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Nevertheless, that is the law of the jungle. It is the way of the savage who leaves his sick and dying to lie by the roadside as he pursues his pleasure or his business.

Wealthy men who have been guided by that rule will be opposed to unions because they cannot comprehend our fraternal conceptions or come within hailing distance of knowing how fully we live up to the humanities.

So they reason that if they put Gompers in a position where he is an apparent financial burden we will turn him down and get some one who will "president" at less cost. That is how they reason it out when discussing their employees.

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Just between us, I think Gompers got in bad over the McNamara affair, but I don't believe he is in any way tainted. A good-hearted, whole-souled fellow, full of sympathy and with a passion for relieving those in distress, he accepted the statements of the McNamaras, as 999 out of 1,000 men of his temperament would do. Then the trade-autonomous character of the federation-and in maintaining this obsolete characteristic Gompers is the chief sinner-rather indicated it was not his duty to go behind the statement of officers of the iron-workers' union. If he erred, it was the very kind of error a man of his makeup and his ideas of union policy might be expected to make. However, he is paying the penalty for the mistakes of his delightful disposition and his extremely happy-golucky idea of allowing every union to do as it pleases.

Be sure of one thing, he is not likely to pay the extreme penalty at the behest of the people who are now hounding him in the press. No matter how bitterly opposed the radicals may be to some of Gompers' policies they will not stultify themselves by playing into the hands of those whose savage doctrine is: Desert your friends when they are in trouble.

*

So we are going to have a referendum supervision of the courts. Teddy Roosevelt says so, and that is how we know. Not that Teddy will ever bring about the reform in a way which will prove of advantage to the people, but because Teddy knows the people have their minds set on the referendum, so he proposes to give

them a little less than they really want or need.

Roosevelt's one conspicuous talent is his ability to understand what the people want. In close relation with that is his extremely profitable faculty of soft-soaping the people, and then giving the people's enemies about what they want. We all remember how he raved about what he was going to do to the railroad trusts, yet he sent for Harriman to see him at the White House. After election he liked to deal with "practical men," the implication being that the great mass are dubs.

Not only does Roosevelt's support of the referendum show that the people want it and are going to have it, but that practical men of the Harriman stripe see it that way, too.

It cannot be repeated too often that "The vote is the thing!" Let one of our enemies, who does not believe in union men going into politics prove it.

Down in New York there is a person known as Marshall Cushing. He has been many things in many places, but at all times a good writer. I don't know that he ever wrote a book-I don't think he ever did; but his writing has a charm that pleases the ordinary man-I don't mean what he says, but how he says it. Cushing is a "near-there"-he has not achieved the success that less talented men in his line have achieved. He is now a species of mercenary, supplying a set of well developed brains to men who have but one standing-out mental quality-to make money through skinning labor.

One of the instrumentalities through which he works is a small monthly publication called "How," a magazine for manufacturers, in which he disseminates wornout and fetid political economy to poor wights with the single talent. So clever a man as Cushing must laugh at some of the guff he hands out to these intellectual never-wassers. He says on his first page that he edits the paper for the "fun of it," and a blind man can see where the fun comes in, and some day the single-talented dotards will-but that is an affair not concerning us, but intimately affecting Marshall's cozy meal ticket.

I see Cushing's "How" right regularly, and had a mild curiosity to read what he would have to say about the McNamara affair. That afforded a fine chance to flourish a blood-stained magnet that would draw the dollars. In his November edition,

which reached at least one subscriber late in December, he had hardly a word on that subject. Clever man, he knows that McNamara is but a pimple arising from diseased conditions. Mercenary though he may be, he likes to tell his self-sufficient auditors the truth occasionally-that is where he gets some of his fun. Skipping the dynamiters, he speaks of the growing socialist vote. That is the alarming symptom. He tells his capitalist friends that it is their most important business to find what it means, and then he goes on to say there must be fairer treatment of employees, and so forth and so on. In other words, Cushing "throws a scare into them," and all because the socialist vote was a surprise.

All things considered, the press has been very fair regarding the McNamara affair, and some of us began to think that the editors concluded that after all the noise about bomb-throwing by labor people, the conviction of two or three men and the involvement of one great union were small results. Also we thought there might be a modification of attitude toward us, for there is no doubt that the Parry-Kirby-Otis kind of attack has become nauseating to the general public.

But there are signs that the unions are going to be fought along new lines; or, rather, by new methods. Heretofore Big Business, as represented by the Morgans, Rockefellers and others, have not paid much attention to us. To some Big Business has gone along. Occasionally it destroyed a union, but as for fighting us openly they left that to notoriety hunters and financial small fry like Kirby and Parry.

