for he foisted Taft on a confiding public.

At this exciting moment comes the American Federationist-official paper of the American Federation of Labor and all that-giving advice to the workers. It consists of a lot of Punch old advice a multiplicity of "Don'ts." There is a singular fatuity on the part of Mr. Gompers, the editor of this journal of light and leading. In political campaigning he takes "Don't" for his text. As Gompers knows or ought to know, the gospel of "Do! do!" is what leads to success in the political arena. The most charitable characterization of this sort of thing is that the editor of the Federationist knows nothing about the game or has little faith in political action.

Again let me remark that those peculiarly "funny" institutions, the courts, are coming into their own. Roosevelt has hit at the vitals of their usurpation and corrupt power.

And there are scores of others joining in the anvil chorus. For example, there is

a Chicago judge by the name of Kavanaugh, who has had something to say about the decadence of bench and bar. He asserts that the people have lost faith in both, and that a hundred years from now the world will make laughing stocks of the decisions of today.

That is rather strong, coming as it does from a judge. And yet His Honor Kavanaugh is mistaken, and possibly he knows he is.

The fact is that thoughtful, commonsense people are laughing at court decisions today. If he or any other judge were to mingle with the crowd-the people who pay the bills-he would know that there is a sniff and a sneer in most places when a court remedy is mentioned. And where there is neither sniff nor sneer, there is a loud guffaw which implies contempt

If you're game to fight with no end in sight and never a band to play,

If you're fit to toil with no hope of spoil and the toiling itself for pay,

If you'll bear the irk of the thankless work of making the dream come true

If you'll march along through a hooting throng that bellows its oath at you,

If you'll learn to meet each new defeat with the gritty old grin of yore

And lift your lance in a new advance with hardly a chance to score,

Then you're just the breed that we sorely need; you're one of our kith and kin.

So get the swing of the song we sing and join in the march-fall in!

We promise no loot to the young recruit, no glory or praise or fame.

No gold you gain in this long campaign-but plenty of jeers and blame,

The quarters are mean and the rations lean; the service is harsh and grim.

The war is on from dark to dawn, from dawn to the twilight dim:

But there's ever the cheer of a comrade near and the touch of his sturdy arm

And his help in call if you faint and fall where the harrying foemen swarm.

If you scorn reward for the fight that's hard, if you'd rather be right than win,

Just get the swing of the song we sing and join in the march-fall in!

A glorious victory

The textile workers of Lawrence have won their hunger strike; if the unpremeditated, planless revolt of a motley multitude may be called a strike. Twenty thousand unorganized people, more than half of them women and children, threefourths of them foreigners, of a dozen different races, here but a little while and speaking but few words of our language, have forced to their knees the men who control a great industry capitalized at many millions and in which hundreds of thousands of workers are employed. A heterogeneous mass of helpless humanity has humbled men accustomed to have their slightest wishes heeded by the courts and by the governments of great cities and states.

To toil sorely and have nothing is the lot of these slaves of the mills; only by stinting themselves of even the plainest and cheapest food are they able to exist. But the limit of endurance was reached when the employers, deceived by their seemingly inexhaustible patience, clipped from their pay an amount equal to the wages for the two hours by which their weekly labors were reduced. They rebelled, preferring absolute want to continuous semi-starvation.

Enraged at this unexpected resistance, the mill owners proceeded to ruthlessly crush it and reduce the rebelling workers to submission. Hunger, cold, the club, the bayonet and the jail were the arguments used to break the strike. But here, again. the employers blundered; the very weakness of the strikers was their strength, their abject misery and utter helplessness compelled the attention of Congress and the sympathy of the public.

The manufacturers awoke to find that public opinion was with the under-dog and demanded that consideration be given to its protest.

The small increase in wages granted will be a Godsend to these simple folks. but the chief value of the victory is its moral effect. It has inspired the workers in the textile industries with fresh courage, greater self-reliance, and a lasting conviction of the power born of organization and solidarity.

The immediate and concrete results are not confined to Lawrence; from all parts of the East come reports of increases in wages, voluntarily granted. The manufacturers realize that the Lawrence strike has ushered in a new era, that there is going to be a general revival of trade un

of

That such crime-breeding, death-dealing, demoralizing and unnecessary misery should exist is in itself sufficient cause for bitterness and indignation. Hundreds thousands of men, able and anxious to work, are idle, while other countless thousands lack food and fuel, clothing and shelter, all of which could be supplied in plenty from our inexhaustible resources if it were not for the man-made obstacles which prevent the workless having access to the things needful to life except when those who own the land, the tools and the jobs can profit from their labor. Such a condition is a caustic reflection upon our assumed intelligence, an unanswerable indictment of the existing social system.

