N 1907 the Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, known as the Lemieux Act, was enacted after a coal strike in the mines of Alberta. Public attention had been directed to the discomforts of interference with the fuel supply; the "rights of the public" were urged as paramount. The Lemieux Act was adopted to prevent similar interference in the future. The act was enacted for the purpose of compelling industrial peace, and it ignored the fundamental causes that result in strikes, lockouts and industrial unrest.

When the law was adopted those who understood pointed out the grave dangers it portended to the workers. They were justifiably apprehensive that under the law the freedom of the workers to protect themselves and to promote their best interests would be seriously restricted and jeopardized; the majority of the workers did not see the dangers at first, but slowly, as different groups of workers have had practical experience with the workings of the law, and have seen how it has been applied to restrict their freedom and to interfere with movements for better conditions of life and work, there has been an increasing sentiment against the act and a more general determination to secure its repeal. As year after year the matter has been discussed in the Canadian Trades and Labor Congress, opposition to the act has been voiced, but this sentiment did not secure sufficient strength to result in the Congress taking action condemning the law and asking for its repeal until the act had, through the exercise of discretionary power on the part of the Government, been extended to a vastly increased number of workers.

As a war measure the Lemieux Act had been extended to apply to all workers in munition factories. This amendment of legislation by the executive authorities resulted in a greatly increased number of wage-earners finding out from actual experience how the act operated, and thereby becoming convinced that the law was contrary not only to their own best interests, but to the best concepts of freedom for all the people of the Dominion.

The Calgary local union of the International Association of Machinists introduced an amendment in that Congress denouncing the Lemieux Act in its entirety. This resolution, together with several other motions dealing with the same subject, brought the Lemieux Act before the Dominion Congress and resulted in an intense

ly interesting debate. In the course of the debate the speakers related their experi-, ences with the Industrial Disputes Act which determined them to demand the repeal of the law.

One of the most recent experiences was that of the Thetford asbestos miners. These miners perform a valuable service to their government in the time of war, as is shown by the fact that there are proportionately more fatalities in the open pits in which they work than in the war trenches. Although the productiveness of these mines has increased vastly, yet when the miners last summer asked for an increase in wages they were refused.

In accord with the procedure specified by the Lemieux Act, the miners applied to the Minister of Labor for a Conciliation Board. Mr. Thomas H. Crothers, who occupies that office, found that the owners of the five mines could not or would not agree upon the appointment of their representative on the board. Because of this condition Mr. Crothers refused to appoint a Conciliation Board, but appointed a Royal Commission to investigate and report to the Government. The commission's award was largely in accord with the men's demands, but the operators refused to accept it. The miners then struck.

It was stated on the floor of the Congress that the Dominion Government consented to the release of a number of interned aliens from the detention camp at Spirit Lake to replace the asbestos strikers when it became evident that they were likely to succeed. The Government thus went into the strike-breaking business under the Lemieux Act for the purpose of defeating the asbestos miners in their demand for a restoration of their wages, which had been reduced.

This action on the part of the Canadian Government brings to mind a similar policy followed by the Government of New South Wales in the case of a strike among the gas workers. The head of the Government issued a proclamation in which he called upon the citizens of Sidney to serve the public interest by aiding the Government to "keep order," and to secure the gas supply for the public. The citizens, the so-called disinterested third party or the public, responded to the call of the premier and volunteered as strikebreakers. Among them was the mayor of the city, a number of influential citizens, and students, who took turns, at the work of stokers.

In discussing the strike of the asbestos miners in the Dominion Trade and Labor Congress, Delegate Rigg, of Winnipeg, made the following statement:

These miners were told it would be a criminal offense to strike. This was the attitude towards the men at first. Then their attitude switched on the ground that because the five companies couldn't agree on one man to represent them, therefore no board could be granted. They call it a criminal offense to strike and yet when the companies refuse to select one man the department lies down.

These interned aliens were sent to take the places of the men to intimidate them. They were to get $2 a day, but we are told that some of the envelopes contained nothing, and others bills showing the men had eaten up what they earned, and also that they owed the company $6.20 as well.

