hat labor can not defend itself against a corporation through means of the unfair ist, are contradictory and unjust.

What does it avail labor to exert its influence in state legislatures and in Congress and succeed in having laws passed which are beneficial to them if a federal judiciary is going to step in and nullify the effect of the law by an injunction or declare it unconstitutional?

My idea in brief is to concentrate our political strength, and let us in unmistakable terms show the federal judiciary and the representatives of corporate wealth in the halls of Congress that they can not treat the representative of 2,000,000 organized working people with contempt and derision and get away with it. Let us show them that labor is aroused and will make itself felt in as emphatic a way as our co-workers did in England.

Frank Duffy.

General Secretary, Carpenters and Joiners of America.

The American people, the merchant, the manufacturer, and the employer, each and all, should demand of the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States, since it claims to severally and collectively represent them, that it place its acts done, pending and proposed in the public scales with like acts of the American Federation of Labor, which is recognized as the representative body of organized labor in this country and to do so without resorting, as it generally does, to language that subtly and purposely conceals the true aim and intent of its acts. Failing to do this it must be looked upon as not only conspiring but ready to assassinate what it assumes to protect. Will it comply?

The real question to be weighed is, I hold, which by natural law and right is the proper force to direct industrial interests in America, for it seems inconsistent with reason to trust to an element that has refused, and still refuses to yield to arbitration when differences arise between employer and employe. It is then the wageworker turns to organized labor for protection, and especially so when he is contemptuously told there is nothing to arbitrate, no one to conciliate, nothing to do but to submit and obey.

Events have established in the minds of

labor and in favor of the employer. With thousands of people this blemish on our judiciary is a sad and serious reflection upon the impartiality of American jurisprudence, in fact it has reached that stage now that confidence is lost in the courts of the land.

"Fairness," said Henry Ward Beecher, "enters into life's transaction as a quality that considers the interest of parties and weighs circumstances alike for all;" or, as Blackstone construes it, as "that action which in commercial transactions, looks to and for those who deal with others that none may suffer by the act of another."

I am ready and willing, when desired, to prove Mr. Van Cleave advised members of said association not to trade with those who sold, made or produced union-made goods. Courts have decided this to constitute "boycott," but have never declared Mr. Van Cleave a "boycotter," notwithstanding he asked a Washington, D. C., court to enjoin others from the liberties he himself enjoyed and performed.

I believe I express a general opinion when I say that all labor will be grateful to our highest tribunal if it decide whether two or more persons engaged in any separate or joint affair of mutual interest may by oral or other means of communication express an unlibelous opinion as to what constitutes 'fair" treatment to them or their friends. Unless such finality is rendered, organized labor and the American people will settle down to the conviction that the man of no means or limited means and wage-earners generally will be justified in refusing to accept, prearranged and preconceived decisions and announce a more emphatic declaration of labor's importance. as a dominant-not domineering-factor in American industries. Labor unions have sought to defend and have defended honest and ambitious workers and saved them from abject industrial slavery, but the people generally, as well as organized labor, have reached the place where they must of necessity, clear the way to industrial peace and prosperity.

The recent cessation of the circulation of money throughout the country was so disastrous as to throw thousands out of employment, others upon meagre pay, and business concerns into receiverships, assignments, bankruptcy and failures utterly beyond recovery.

Did organized labor or its unions cause

all trade unionists that courts have been biased and prejudiced against organized this state of affairs? Were the men of Wall Street, the millionaires, and our billionaire sufferers? Could not any one of them have satisfied any possible desire or need that might have arisen? Were not and are not the merchant, the manufacturer, the employer, and the consumer the real sufferers? Yet who suffered more than the wage-earners of the country? A mere gush of wind will scatter the leaves, but it is the torrents of nature that turn the course of mighty streams, tornadoes that upheave great trees and earthquakes, that pull down mountains, and even nature itself is not always a satisfied element. I am moved by the persuasion of Paul in my belief that capital saw it was weakening its own potency, yet was determined to make its power greater and wider in control. This attempt was a failure. So will be the encroachment of the National Association of Manufacturers upon civil, political, and industrial domains notwithstanding it is assuming dangerous influences over statesmen, Congressmen, the government, and over the manufacturer, merchant, and employer. To no element is this so apparent as organized labor, which confesses to surprise that the people are permitting themselves to be persuaded by the seemingly plausible platitudes of capital and their friendly press that their interests are, through the National Association of Manufacturers, being safely guarded.

What, oh, what does this institution do for the wage-earner-work him from 7 a. m. to 7 p. m., force him to breakfast at 5.30 or 6 a. m., and to supper at 8 or 9 p. m.? Where, oh, where does it find him reasonable hours for rest or recreationbetween night's coming and night's going? Where, oh, where does it encourage the eight hour law-in circulars sent broadcast over the land asking Senators and Representatives to oppose such? I have one that will not do to print as a sign manual of "encouragement." Where, oh, where is its desire to equalize injunctional powers-in processes laid away in Kumler, Kohlsaat, Thompson, Gould et al. courts? Where, oh, where stands child labor in its humanitarian noblesse-under the thumb of the employer? Where, oh, where is its spirit

of arbitration, conciliation, or concessionamong decisions of courts and its expert opinions? Will American Industries answer my anaphora and interrogative?

I assert this National Association of Employers does not represent more than a minimum of American manufacturers and employers; that American Industries utters a downright falsehood and libel against parents when it declares their sons are forced by labor unions into "idleness and crime." I do know where a labor union gave $1,000 to a Young Men's Christian Association to aid it in erecting a building ample enough for its purposes and wants. I know of a labor union that gave over $22,000 for the relief of the citizens of San Francisco when that famous city suffered from earthquake and fire two years ago. I know of a labor union that gave $30,000 to the wives and children of the miners of the anthracite coal fields to provide the necessaries of life during the great coal strike a few years ago. I do know that there is a union printers' home in Colorado Springs, Colo., supported by union printers that their superannuated craftsmen may rest in peace and plenty till the "lights of life go out forever." I know of other homes where weary, worn-out toilers are cared for by union labor through labor unions, and that some of their inmates are in maimed and injured condition because of the irresponsibility of their former employers.

There is no intention to defend or conceal organized labor's errors. It has lived within its constitutional rights and can not be held for those who lose their individuality or take law unto themselves. Is it not a fact, and a shameful one, that the agents of manufacturers' associations have come from private detective agencies to serve as soldiers, guards, and pickets around squads of independent workmen, and to aid them in acts blotting the country's honor, thus forcing union men to defend their own rights, homes, and families.

The question now is, whether trade unions shall remain as muscular and mental monuments of American industry or be destroyed by an employers' associa tion that seeks to relegate the country to servile ages and the wage-earners to the almshouses of the land.