WESTERN UNION COMMISSIONS. TH HE question of adequate commissions on Western Union business handled, is one that has been made the subject of discussion by the entire membership, as well as a matter of negotiation by general committees for many years past, but one which has never been satisfactorily settled. The subject has received consideration at many meetings of general chairmen and was given earnest consideration at the last meeting of the general chairmen and general secretaries for the Middle West and Northwest, held in St. Louis on September 7th and 8th, and as a result of their deliberations on the subject, the following resolution was adopted, which it is hoped will pave the way for some uniform action on this much-mooted question: WHEREAS, The railroad telegraphers on certain railroads receive no commission o:1 Western Union business handled by them, and on other roads receive a small commission on a portion of the business handled; and WHEREAS, The practice of promiscuously issuing "collect" cards by the Western Union Telegraph Company has resulted in reducing the commissions paid railroad telegraphers on Western Union business to such an extent as to produce no adequate returns for the service rendered, even where commissions are paid; and WHEREAS, A commission of at least 10 per cent on all Western Union business handled would be a very meagre allowance for this service; and WHEREAS, All efforts put forth in the past by general committees to satisfactorily adjust this matter have been unsuccessful; therefore be it Resolved, That this meeting of general chairmen and general secretaries of roads in the Middle West and Northwest record our dissatisfaction with existing conditions in connection with the handling of Western Union business and our firm conviction that railroad telegraphers required to handle this business should receive a commission of at least 10 per cent on all business handled; and be it further Resolved, That in order to finally dispose of this question, which has been a matter of discussion and negotiation for many years past, that the chairman of this meeting be instructed to communicate with the chairman of each general committee in the United States, on or before November 15th, 1914, for the purpose of endeavoring to arrange uniform and simultaneous action on the matter of Western Union commissions. THE COMMERCIAL TELEGRAPHERS' (By S. J. KONEN KAMP, International T HE Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America has made very satisfactory progress during the past year and has commenced the thirteenth year of its existence with the largest membership since 1907, a membership that is steadily growing in numbers and enthusiasm. Its concrete achievements are to be found in the increased wage-scales obtained during the year for the telegraphers employed by the United Press Association and the International News Service, which now represent the highest scale paid telegraphers in over thirty years. The commercial telegraphers were among the pioneers in the labor movement of this country. Their first union, the National Telegraphic Union, was organized in the latter part of 1863. It had branches from New York to San Francisco. This union was succeeded by the Telegraphers' Protective League in 1868, a militant organization that struck in 1870 against a reduction in wages and lost. Numerous efforts were made to reorganize, but not until 1882 was another strong organization formed. This was the Brotherhood of Telegraphers of the United States and Canada. Wages were being reduced and had been declining from 1870 to 1883, the reductions ranging from 20 to 40 per cent of the going wage. The brotherhood demanded a restoration of wages by asking for a 15 per cent increase in 1883. A strike was declared against the Western Union Telegraph Company and lost. Numerous unions were started in the following years up to 1902, and two efforts to amalgamate with the Order of Railroad Telegraphers were rejected by that organization during the nineties. In 1902 the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America was organized and is the strongest, longest lived and most effective organization achieved during the fifty-year struggle of the craft for the right to organize. It has not only survived a general strike which was lost in 1907, but has gained membership steadily since that time. During the past three years it has had to combat one of the most vicious campaigns upon the part of a corporation to destroy a labor union ever recorded, yet during this fight the membership has continued to in crease. The Commercial Telegraphers' Journal recently published an expose in serial form showing how the Western Union Telegraph Company was trying to destroy our union and how thousands of dollars per annum were being spent for this purpose. Facsimiles of correspondence between officials of the company relating to this campaign were printed and confessions of spotters were published implicating the vice-president and general manager of the company as well as minor officials in criminal acts in this conspiracy, and several of those involved are now under arrest and indictment in Chicago, Ill., for crimes committed in connection therewith. One of these is R. M. Shoemaker, chief special agent of the Western Union, who spent $50,000 in less than a year trying to break up the C. T. U. A The Postal Telegraph Company is united with the Western Union in its opposition to all unions and any one suspected of belonging to a labor organization is barred from employment by both companies and blacklisted. Blacklisting by one telegraph company prevents employment by the other. Inasmuch as these two companies employ nearly 90 per cent of the persons eligible to membership in this union, the work of organization is slow. Organization work is also more difficult than in most other trades where there is a large number of employers. To make a