Another delegate, Mr. Fred Bancroft, made the following statement:

My belief is that the act has been operated to the advantage of the employers. It was also well known that the present Government has no intention of repealing it. The Government unhesitatingly told Labor that it would not insert the fair-wage clause in munitions contracts. The act is not only faulty in many ways, but is positively rotten.

The action of the Canadian Trades and Labor Congress, after an experience of over nine years with the act, expressing its mature and deliberate judgment that the fun

damental principles contained therein are subversive of the best interests of the wageearners, is of great interest to the wageearners and the citizens of the United States. It is of particular interest and importance to the wage-earners and citizens: of Colorado. Colorado wage-earners, after experience with a similar act within a period of little more than a year, have reached an identical conclusion with that of the Canadian Trades and Labor Congress.

Wherever any legislation has been enacted which establishes 'compulsory institutions to abolish strikes and industrial dis turbances, the legislation has always proved to be a failure. Not only do such laws fail to abolish strikes, but they encourage and generate a spirit that is not compatible with free institutions, and are subversive of the very spirit of liberty and democracy.

Industrial peace lies in a different di

rection.

Industrial peace can not be secured by any superficial agency grafted upon present conditions of industrial injustice.

The Organized Labor movement is doing more to secure industrial peace, to abolish injustice and industrial wrongs, than any other organization.

The way to greater progress lies through increasing the effectiveness of the Organized Labor movement.

If some philanthropic or "uplift" organization, some association for improving something or other, some Civic Federation, Rockefeller, Carnegie or Sage "foundation" had added ten years to the lives of 50,000 people, established a home for the sick and the aged, raised wages, shortened hours, paid out a million for old age pensions and maintained a great system of education, how the plaudits of such an achievement would ring through the columns of the press. All these things the typos have done, and here is the story of how they did it.

HE International Typographical Union has used the stones in its path to build steps to success. In many industries union men fought machine. methods and were crushed. When Mergenthaler made a machine whose steel organs unite in one mechanism the trades of compositor, caster and distributor of type the printers did not try to block progress with their bodies. They captured that machine and made it shorten the day's work.

They made a union organizer of the very angel of death and disease by using the

threat of lead-poisoning and tuberculosis to make sick and death benefits attractive. Then they took away some of death's ter rors, and extended the lives of union printers beyond the average that rules in what were once called more healthful trades. For the tuberculosis-threatened victim the union camp and solarium in Colorado has become a powerful attraction to membership. **

When the the bosses built trade schools to raise up "rats" (the printers'. term for "scabs") to eat the life out of the union, a correspondence school was established so good that the educational world looks upon it as a model.

Employers hired women to come at low wages, and tried to exploit sex-antagonism. Only a few of the typos were caught and made remarks about "woman's place is 'in the home." Then the sister worker was' taken right into the union and equal pay for equal work firmly insisted upon. Women,

as workers, ceased to be especially attractive to employers and the number of them in the trade is now small. But those who remain share all the burdens and all the benefits of the organization.

But labor does not organize simply to spend wisely, through benefits, the money of its members. The first function of a union is to add to the income and shorten the hours of labor of its members. Of the two, shortening the hours is much the more important.

The big conflict of the age of wages is to shorten the day's work. Using modern mechanisms the best paid workers produce their wages in far less time than any union has yet set as the standard of a "fair day's work." The shorter day is the corner stone and the whole foundation of every sort of social progress. Without fewer hours of labor there is no opportunity for education, culture, amusement or any of the things that the advisers of the worker assure him are "good for him."

Man's work is not yet his play. It will be some time. But not while idlers direct the work and take a profit. Until the day of joyful, constructive, self-expressive work of which William Morris was the prophet has arrived, progress is measured by the minutes clipped from bossed and exploited labor and added to the time controlled and used by the worker.

The long work day is the first line of defense of the exploiter. All that lies beyond is out of the reach of labor until this line is carried. Therefore the fiercest battles of the class war have been fought for this position. The International Typographical Union's fight for an eight hour day was one of the most important conflicts waged at this point. In duration of fighting, sacrifices made, men involved, solidarity maintained, money expended and fullness of victory it stands without a parallel. Other union struggles have equaled this one in some of these features, but none compare in all combined.