That conscienceless cowards should be permitted to exploit and aggravate misfortune is a social crime. In Chicago, New York, every large city, are tens of thousands of jobless men. The railroads are seizing the opportunity to rake in a few dirty dollars, the all of men who, allured by lying advertisements, leave home and friends to seek employment in imaginary El Dorados of the South or the Pacific Coast, only to be stranded among strangers, thousands of whom themselves are without work or means of livelihood. From Vancouver to San Diego, the Pacific Coast is thronged with workless workers.

The railroads are abetted in their infamous practices by the employers' associations and the real estate sharks, while the press, as a rule, maintains a cowardly silence.

San Francisco enjoys the unenviable distinction of producing the star criminal in this conspiracy. The contract for the excavation for the foundation of the first building of the Panama Exposition has just been let; not a spadeful of earth has been turned or will be turned for sometime, yet some unprincipled scoundrel or combination of scoundrels is advertising for carpenters and other mechanics to work upon the Fair buildings, while 50,000 men on the ground are waiting for a chance to bid for the first job that offers.

If the officials of San Francisco and California sit complacently by and tacitly connive in this vile scheme of the railroads and rapacious employers, the Federal Government should step in and sternly end this interstate commerce in human degradation.

But while that grass grows, the horse will starve. Congressman Berger recently asked the House to discuss the unemployment problem, but it was too busily engaged in attending to matters affecting the pockets of the employers. Upon organized labor and the trade union and socialist press rests the duty of warning the unwary worker against these snares so cunningly prepared.

Advertisements for men to work in Pacific Coast cities are invitations to starvation. The railroads lust for your last dollar; the employers want hungry men to bid for jobs and to work for a crust. Give no ear to their seductive lies.

Twenty years have come and gone since Justice Shiras changed his mind in his sleep and so reversed a ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States.

By a vote of 5 to 4 the court had ruled that a provision of the Federal Income Tax law exempting incomes under a stated amount did not conflict with the constitutional guarantee of equality under the law. Justice Shiras was one of the five.

After sleeping on it, however, he changed his vote and the law was declared class legislation and unconstitutional.

This decision checked the movement for direct taxation and several proposed state income-tax laws were abandoned.

Believing that a tax on incomes distributes the burden of the expense of gov ernment more equitably than our present complex, antiquated, round-about methods, and encouraged by the example of all civilized countries outside of the United States, the Legislature of Wisconsin at its last session enacted an income tax law which exempts small incomes and provides

for a graded tax rate which increases with the size of the income.

The Supreme Court of the State has declared this law constitutional, exemptions, graduation provision, and all. Every man who evades paying according to his ability and in proportion to the protection and benefit he receives from organized society-the state, city and federal governments-every man who is shirking his share and transferring the load to somebody else's shoulders, is hoping the Federal Supreme Court will reverse the Wisconsin decision and declare the law unconstitutional.

It is well that the law is to be passed upon by the Federal Court; the personnel of that body has changed since Shiras slept and we shall see if there has been an improvement or whether its eyes, filled with the dust of the past, are still blind to the injustice of taking from him that hath nothing even that which he hath, and to him that hath, giving more.

Incidentally it is significant that the Wisconsin Supreme Court that has shown such breadth of mind and clearness of vision serves a people who send a vanguard of Socialists to their State Legislature, are represented in the United States Senate by Robert La Follette and sent the first Socialist to Congress.

a

political

Maker (in sense) who doesn't think much of his job -is making Republican politics so interesting that the Democrats are envious.

To offset the Rough Rider's bid for the unknown quantity-the Progressive voteTaft's dope agents remind us that the chameleon from Oyster Bay didn't think so well of the initiative and referendum when he sent Dear Will, as his personal representative, to stump Oklahoma against the adoption of its proposed constitution. They hint that the Strenuous One's burning indignation at wealthy malefactors suddenly chilled when it was shown that the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad had rebated to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and that crony Paul Morton was eligi ble for admission to the Federal institution at Leavenworth. Paul gracefully resigned from the cabinet to accept the presidency of the New York Life Insurance Company

and the incident was forgotten-for the time. They also intimate that the prosecution of the Steel Trust was timed so as to refresh our memories regarding the memorable midnight interview at Washington when Roosevelt and the Steel Trust magnates decided the fate of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company and saved the country. As the story is retold we are left undecided as to whether Wisdom Incarnate was fooled or wilfully blind. Again Roosevelt is twitted with the immunity from prosecution enjoyed by the Harvester Trust during his administration. His publicity man neatly counters by acknowledging the corn, jocularly adding "The Harvester boys are such good fellows; why, we elected Taft from the sixth floor of their building and they didn't charge us a cent for rent."