proper comparison of conditions we must allow but two employers to a given trade, both controlling employment in every city in the country, both hostile to organized labor and the workers compelled to meet these same employers wherever they may go. If the members of other trades will figure their two greatest enemies and imagine these two concerns in full possession of the jobs from coast to coast, their position will be analogous with that of the union commercial telegrapher. This union represents the workers of a highly specialized trade with the Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies controlling nearly 90 per cent of the jobs. The policy of these companies today is the same policy that has confronted the telegraphers for fifty years. As a result the wages paid commercial telegraphers are lower today than they were forty years ago, although the cost of living has constantly increased. The percentage of telegraphers receiving the maximum of $100 in New York and Chicago is less than 3 per cent. The minimum wage in 1870 was upwards of $50 per month, while today it is $30 or less. There has been no reduction in working hours in over thirty years. Some increases in wages have been gained from time to time, but these are due entirely to the activity of the union. Working conditions for telegraphers are better in Canada than in the United States, due to the fact that collective bargaining is agreed to by the Canadian telegraph companies, except the Western Union. As a result wages are higher in Canada than in the United States, except for the maritime provinces where the Western Union holds sway. Canada also furnishes a haven for the blacklisted members of our union who are driven out of the country from time to time by the Western Union and Postal. The wireless telegraph field is being exploited through the lure of the sea and the romantic stories told of wireless heroes. As a result their wage-scale is from $25 to $35 per month with a possible attainment of $60 per month after seven years' service. At the Detroit convention of the union, held in June last, the officers were in The structed that at any time the Western Union and Postal shall lock out our members in any city, the officers shall do all in their power to protect the membership, even to the extent of declaring a strike. convention also endorsed the proposition for government ownership of telegraphs and telephones as proposed by Congressman Lewis, namely, to take over the trunk telephone lines for long distance telephone and telegraph work in competition with the telegraph companies. We believe that the success of the parcel post can be duplicated in the telegraph field. The commercial telegraphers understand their economic position and we will rapidly forge to the front once the opposition is broken down. We are growing steadily and every year our membership shows an increase. Concessions are gained from time to time and we are plodding along knowing that we are going to win in the end. T THE CLAYTON ANTI-TRUST BILL. HE Clayton Anti-Trust Bill was passed by the United States Senate on Wednesday afternoon, September 2d, by a vote of forty-seven to seventeen, which bill was previously passed by the House. The Senate made several amendments, and declared in the strongest language possible for Labor's contention that there is a difference between persons and things. By a unanimous vote it was agreed to amend the bill to read: "The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce." The House provision dealing with picketing was stricken out by the Senate Committee, with the understanding that it would permit a trespass. It was reinserted in the bill on motion of Senator Cummins on the Senate floor with the consent of the Senate Committee, in an altered form, which permits workers to be at any place where they have a lawful right to be. Both branches of the national legislature agree that nothing in the anti-trust law shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural or horticultural organizations, nor can these organizations or members be held to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under the anti-trust laws. To emphasize their views on the question of labor's rights, the Senate adds: "Nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States." The bill marks the end of so-called "labor injunctions," which have been issued on the theory that if workers quit their employment or induce others to quit, they can be restrained, because such actions "injures property." No injunction shall be issued in a labor dispute unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury, for which there is no adequate remedy at law. During the discussion of this bill in the Senate, many stirring speeches were made. United States Senator Hughes, a member of the labor group, has attracted much attention because of the masterful manner in which he has conducted himself in running debates with opponents of the sections and his ability in presenting and defending the principles of trade unionism. United States Senator Cummins, of Iowa, has also been an earnest advocate of what are known as the "Labor Sections" in that bill, and was introducer of Section 7, which is one of the most important sections of the bill. The following excerpts are taken from the speeches of Senators Hughes and Cummins on the bill: BY SENATOR HUGHES. While we are speaking of class legislation, where could we find a more beautiful illustration of the ease with which class legislation is accepted when certain powerful interests are involved than the spectacle exhibited in this body the other day, when a statutory monopoly was permitted to continue its exactions, permitted to continue to mulct the American people for carrying their goods, even in the face of a great exigency, a great war emergency? Here was a little selected class of American citizens who have the privilege of operating vessels