to violence. The American labor movement and its men are loyal Americans and seek to obtain the abolition of wrongs and the attainment of their rights within the law. Organized labor of America has no desire to condone the crimes of the McNamaras. It joins in the satisfaction that the majesty of the law and justice has been maintained and the culprits commensurately punished for their crime. And yet it is an awful commentary upon existing conditions when any one man, among all of the million of workers, can bring himself to the frame of mind that the only means to secure justice for labor is in violence, outrage, and murder. It is cruelly unjust to hold the men of the labor movement, either legally or morally, responsible for the crime of an individual member. No such moral code or legal responsibility is placed upon any other association of men in our country. In so far as we have the right to speak, in the name of organized labor, we welcome any investigation which either Federal or State courts may undertake. The sessions of the conventions of the American Federation of Labor are held with open doors that all may see and hear what is being said and done. The books, accounts, and correspondence of the American Federation of Labor are open to any competent authority, who may desire to make a study or an investigation of them. Will the National Manufacturers' Association, the Erectors' Association, and the detective agencies extend the same privilege for public investigation and examination of their books and correspondence? When we were selected as a Committee on Ways and Means to raise and dispense funds for the defense of the McNamaras and the prosecution of the kidnappers, we were fully impressed with the innocence of the accused men. That impression was strengthened by their written and oral protestations of innocence. We here and now, individually and collectively, declare that the first knowledge or intimation of their guilt was conveyed by the press in their confessions of guilt. From the outset we assured all contributors and the public generally that we would publish an accounting of the moneys received, from whom received, and to whom paid. This assurance will be fulfilled. A report in full will first be made to the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor, at its meeting to be held at Washington, D. C., January 8, 1912. The American labor movement has done so much for the workers of our country in improving their condition, in lightening the burdens which the workers have had to bear, bringing light and hope in the homes and in the lives, the factories and the workshops of our country, that it challenges the world of investigators. The organizations of labor of America have been the most potent factors in the establishment and maintenance of the largest measure of industrial peace. Their course is of a conciliatory character, to reach trade agreements with employers, and the faithful adherence to agreements. When industrial conditions become unsettled they are more largely due to the unreasonableness of employers, who regard every effort of the workers to maintain their rights, and to promote their interests, as an invasion of employers' prerogatives, which are resented with consequent struggles. If employers will be but fair and tolerant, they will find more than a responsive attitude on the part of organized labor, but, of one thing all may rest assured, that with existing conditions of concentrated wealth and industry, the organized toilers of our country realize that there is no hope from abject slavery outside of the protection which the organized labor movement affords. The men of organized labor, in common with all our people, are grieved beyond expression in words at the loss of life, and the destruction of property, not only in the case under discussion, but in any other case which may have occurred. We are hurt and humiliated to think that any man connected with the labor movement should have been guilty of either. The lesson this grave crime teaches will, however, have its salutary effect. It will demonstrate now more than ever, the inhumanity, as well as the futility, of resorting to violence in the effort to right wrongs, or to attain rights. In view of the great uplift work in which the men of the labor movement have been and are engaged, and the industrial problems with which they have to contend, we insist that our organizations of labor should be judged by what they do, and aim to do, rather than to be opposed and stigmatized because one or a few may be recreant to the good name and high ideals of labor, and we appeal to the fair-minded citizenship and the press of America for fair treatment. SAMUEL GOMPERS, President, American Federation of Labor, Chairman. FRANK MORRISON, Secretary, American Federation of Labor, Secretary. JAMES A. SHORT, President, Building Trades Department. WM. J. SPENCER, Secretary, Building Trades Department. President, Metal Trades Department. A. J. BERRES, Secretary, Metal Trades Department. JOHN B. LENNON, President, Union Label Trades Department. THOMAS F. TRACY, Secretary, Union Label Trades Department. Constituting the McNamara Ways and Means Committee. WASHINGTON, D. C., December 7, 1911. THE WAGE-EARNERS AND THE Employers. T By JOHN MITChell. HE typical American employer, in exercising the common sense and business sagacity required in successful management and in achieving a desired reputation for fair-mindedness, avoids placing himself among those disputatious irreconcilables, the exceptions in his class, who refuse to recognize that their extreme anti-union views are out of date. Consequently, as the organization of labor has developed in this country, the bulk of the employers in one occupation after another have openly accepted the trade union as one of the inevitable modern institutions-one which is an outcome of the new industrial conditions, a necessary creation and refuge of the wage-workers, a legitimate order and body within our republic, covering a social territory