Big Business has a magazine in which it voices its views on all sorts of topics. It is the North American Review, and anyone who has an argument against the people or in favor of the exploiters can find a place in its pages, provided the article is well written. Well, the January issue contains a screed on the closed shop, by a man who reasons closely enough, but does not state all the facts-a common enough and cheap trick with controversialists of a certain stripe. But this man makes the declaration that all the benefits which flow from unionism are as nothing compared with the liberty that is sacrificed to maintain the closed shop. The implication is that the first duty of the hour is for Americans to cripple or exterminate unionism.

Appearing as it does in the North American Review, the mouthpiece of Big

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Business, the article in question aspires to be a call to arms. If the appeal is answered and a new fight inaugurated, what and where is the best way for labor to strike back?

At the ballot box!

Strikes and lockouts with the legal machinery in the hands of the enemy would put us always on the defensive. A few million votes marked the right way would not merely put the opposition on the defensive but rout them.

And the right way for us is to mark ballots so that the machinery of government is really in the hands of the producers, not the exploiters.

Whichever way we turn labor's best friend is the ballot. How ruthless of us to neglect it as we do!

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in. Time, you thief! who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in. Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;

Say that health and wealth have missed me; Say I'm growing old, but addJenny kissed me!

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In the death of Brother Thos. J. Moore, of Local Union No. 7, of Toledo, Ohio, the Brotherhood has lost an old, faithful and greatly respected meniber. Though in later life the burden of the years pressed too heavily to permit him to be as active as in earlier days, he preserved keen interest in the union to the end.

From 1898 to 1900 Brother Moore served as a General Vice-President of the Baltimore branch of the Brotherhood and proved himself to be worthy and efficient. He lived a useful life and his many friends sincerely regret his death.

He

T. G. Kennedy, member of Local Union No. 49, of Memphis, is the first union man to serve as state factory inspector of Tennessee and the first holder of the position to consider it anything but a political job with nothing to do but draw salary. found the laws regulating child labor universally and flagrantly violated; the Postal and the Western Union Telegraph companies were using boys of tender years in the night service to deliver messages to houses of prostitution; prominent citizens, pillars of the church and leaders in Sunday school work, were employing hundreds of little tots in their cotton mills, with false affidavits as to their age filed in the Without any law to sustain him, Inspector Kennedy destroyed these perjuries and the mill owners whom he has prosecuted have not dared to protest.

Correspondents will please write on one side of the office. We are not responsible for views expressed paper only. by correspondents. Address all mail matter to J. C. Skemp, Editor,

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His conscientious enforcement of existing laws and his efforts to secure needed amendments are earning for him the antagonism of all employers of child labor, this should win for him the support and encouragement of all working people and of the decent people of every class in Tennessee. He has the courage and the will to do splendid service he should be given the opportunity.

Just before the fearful disaster at Briceville, in which over a hundred miners lost their lives, the legislature of Tennessee rejected a very modest Employers' Liability bill.

Before election every candidate favored the bill; the party platforms of the Democrats, of the Reform Democrats and of the Republicans endorsed and made it a party measure; the governor urged its passage that the working people of the state might have a chance to recover for unnecessary loss of limb and sacrifice of

life.

When the bill came up, sixty members forgot their pledges and cheerfully went

on record as liars and as traitors to the people. The explanation, known to every man in Tennessee who knows anything, is that these men are on the pay roll of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and received orders from its offices.

The thirty-seven men who voted for the bill deserve credit. Either they are honest, the railroad doesn't need them, or is not willing to pay their price. In such company they should be given the benefit of the doubt.

We are told that in voting the Socialist ticket the worker "throws his vote away." How about the votes cast for the Democratic and Republican parties of Tennessee?

On page 17 of this number we print the text of the Eight-Hour bill now in the hands of the Senate.

The bill, drafted by Representative Hughes, who carries a union card, was favorably reported by the Labor Committee of which Representative Wm. B. Wilson, union mine worker, is chairman. It passed the House unanimously and that fact led us to read the bill more carefully than we would if it had met with the open opposition or the covert antagonism usually accorded to labor legislation. The purpose of the bill is to make the eight-hour day compulsory upon all work done by or for the Government except where it is absolutely impracticable or where its enforcement under present industrial conditions would make it impossible for the Government to obtain materials or supplies.

Section 1 of the bill is clear and positive. The only way in which the penalty for violation of the law can be escaped is by appeal to the head of the department making the contract or to the Court of Claims.

Section 2 of the bill is rather disappointing as compared with Section 1. The exceptions-the things to which the eighthour provision does not apply-are so indefinitely stated as to seriously weaken the bill. The section starts out by excluding all men employed on steam or electric railroads, on steam or other boats, in the mail service, by telephone or by telegraph companies the text reads, "this act shall not apply to contracts for transportation or for the transmission of intelligence."