The vision of the eight hour day was before the printers a half century before it became reality. In 1865 some daring dreamer offered a resolution to the national convention stipulating that "on and after May 1, 1866, eight hours shall constitute a day's work, and subordinate unions were requested to so amend their constitutions and scale of prices." The ten hour day was then the rule. But the convention took the proposal seriously and instructed the delegates to put the matter before their respective unions and receive instructions for the next convention. Evidentlq the

membership did not think the proposal practical for no reference was made to it at the next convention.

When next a shorter day is proposed, although it is in the midst of the great eight-hour movement of 1887, there was only an ineffectual effort for nine hours. With the enthusiastic thoughtlessness of labor in that year, the convention of 1887 confidently fixed Nov. 1, 1887, as the date when the nine hour day should begin, and then adjourned in simple faith that providence would bring a victory.

The union officials, doubtless feeling that providence might need a little help, tried to raise a strike fund. The local unions were unwilling to collect any assessments. "Therefore," President William Aimison reported to the next convention, "as the time approached for the enforcement of the law, a change came over the spirit of their dreams. The fact stared them in the face that they should have made haste slowly; that they were not, as yet, prepared for the contest, either in a financial or a business sense; and that this movement should be thoroughly ventilated and studied in all its phases before action was taken."

To save all possible from the wreck of battle the national officials levied an assessment of $1 per member, although freely granting their lack of authority or power to punish refusal of payment. This fund saved the organization from any important losses, and even made it possible to gather in a few gains, but no general conquest of a nine hour day was attempted.

The union learned its lesson. Never again did it enter a battle without organization and funds. It became the original "preparedness" union in the labor warfare.

When next it asked for a nine hour day it was ready to back up its demand. For ten years the gospel of shorter hours, the certainty of a hard fight and the need of a full treasury were preached to the members of the typographical union. When the time set for battle arrived the reserve stock of ammunition was piled so high that it was the only thing in sight from the employers' line of vision, and the members were so full of fight they were almost afraid of themselves. Then the employers, like Davy Crockett's famous coon, came down without waiting to be shot. A committee from the United Typothetae, the employers' organization, visited the Typographical Union convention of 1898 and while the delegates were drawing up the declaration of war a treaty of peace was

signed granting the nine and one-half hour day almost immediately and the nine hour day one year later.

In 1899 the Shorter Workday Committee reported that 24,967 out of a membership of 27,435 were working nine hours per day. The remaining nine per cent. were mostly members of small widely scattered unions. As hours went down wages went up. The committee reports that "at the same time seven unions secured an increase of wages while reducing hours."

This gain came while the machine was revolutionizing the trade. For more than fifty years inventors had been filling the shelves of the patent office with models of machines designed to take the place of the compositor's fingers and brain. Millions of dollars were lost in an effort to make these machines work. The bankruptcy of Mark Twain, so pitiful personally even though so fruitful to literature, was caused by his effort to emulate his own Col. Sellers in the promotion of a type-setting machine. By 1890 Mergenthaler's linotype had been proven a mechanical and commercial success. The next ten years brought a revolution in the type-setting branch of the printers' trade.

A machine that transforms the technique of a trade is like a new and powerful explosive controlled by one of two hostile armies. Heretofore ownership of the machine has given this advantage in the industrial battle to the employer. That the typos were able to make this machine their ally is an example of Napoleonic strategy in the class war.

The plan of battle was outlined at the Boston convention in 1891. The committee "appointed to consider the need of additional legislation in the matter of type-setting machines" reported that:

"We are of the opinion that the principal factor in the economy operation of type-setting machinery is the employment of highly skilled and intelligent labor, and that this is to be found in the ranks of the union."

The committee sketched a plan to insure control of the machines by union members and insisted that "the work upon machines, being of a more exhausting character, both physically and mentally, than hand composition, that the hours of labor upon them be reduced to the lowest possible number-eight hours being the maximum."

The standard principle of all good military strategy-anticipate the enemy's offensive-is here followed. Hitherto unions had objected to new and revolutionary machines and employers had accompanied

their introduction with an increase of hours. Now the union proposed to run all the machines and make them a means of shortening the working day.