lying beyond the dictatorship of employing capital. The closing of that period in our industrial history in which the trade unions might possibly have been regarded by conservative employers as yet awaiting honorable standing with other recognized beneficent institutions ought to have been regarded by even them as arrived at the day that President Taft said: "Time was when everybody who employed labor was opposed to the labor union; when it was regarded as a menace. That time, I am glad to say, has largely passed away, and the man today who objects to the organization of labor should be relegated to the last century." Granted, President Taft did not explicitly set the seal of his approval on every feature that the trade union regards as essential to its functions. Nor do employers who recognize organized labor uniformly acquiesce with good grace in every union regulation, but taking broad views of life and of the perplexities in the general industrial situation, they have learned that on the whole the union brings both to the employing and the working classes, as well as to the nation, results immeasurably better than the chaos of the labor market, the defenselessness of the wage-workers, and the silencing of the voice of oppressed labor where the ma are unorganized. Granted, also, that in general the industrial peace which exists between organized wage-workers and their employers is recognized by both sides as really a phase of economic conflict; it is a truce, possible of indefinite duration, in which each has learned to respect the other. On both sides are men. Neither knows despot or serf. Both are included, to the extent of their trade contracts, in a wage-market democracy. The mutual attitude is far from indicating social ill-health. Both sides gain in the discipline consequent on learning through strife the wisdom of conciliation, on seeing facts as shown on the other side of the shield, and on hearkening on occasions to warnings in public opinion. The mental horizon of both employer and employe in that situation becomes sufficiently wide to permit of a clear survey of all the body of facts for and against either party. The organized wage-earners and the organized employers may agree upon regarding each other as on different sides of the labor market, even, to an extent, as rivals in dividing the wealth they together produce, but they may yet have wisdom enough to stop short of declaring each other social enemies and showing themselves animated with the bitterness of a mutual hate or bent on exterminating each other's organizations. Not in a spirit of rancor and recrimination would a congress of American employers and employes meet today if it were truly representative-if, for example, it were composed of one wage-earning delegate from each of the railroad brotherhoods and one employer delegate from among the railroad managers closest to each of these, and also one delegate from each of the 115 international unions in the American Federation of Labor and one from the employers of each corresponding occupation. Such a congress might reasonably be expected to exhibit to the world a wealth of instructive experience, a healthy breadth of view and manly toleration, a habit of self-control, a desire for a clear understanding of the differences in principle between the two great human elements in industry. In the course of the proceedings of such a deliberative body it is certain the labor delegates would act under a sense of their grave responsibilities, while the extremists among the employers would be obliged, through the prevailing opinion in their own numbers, it can be believed, to drop from their case against unionism the sort of arguments certain radical attorneys and hasty tempered officials who speak for the few belated and contentious employers' associations nowadays rely upon to mislead the public. What the latter can be truthfully charged with is narrowness, exaggeration in statement, lack of candor in argument, impracticability, and withal shortsightedness. They ignore, or at least give slight weight to, the fundamental economic causes for trade union principles and organization. They "harp on one string," presenting repeatedly in various forms their one set of partisan pleadings as if they thereby exhausted the whole subject at issue. Their task of trying to demolish the unions they carry on in terms of heat and hate, which usually betray misrepresentation. But, worse for them, as business men, they fail to win their case before the public and they lose in their fight on unionism. Suppose that before a congress such as that we have imagined, a labor delegate were to make against one of the employers present the charges contained in the preceding paragraph. Could he substantiate them? Suppose he were to make them against Mr. John Kirby, Jr., President of the National Association of Manufacturers? To begin, Mr. Kirby has signally failed to defeat American unionism, which surely has been his purpose, other than filling the air with plaint and denunciation. In one of his leaflets he expresses his desire to see the American Federation of Labor "as dead as a mackerel." In his inaugural address in 1909 he said: "Today the life of the American Federation of Labor is hanging by a thread." But the report for 1911 of the Secretary of the Federation shows an increase of nearly 200,000 in the paid-up membership for the year, the total the largest yet reached-now being 1,756,000. In another leaflet Mr. Kirby announces: "Why, even the Canadian unions have repudiated the methods of the American Federation of Labor," quoting in confirmation a “Grand Council of Provincial Workingmen" as de ciding "in favor of cutting loose." But at the Atlanta Convention, as usual, Canada was fully represented, its delegates reporting unquestioned loyalty to the international body. In other leaflets Mr. Kirby refers to the Buck's Stove and Range Company's contest with union labor as if it were to be as uncompromising as his own. But the company is today on friendly terms with