Manufacturers from whom the Government buys "any materials or articles as may usually be bought in open market"except armor and armor-plate-need not observe the eight-hour day; neither need those who furnish "supplies whether manufactured to conform to particular

specifications or not." The words "materials," "articles" and "supplies" are discouragingly vague and general. The term "open market" is susceptible of widely different constructions; there are few things that cannot be bought in the open market when that term is construed to include articles "manufactured to conform to particular specifications."

We regret exceedingly the provision giving the President "by executive order" power to "waive the provisions and stipulations in this act and to set aside

all penalties for its violation" in case of any "extraordinary event or condition on account of which the President shall subsequently declare the violation to have been justifiable." This is not as wide as a church door nor as deep as a well, but 'tis enough. A Taft or a Cleveland would find "extraordinary" conditions in connection with any job or contract in which a political supporter was interested and the profits upon which might be curtailed by the enforcement of the eight-hour day.

But in spite of these weaknesses, the bill is a long step toward the goal. The private ship-yards that have obtained so many Government contracts will be compelled to concede the eight-hour day not only on Government contracts but on work for private firms and citizens; it would be impossible to run such extensive establishments on two different bases of working hours.

We hope to see the law amended so that its provisions will apply to every day's work done for the nation and to every dollar's worth of materials or supplies paid for out of the public funds.

If your journal is late in reaching you, the delay is caused by a new scheme of the Third Postmaster General, who has ordered it shipped by fast freight A change instead of mail trains. needed We are also required to route the mail sacks according to the railroads upon which are situated the cities and towns to which they are addressed, all of which has hitherto been done by the railway mail service.

The excuse is that this will reduce the cost of handling second-class matter; we believe the purpose is to destroy the circulation of the popular magazines and to so increase the expense of publishing trade union journals that many of them will be abandoned in despair and disgust.

If you ever shipped anything by freight you know how long it takes it to reach its destination. You can imagine how long

it will take the "Painter and Decorator" to reach the Pacific or even the Atlantic Coast on a freight train. The news will be so stale as to have lost all interest and the magazine will be practically valueless.

These facts have been plainly and forcefully thrust upon the attention of the Third Postmaster General, but he persists in his unreasoning and unreasonable policy regardless of all protests.

Congress is in session and this matter will be brought to its attention and President Taft will be urged to remove the present autocrat of the Post Office Department and to substitute some man who is less openly and brutally opposed to the labor movement and to the education of the masses of the people.

If you will write a letter to your representative in the House and to the senators from your State, embodying this complaint against the arbitrary unfairness of the Third Postmaster General, it will help to hasten a change for the better.

The election

Owing to there being one more ballotthat for delegates to conventions of the Building Trades Department-than in previous referendum elections of officers and delegates, to there being so many candidates and to the votes being SO generally distributed among them, the canvass of the returns is taking longer than was anticipated. As we go to press, the Election Board is still busy and the summary of the result cannot be published until next month.

With the exception of that to fill the vacancy caused by the death of former Third Vice-President Healy, the recent election was the first under the laws enacted at Cincinnati and, while the necessity for some changes was shown, the system worked without undue friction. The most serious trouble was due not to the inadequacy of the law or anything unsatisfactory in its provisions but to an error in the make-up of the ballots for delegates to conventions which, after separation from the stubs, were without sufficient means of identification.

When the ballot was prepared and the copy given the printer, the blank line for the insertion of the member's name on the stub was placed about an inch from the upper end and above the title, the perforation being between the two, so that the designation would be on the ballot itself. Later it was suggested that after a portion of the ballots had been detached from a pad it would be difficult to raise the stubs to insert the names of later voters.

To

overcome this objection, the blank line for the member's name was placed below the title of the ballot and the perforation lower still and between it and the names of the candidates. When this change was made, we overlooked the fact that this would leave the title on the stub and that when the ballot was detached it would be without any distinguishing mark other than the names of the candidates.

We realize the uncertainty this created in the minds of the members and the annoyance and additional labor it imposed upon the officers of local unions and members of election boards. The error was a most unfortunate one and we sincerely regret it.

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The election should be held upon one of two specified successive days-Saturday or Sunday. The extended period now allowed affords opportunity for the dissemination of rumors regarding the result in local unions voting early, intended to influence the elec tions in unions voting later and makes possible the visiting of local unions for the same purpose. The only objection to the restriction of the voting period is that it might necessitate the hiring of a special hall. As, ordinarily, referendum elections can not occur oftener than once in two years, this argument has little weight.

There has been some criticism of the requirement that returns be in the mails within twenty-four hours of the close of the polls and in the case of the larger locals it must be admitted that this rule works a hardship. With so many positions to be filled and so many candidates for each, the canvass of the votes must be commenced as soon as the polls close, which compels the Election Board to remain in continuous session for sixteen to twenty-four hours. The purpose of the restriction is to lessen the opportunity for fraud. Perhaps, this end would be equally well served if fortyeight hours were allowed in which to canvass the vote.

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