bers who disregard the laws of the Brotherhood, in fact ignore them entirely, and attempt to substitute the individual made law for the laws of the organization; too frequently do we find our members advocating taking drastic action and adopting a mode of procedure which is entirely contrary to the established and prescribed law of orgaization.

This is a dangerous practice. which will work an irreparable injury to the organization and the men who attempt it, and will not only have to be discouraged but condemned if the organization is to exist and prosper and perform the functions for which it was intended; that is the betterment of the railway clerks as a whole.

Where grievances exist we must adjust them under the laws of the Brotherhood; for any of us to pursue antiquated methods which have been discarded years ago, or for us to take the matter in our own hands without first complying with our laws, using all honorable means at our command to bring about a peaceable settlement can only be construed as a hostile movement on our part towards organization and should not be attempted.

A closer investigation of these spasmodic outbreaks, an inclination on the part of our members to exercise a little more common sense and cooler judgment, together with the ability to think seriously before we act, will do away with the chaotic conditions which have existed for a number of months and prevent similar outbreaks in the future. Much may be gained through discipline and obedience to our laws, but there is very little (if anything) to be accomplished by pursuing the opposite course. Let us hope that all our members will realize this, and in future profit by the experiences of the past, and pursue the safe and sane policy of thinking first and acting afterwards, which will be the most successful for them in the end.

BROKEN PROMISES.

The Candidate, after securing pledges of enough votes to elect him went fishing and paid no more attention to the election; the result of which showed that not more than one per cent of those who had pledged themselves to vote for him had done so, and that he was beaten unmercifully. Upon being asked if he had any comment to make on the result of the election, replied: "Yes! I wish to state

that there are more infernal liars to the square inch in this town than there are anywhere else in the U. S."

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This candidate's proposed had but little on the average non-member railway clerk for making promises which they never intended to keep. If all the promises ever made to Organizers and other representatives of the Brotherhood by those whom they were seeking to benefit, had been religiously kept, those making them would today be far advanced in point of salaries and conditions under which they labor.

It frequently happens that an Organizer visits a certain town or city, visits the various offices and receives positive asurances from the individual Clerks that they will attend a meeting and assist to the extent of their membership in the formulation of a local lodge of the Brotherhood. Often the Organizer rents a hall and incurs other expenses upon reliance of the promises of the Clerks only to find when the time for the proposed meeting arrives, that perhaps not more than half a dozen will show up out of a possible hundred or more. When they are asked for the reason for their non-attendance after promising to be present and at least listen to what the Organizer has to say, they invariably have what they presume are reasonable excuses-such as sickness, inclement weather, previous engagements, (which they had forgotten) unexpected calls, etc., etc. The result being that the expenses are indirectly borne by their associate Clerks on other parts of the system by which they are employed, or in other sections of the country, who are trying to assist them.

If the non-member Clerk, when approached, would be candid and tell the Organizer that they will not attend the meetings which he may arrange, if they do not intend to do so, in many cases the useless expense which falls upon the shoulders of their associate Clerks could be avoided.

THE GOOD OLD YEAR-1913.

The year 1913 has passed into historyjust as so many millions of other years have done. It has left behind it its memories-some pleasant, and some otherwise -but taken as a whole, it has been a

When the sun cast its morning rays upon a new year, they shone full upon a grand organization of our craft. An Organization with a far larger membership than it had ever known, more prosperous in every way than at any time in the past and one whose future is so bright that it cannot be dimmed by any adverse conditions that might be imposed. One with achievements to its credit during the good old year which has passed and gone that may well cause a feeling of pride to swell the hearts of every Railway Clerk whose membership has contributed toward making these

achievements possible.

We must not pause-"To Hesitate Is To Be Lost." We have progressed because we have worked. We cannot afford to rest on our oars-to do so means to be swept back down the tortuous stream we have ascended. To entail upon ourselves the tremendous labor of again breasting the relentless current which we have already met and conquered. We cannot stand still-to attempt it, means retrogression. We must advance-advancement means Work! Work! Work!