all the unions. He mentions approvingly a recent attack by "the Knights of Labor" on the American Federation of Labor. But at this showing of how hard pressed he must be for arguments, trade unionists merely smile and ask where those Knights are to be found. In another of Mr. Kirby's leaflets, which contains his address on taking the Presidency of the Manufacturers' Association in 1909, he quotes a magazine in calling attention to the fact that in 1906 and 1907 the International Typographical Union spent three million dollars on its eight-hour strike, the article saying, "they lost ground" in the first of these two years and in the second "threw into the same whirlpool," "with the dogged tenacity of a man who does not know he is defeated," the sum so expended. But that eight-hour strike was completely won. When it began the International Typographical Union had 46,000 members; it has now 51,000. These have gotten back in increased wages since the strike was closed all the sums it cost the union, several times over, besides enjoying the marked reduction of the workday. most of his leaflets, Mr. Kirby, in unmeasured terms, attacks the National Civic Federation. But that organization gives no indication of being enfeebled thereby. Mr. Kirby in an address took the side of the employers against the shirt-waist strikers, citing with approval the dictum, "The Waist and Dress Manufacturers will never sign any union agreements." But they did, the last one among them. Again, Mr. Kirby enumerates the number of fights the Metal Trades Association claimed to have won over the International Association of Machinists. But, nevertheless, this union appeared at the Atlanta Convention with 671 representative votes, 50 more than it ever had before, indicating an increase of nearly 20 per cent in its membership in the last year. Mr. Kirby seems to regard his favorite assertion relative to the proportion of union wage-workers In Mr. exte et bending dement of soctootit be gene dominate ne mara a commercial affairs as The tone toe aa fagrace to Americas VOTER IE si to American manbood But where the mineral employer who is *ax 1 Feme that be bas access to a labor a Mr. Kirby elsewhere peu la prISKIE Jis per cent of the very intimidate and brutally twm the other 90 per cent? King & statements of this kind-typical of e premsa on which he makes his usual diré deixeurs enid not arouse any ime ing the employers in the congres we have imagined practical men as they word 'be. The bituminous mine operwvore prevent would know full well that the propicion de salon miners runs from 60 to 71 per cent of the whole number; and the employing printers that more than 90 per ont of the available and competent compoalton are union: even the waist and shirt manufacturers, in proper season, are made aware that not even 32 per cent of their employes are then non-union. Mr. Kirby would in vain point out to his fellow employer delegates at the congress the millions of domestic servants, farm laborers, office Clerks, and unorganized casual workers as playing any part in the industrial market in which they are commonly interested in obtaining their skilled employes. On these classes of workers the employers do not bestow a glance when choosing between union and non-union men, each for his particular industry. The momentous fact to industrial employers is that the unions master their respective divisions of the labor market and hold the labor in them on sale collectively. The unionists also speak for the non-unionists, who are unable to voice their own demands, either before the public, the legislative bodies, or the employers. A minor point in the estimate of delegates to a mixed congress discussing economics, and yet a matter of some consideration among American gentlemen, might be made against Mr. Kirby should a labor del egate gote specimens of the bugsgate he Catronally employs his peppery litera Dond-apche agitator and preacher of discontent "reipings of such labor demagogue: captured the Coric Federation. body boots. and breeches no organisation of men, not excepting the K-5=x-Kan the Mañia, or the Black Hand Society, has ever produced such a record of barbaris: fake union promoters sinister threatenings of the labor trust': "gab-fests"; "a Sze bunch of reformers: a reverend demagogue" Mr. Stelzle. It was such phraseology that brought from President-Emeritus Eliot of Harvard the suggestion, "Your words would carry greater weight with the American people if they were somewhat less intense. Mr. Kirby would be asked to give names at once were be to assert before the Congress we have imagined, what he has printed repeatedly in his association's leaflets, that a man prominent in labor circles," said to him: "A labor union without violence is a joke," and that “a President of a labor union" said to him: "The only way to make a boss give us what we want is to tie him up in knots and beat hell out of the scabs who work for him." He would also be compelled to face the challenge of Samuel Gompers to produce his proofs should he repeat his quotation attributing to Mr. Gompers the declaration on one occasion that he is the master of a million minds." Mr. Kirby could also be set right, on the spot, were he to say, as in his leaflets, that "John Mitchell has expressed in the strongest language his contempt for the decisions of the courts and his refusal to obey them," and that "Gompers, Mitchell and Morrison have openly defied the authority" of "the supreme judicial tribunal." As all men may know, the basis of these last assertions is the fact that organized labor has asked for a decision by the highest court on certain decrees of a lower court, which may be in error. But all such talk by Mr. Kirby is recognized as mere campaign perversion and distortion. Mr. Kirby's spirit, the tone of his utterances, his manner in expressing himself, and the plane of his argument, all would fail to awaken favorable response in a gathering of serious men representative of the two classes most closely interested in the social |