So each pricks the bubbles as they rise from his rival's political pipe and the emptiness of the pretentious professions of both is shamelessly exposed. If the Kilkenny cat fight continues, the Grand Old Party will have to stake its hopes on a dark horse.

And yet, despite this exposure of its insincerity, of Taft's futility, of Roosevelt's shifty egotism, the Republican party stands a better show for victory than the Democracy. Devoid of principle, policy or program, with its face to the past, seeking to revive issues long dead, to persuade us to return to the ways of our grandfathers, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, as Grant said, "the Democrats can always be relied upon to do the wrong thing at the right time." This is, perhaps, their last chance of electing a president of the United States. The prospect is that it will be thrown away.

The workers are beginning to see through the farce. The old parties with their fake issues and sham battles have long diverted our attention from the fact that both are financed and run in the interests of the capitalists, that whichever wins, we lose. But a new alignment is taking place; we have discarded the old ties. The problem we face is too serious, the daily struggle for bread and butter too keen for us to waste time on the minor reforms advocated by one or other of the groups of "progressives" whose campaign cries have been appropriated by the Big Noise. In the future, the battle in the political arena will be between the forces that war upon the industrial field, between those who own capital and control the jobs but produce nothing and those who own nothing but produce all.

The diamond cutters of England, France, Belgium and Germany have won their international strike for an eight-hour day. As those of Amsterdam and New York gained it some time ago the shorter work day is now universal in the industry. The victory is notable as adding one to the rather small number of European unions enjoying this condition. It was won by thorough organization; the union has jurisdiction over the civilized world and its 9,000 members include all the skilled craftsmen in the trade.

The wages of these intelligent workmen are much above the average; another instance where short hours, good wages and decent working conditions go hand in hand with membership in a progressive and well managed trade union.

It's a beastly shame; beauty must go unadorned. The good wives of friends Belmont and Morgan, of Kirby and Parry, must attend their social functions dressed in severe simplicity; even the "hand that writes the ads" (Grape-nuts)—that of the ex-stenographer-must go bare.

There's a reason. All the diamonds to be had are cut by union men enjoying the eight-hour day.

The attention of the Secretary of State should be drawn to this international conspiracy in restraint of trade.

Every one who knows him, and particularly our Ohio members, are pleased at the election of Brother Steve S. Stilwell, of Local Union No. 102, Cleveland, as a member of the Convention which is drafting a new constitution for submission to the voters of Ohio. He and the men elected on the same ticket are pledged to embody the initiative and referendum in the organic law of the state and, as a majority of the delegates elected believe that the people should rule, that they should have the right, when they see fit, to say the first and the last word about the laws under which they live, and have other progressive ideas, it would seem that the working people of Ohio are in a fair way to obtain that political power which is essential to the success of our struggle for industrial liberty and economic independence.

Among others serving the people with Brother Stilwell are Herbert S. Bigelow, the eloquent pastor of the Cincinnati People's church, ardent advocate of the single tax, and Harry Thomas, the industrious, able and popular secretary of

the Ohio Federation of Labor and earnest worker for socialism.

With cheerful hope of fattening a lean wallet, Marshall Cushing has again entered the lists as the champion of the non-union shop.

Never heard of Cushing? Well, he's a former associate of Parry and Post, now the editor of "How-a Magazine for Manufacturers," which his letterhead says he publishes "for the fun of it."

One of his letters, addressed to a Chicago manufacturer, finally landed on the editor's desk. It's an appeal for a subscription-$1.00 for a year-which leads one to conclude that Marshall is fishing for suckers to pay for his fun. He pleads and coaxes the manufacturer to toss him the coin to "help me beat closed shop legislation at Washin ton," and-knowing the weak spot in the mental make-up of the employer of non-union labor-he asks, "Can you get more for a dollar in any other way?"

Well, suckers are born every minute and Marshall will find a few buyers for his brains and nerve-his stock-in-trade. Conscience, manhood, fairness, common decency -he has forgotten that such things exist, anyway they are a handicap to the open shop advocate.

Cushing's debasement is worthy of reference only because it shows that the enemy is alert and using every means known to resourceful and unscrupulous men to poison the public mind and to maintain a strangle hold upon the workers who are compelled to toil in the slave-pen which hides behind that lying term, "the open shop."

"President Taft concurs with Mr. Hitchcock in the opinion that magazines should travel in freight cars. Likewise some presidents could appropriately travel on the hog train."-Chicago Hope.

The lateness of the Journal this month is due to delay in the shipment and arrival of the paper. The Elkhart Mill, which has the contract to furnish the printer with the union made paper, has a limited capacity and finds it difficult to execute orders promptly. This and a severe blizzard that blockaded the railroads while the paper was enroute, caused the presses to be held for a week pending the arrival of the paper. The mill has promised better service in the future.