"Will It Pay"? Is perhaps the most frequent question asked in this commercial age. It arises in our minds when we contemplate the tremendous effort which must be put forth, to overcome the many cbstacles which beset our path. The answer lies in our achievements during this good old year of 1913. In the hundreds of thousands of dollars increase in salaries. In the gradual elimination long hours and adverse conditions. As we contemplate these things, let us not forget that results are always in exact ratio to the numerical strength of the Brotherbood. It cannot secure one-hundred per cent results with a fifty per cent membership.

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Let us also make 1914 "A Good Old Year." Let us double the membership and thereby place ourselves in a position to increase the benefits in the same proportion. This is a simple little thing to do the labor required is apparently great. So it is in the aggregate, but when divided among the loyal Brothers and Sisters, each one's share is insignificant. If each member will resolve to add one

Brotherhood, before the sun sinks to rest on December 31st. next, and lives up to that resolution, the goal will be reached, but if the membership passes the work on to the Grand Officers of the Brotherhood, it, in its aggregate, is beyond their capacity. Twelve long months remain in which to do your part of the work. In which to secure one additional member for the Brotherhood-Your Brotherhood. And remember when you do so, you are strengthening your own hands, and the hands of every other member in the fight for emancipation.

So let us each and every one-with renewed hope, courage and confidence nobly respond to the call and make of 1914, truly, "A Good Old Year."

"ORGANIZE IN SELF DEFENSE."

Unlike every other human institution, the clerk's organization is easy of access to clerks. Creed and nationality play no part in determining its membership. The only qualification is that the applicant be a bona-fide clerk in the service of a railway, steamship or other freight transportation company working for wages. It makes no real difference whether he be a college graduate or only the possessor of a grammar school education the door of this Brotherhood are always open to receive him, provided he is otherwise qualified.

In fact the members of this Brotherhood appropriate money every year to be expended in employing organizers to tell the unorganized clerks of the benefits of organization. Those who by experience have learned and participated in the benefits accruing to the members of this Brotherhood are willing and anxious that those outside the ranks of the clerks should receive equal benefits with them. But the organized clerks cannot confer those benefits upon the unorganized without their co-operation. In the struggle to secure higher wages and better conditions, those who are to be benefited must do their share.

If shorter hours and decent wages are desired by clerks there must be an earnest effort made by the individual clerk in co-operation with his fellow clerks to secure them. The improved conditions of the clerks have not been received as a

gift from their employers. Every cent of increase, every hour taken off the work-day, every improvement in working conditions has been made possible by the clerks refusing to accept anything less. The business of the corporations is to buy labor at the lowest possible price, and it is the business of the clerks' organization to assist its members in selling their services at the highest possible figure. Individual employes cannot bargain on equal terms with large employers of labor. The single clerk is but a unit, and a mighty small one at that, in dealing with the large combinations of corporations-trusts, etc.

The Organized labor movement, the American Federation of labor is a great army of men and women who have learned the value of co-operation. Every paragraph in history tells its own story of the tyranny to which the workers of every age have been subjected. In former times toilers were accorded no rights; they were but the serfs and slaves, and were given no more privileges than the beasts of burden. Tyranny and oppression however, awoke in the workman a rebellious spirit. The first stone laid in the formation of economic liberty was the formation of the guilds. So hemmed in by restrictive regulations and laws, it is improbable that the active spirits in the formation of these guilds had any clear conception of what might be accomplished, save and except that the organizations permitted the close contact of the wealth producers and afforded a safeguard against further oppression.