plying from port to port in the United States, while an American ship, flying the American flag, sailing from the port of Liverpool, for example, to the port of New York and discharging her cargo there can not pick up another cargo at the port of New York and carry it to a Gulf port in order to pay its expenses for that part of the trip, but must confine its operations to American commerce transported abroad. Why? Because if it were permitted to engage in the coastwise trade it would interfere with the privilege of a class of American citizens who own and operate coastwise ships and a class of American citizens who build those ships for those men to own and operate. We are under no illusion over here. There is not a State in the Union, so far as I know, that has an act of this kind, or one so liberal as this. (English trades dispute act.) We know that it is not even attempted here to come within miles of it, and it is known that even if we did we still would leave these men subject to the various jurisdictions in which they live and operate. No; we prate about the American workmen in our political platforms, and we excuse the system of tariff robbery on the ground that the robbers are going to hand their plunder down to the workers. There is only one way in which they can be compelled to hand it down; there is only one weapon that will permit an American workman to plunge his hand into the employer's pocket and get his share of the loot that has been wrung from the American people, and that is the strike. One of these conspiracies, one of these combinations and agreements that may be in restraint of trade is the only weapon he has had, but you have given his employers themselves many; you have permitted them to capture this loot and you have said you have done so on behalf of these American workmen. That is what you said; your platforms reek with it; there is not a platform that you have adopted for the past twenty-five or thirty years that does not say that. You pride yourselves upon being class legislators. You have two classes-employers and employes. You give the employers the right to loot and plunder, and you say we do so because we know they will pass it down. As the present Secretary of State one time said, you have appointed the employers trustees, you have made them executors or administrators, but you have not asked them to give bond. BY SENATOR CUMMINS. Labor organizations brought together for the purpose of enhancing or advancing wages, bettering the conditions of labor or lessening the hours of labor, can not in the very nature of things be a restraint of trade or commerce. Then, why should not these workingmen and workingwomen combine, associate themselves together, in order that their wages may be increased and the conditions under which their labor is performed may be bettered? There is no danger, Mr. President, that the workingman or the workingwoman will ever receive more than an adequate compensation for the labor performed. There is a potential competition always confronting wageworkers that will inevitably reduce the compensation far below the point at which it should in equity and in good conscience rest. These men and women grow hungry, and they must eat; they must clothe themselves; they must support their families, and these necessities compel them to work at whatsoever wages they may be able to secure. Idleness for any great length of time and among any great proportion of them is absolutely unthinkable and impossible. For these reasons, Mr. President, I have never been one of those who have had any fear of combination among wageworkers. I believe that it ought to be the policy of this government to encourage such combination and association. I believe we ought to lend a helping hand to their efforts to advance their condition in life, knowing that with all their energy and with all the assistance we can give them they will never be advanced in fortune or in property be yond the point necessary for comfort and happiness. This is the beginning, I think, of all consideration of this subject. I do not see how any one can investigate it without first learning and pondering upon the facts that I have so meagerly stated. Let us take the next step. We have been debating this bill, and I have heard the subject debated a thousand times, upon the hypothesis that the labor of a human being is of the same quality and order as a bale of cotton, a barrel of flour, or a bushel of corn. I repudiate the parallel and the comparison. It is because we have been in the habit of thinking of labor as a commodity that we have fallen into many mistakes which now impair and mar, I think, both legisla tion and judicial opinion. The labor of a human being, whether it be of the mind or of the hand, is not a commodity. While we are in the habit, I know, of saying that a workingman has nothing to sell but his labor, it is a confusion in thought and in terms. Labor is not a commodity, it is not an article of commerce, and when the Constitution of the United States gave to Congress the authority to regulate commerce among the States, it did not give it the right to regulate labor, the disposition of the energy of the human being. If we would begin as we ought to begin, with the understanding that the power of a human being to work, to produce something, is not a commodity or a subject of commerce, we would reach a saner and better conclusion than we have heretofore announced. Another important speech made on the bill was that of United States Senator Ashurst, of Arizona. He declared that it was useless to disguise, dodge or evade the one great question that calls for settlement-the exemption of trade unions from trust classification. The Arizona legislator insisted that he had found no record to sustain the position of contrary-minded people, and read at length excerpts from the utterances of Senators Sherman, George, Hoar, Teller, and others who |