By the time the machine was well established one hour had been clipped from the day and the union controlled the operation of the machines. In 1901 President Lynch could say in his annual report:

"What organization has gone through such an industrial revolution as has ours and lived? What labor union has so successfully shortened the hours, aye, and continued the movement, practically without friction? Machinery was introduced so rapidly that we scarce could comprehend the import of the new development, yet, under a wise and conservative leadership, we controlled the modern engine that was destined to assist in giving mental light to the world, and not only that, but we made it a vehicle for the movement for shorter hours and higher wages. A statistical scale report, recently issued, shows that out of a total number of machines reported -4,975-4,098 are in strictly union offices, while nearly half of the balance, it may safely be asserted, are operated by members of the International Typographical Union."

Next came the real fight. The convention of 1902 passed a resolution "That the executive council of the International Typographical Union and the first vicepresident are directed to act as a committee for the purpose of devising and putting into effect plans for the establishment of an eight hour day throughout the jurisdiction of the International Typographical Union at as early a date as practicable."

If the union looked for a repetition of its easy conquest of the nine hour day it certainly received a shock. The United Typothetae met the union's demand on the way with a resolution declaring its opposition to any reduction of the fifty-four hour week and its intention to resist any attempt on the part of the International Typographical Union to reduce the hours of labor.

This meant war. Both sides began mobilization. As the union already had the eight hour day in most newspaper offices, the fight centered on book and job offices. A series of sporadic attacks captured many of these within the next two years. On the eve of battle, in 1905, it was estimated that 25,000 out of a total membership of 46,734 worked only eight hours per day. But all such sallies into the enemy's trenches left the main defenses untouched. It was necessary to bring up the heavy artillery.

4

The fight for eight hours was overwhelmingly endorsed by a referendum vote of the membership. This referendum provided that "on Jan. 1, 1906, the eight hour day shall become effective in all union establishments." It also provided for the first war-tax of one-half of one per cent. on all moneys earned.

A campaign of education deluged the membership with arguments for shorter hours. A great recruiting campaign increased the membership and reduced the number of possible traitors. The aid of the American Federation of Labor was solicited and its pledge of assistance secured.

To this threat of war the Typothetae responded with a similar preparation. It held mass meetings of employers in the principal cities and flooded the public with warnings of the effects of an eight hour day. The president of the Typothetae was invited to attend the union convention at Toronto in 1905. He accepted the invitation and told the delegates:

"It would be ruinous to undertake to put the printing offices on an eight hour basis in the immediate future."

He went on to use every argument employers have ever made against an eight

hour day. "You don't need it. We can't give it. We will fight." The first two of these statements have been proven false every time they have been tested. The other is hardly convincing.

To the defiant stand of the employers the eight hour committee of the union, with Max S. Hayes as chairman, responded by an elaborate report outlining the campaign and concluding with this declaration of independence:

"We want the eight hour day because we are convinced that it suffices for the work there is to do, the work that is to be done, the demand of society for the product of the press. We propose to sell the employer eight hours out of the twentyfour, and we will do what we please with the remaining sixteen."

For such a battle it was plainly evident that the war-tax of one-half of one per cent. a month would be much too small. As the battle approached the tax grew heavier. From Nov. 6 to Dec. 30, 1905, fifty cents per member was collected weekly. Yet as the date set for the beginning of the eight hour day, January 1, 1906, came nearer the amount on hand still looked pitifully inadequate to the tremendous conflict that now was seen to be inevitable. By an overwhelming majority the membership ordered itself to pay 10 per cent. of its wages into the strike fund. This war-tax began the day the strike came.

Within the next eight months the union raised and dispensed $1,563,729.10. Unreported local funds estimated at more than $200,000 were raised and expended during the same period. The membership met this tax, as heavy as any government has dared impose in the face of an enemy, with such solidarity that but 1,574 members were lost from the 46,734 reported the previous year.

While the fight was hottest the San Francisco earthquake came. This hardpressed army of printers never hesitated in taking from their funds $13,358 for the immediate relief of their members in the stricken city.

The struggle by this time had developed into a "trench warfare" of exhaustion. Few strikes that reach this stage end in victories for labor. In an endurance test capital's long purse can match dollars against men until men die and surrender while dollars still remain.

When the strain was hardest the finanical panic of 1907 broke over the nation Few strikes were won that year. Many a strong union found it hard to hold victories gained in far better years. But the printers never wavered. All that dark year the