Slight reference to the past is admissable, but in our day the right of wage earners to make common cause with one another is not directly denied. The legal right is accorded every wage earner to join with his co-workers in an effort to bargain with his employer. Of course the employers are not anxious or willing that their wage earners should organize, and this very fact ought to be sufficient proof that the employers have the best of the bargain. If the employers set the price on the products that wage earners produce, why should not you, the wage earner set the price on the labor that is necessary to the employer? Labor organizations do not want to wait they want more wages for their members, bet

ter conditions and shorter hours-today. Now. The employers will make all kinds of promises for the future, with the hope that the wage-earners will lapse into lethargy and forget about them. The employers have fought in the past and will do so in the future for more profits, and the wage-earners should enter into the spirit of the age, combine with their kind Busiand fight for their interests also. ness of all kinds is organized, no one can truthfully deny this statement. The men and women who do the work should take the tip from the business interests and protect themselves by applying the business man's methods. Every wage-earner should make up his mind that the employers are not going to generally hand him more wages and other betterments unless they are compelled to. The sooner the wage earners get into the fray the sooner they will receive the benefit which is their due. Organization is the talisman. Over two million men and women are members of labor organizations in this country. That this vast number of toilers realize the necessity of co-operation should become conclusive argument to the unorganized that organization is the most effective method of meeting present day conditions. The labor movement is practical.

It does things, the program is not made up of promises to be fulfilled in (maybe) the dim future. It deals with wages, hours and conditions of labor this week, this day, this minute. Organized labor is not organized charity. Every member has to do his or her part, and when achievements are realized the benefits are distributed equally. It is a plain business proposition. The labor organization transacts its business here on earth, and not in the clouds. When members of organized labor want more wages, they tell their employers how much they want. They are not scared by the employers. The same kind of blood flows in the veins of the employers as in the wage-earner. Employers have no divine rights neither has the employes. The labor organizations bargain with the big and small employers. Wage earners want a square deal and the only way to get it is to get together in a labor organization and demand itthen fight for it. The membership of the labor unions is made up of men and women who know what their rights are

and are not afraid to fight in defense of them. Join the Organization of your craft-the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, be a fighter.

TAKING STOCK.

In these days of questioning and testing the worth of present institutions, and of search for better ways, the labor organizations, too, feel the impact of the prevailing desire to "take stock." Though there has been many criticisms of the labor movement, 'though it has been pronounced too conservative, too narrow, too inflexible, too radical, by those who know it has never been pronounced ineffective.

This great movement that we are engaged in is not made up of talk alone, but it is founded upon deeds, deeds which have no hidden or uncertain meaning. It is the real force which secures for the wage earner one more hour from the day's toil-an hour that can be spent in the home, in study in the world's uplift work, or in recreation. Organization has made it possible for the wage earner to acquire more money to spend for food or clothing, insures better standards of living and working conditions.

We must not overlook the fact that organization is nothing more nor less than what we make it. If the individual members are indifferent or luke-warm they are by their own actions retarding the whole movement and delaying the time when all the members shall receive greater benefits. Whereas, on the other hand, if each member of the organization conscientiously performs his whole duty, puts his heart, mind and physical energy into the movement, the organization becomes a power for good in the interest of those who comprise it, and is recognized by employers as a force that even they cannot disregard. Organization is the key to success and brings forth in crystalized form the best thoughts, activities and hopes of the wage earner; it represents the aggregate expressions of discontent of the workers under existing economic, social and political misrule. The labor movement is simply what the wage earners are, and can be made exactly what they please to make it, active or sleepy, keen or dull, narrow or broad gauged, just as the members are intellectual or otherwise. Representing as they may either of these alternatives, the labor unions are the best form of organization for the toilers to protect their present interests, as well as to work out

their salvation from all wrong. What really counts is constructive, effective, persistent work; not excitement, nor intermittent efforts, emotionalism or violence. This is the only way to achieve justice or relief from the many ills which now confront us, every member of this organization is expected to do his full duty to the organization, his fellow workers and himself, by advocating the principles for which we stand as a successful organization in the interest of our membership and to the benefit of the labor movement in general. Now is the opportune time for all of us to teach and practice that which we believe in"Organization."

"THE UNION MAN WITH AN EXCUSE."

There are some strikes that would be settled in short order but for the union man with an excuse. He is always a tougher proposition to contend with than the scab, for it is accepted as a matter of course that the latter will be against the union and everything connected with it; whereas the man with an excuse pays his dues, carries a paid up union card, and what is worse, "he talks," he always hands you out what seems to him a plausible explanation why he chews non-union tobacco, and smokes tuberculosis germ cigars, why he patronizes hotels and boarding houses that are on the unfair list, and a hundred and one other things that are rank treason to UNIONISM.

The union man with an excuse makes it infinitely harder to win a strike; his patronage encourages unfair hotel and boarding house keepers, unfair managers of places of amusements and unfair employers and manufacturers to hold out longer than they otherwise would, it leaves the impression at least that labor is divided, and as a result of that impression the corporations usually prolong a struggle and make a more determined fight than they otherwise would.

The woods are full of those union men with an excuse, men who hold union cards and receive the union rate of wages that the union has been able to secure for them, because in their fight for better conditions the majority of union men in other trades backed them up instead of looking around for an excuse to go back on them. They spend money earned under union conditions for scab tobacco and cigars, patronize unfair hotels and

boarding houses, and pay out their union earned money to bartenders, who have no use for the union and who don't wear a blue button. They patronize unfair theatres and other places of amusement, because they have the excuse that some other union man goes there. They always forget to see that the union label is on their shoes and clothes and in their hats, but they put up a mighty holler for their own label and boast of what good union men they are.

If it were possible to induce the union man with an excuse to get out of the union and join the non-union element to which he naturally and rightfully belongs, the organized labor movement would be immeasurably stronger, strikes and lockouts would be more quickly won and at less cost, and our opponents would take a good deal more stock in us. The organized labor movement has no use or place for the union man with an excuse. what a barnacle is to a ship a hanger on that reduces speed, prevents progress, and plays directly into the hands of the employer. The union man with an excuse is a detriment to the movement and a fellow who is altogether out of place.

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A NATURAL TENDENCY. There is a natural tendency to look at the success of the successful man and not to the methods he employs or how he won his success, whether it be by fair means or underhand methods the inclination to look up to him seems to be the same. It is human to cater to those who have much because of an inward thought that those with an abundance of this world's goods might extend favors that those who have not been successful could not. The newspapers, at least a great many of them, in expressing opinions intended to bias public sentiment are very likely to first estimate what financial influence it will have on the wealthy who buy advertising space, and can extend other favors. 30, we must estimate the actuating cause if we are to get a correct view of the apparent bias in many opinions expressed which are parently intended to bias public opinion but, in fact, are written to please the source from which the writer assumes he can get the greatest sustenance.

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Newspapers will publish dispatches relative to a break in the relations of the

employer and employee, but seldom, if ever, discuss the merits of the controversy for fear they will offend the Capitalists' side of the question, and very few newspapers will publish a statement of the controversy from the laborer's standpoint. So, the cause of the disagreement is always or nearly always from the employers viewpoint, the public being left to absorb the effect which may seem to corroborate the employer's statement, a serious handicap to organized labor, which seldom gets into trouble with an employer when a valid reason cannot be given. But we are dealing with human affairs in which the dollars play queer pranks with morals, and organized labor, the product of absolute necessity, if it gets a reasonable share of the dollars must stand steadfast shoulder to shoulder, with the members sufficiently versed in its principles to be able to defend its demands if we are to educate the public to the need of our existence, and necessity of the things we stand reau to make sacrifice to obtain.

There are too many members who just belong to the labor movement and who keep just at the edge of an infraction of law that would suspend them, a load to be carried by every labor organization, but when they get into trouble they want ten times as much done for them as a good working persistent member would ask.

It may be too much to expect, but we will express the hope that the true value of this Brotherhood to every member may be recognized by all and especially those who are members from policy rather than real interest and that the New Year may find them all standing up to the line of duty to the Brotherhood with a full realization that their own personal interests are involved, for a weakness means the dwarfing of the conditions which have come through years of earnest effort of those loyal and true to the principles of the organization, and who are always ready to make sacrifices to preserve its usefulness and uphold its principles.

PENNY-WISE AND POUND-FOOLISH. The I. W. W. and those who believe that industrial unionism is the logical solution of labors problems, certainly owe a debt of gratitude to many of those who