struction, by the emissaries of the Times contained positive declarations that organized labor was responsible for the disaster. Qualifying statements were conspicuous by their absence. Wide publicity was given, warped and unsupported allegations against the organized workmen of the entire country were featured, vast sums of money were dangled in the faces of uscrupulous men to fasten the crime upon some member or members of the trade unions. The National Manufacturers' Association, flanked by the Erectors' Association, Citizens' alliances, detective agencies, and a hostile press, brought their every influence to bear and appropriated every available circumstance to bulwark and fix in the public mind a mental attitude that the charges made against organized labor had been proven beyond the peradventure of a doubt. The authors of the charge, after months of intrigue and searching investigations, utterly failed to substantiate the flamboyant and positive accusations that had been made. The public mind was slowly emerging from the hypnotic spell in which it had been enveloped, and mutterings of suspicion began to be heard against the originators of the indictments against labor men. The position of the hostile employers' associations became exceedingly desperate. The Times management, with its years of relentless warfare against humanity, fearing that its Belshazzar feast of organized labor's blood was about to be denied, redoubled its efforts, and demanded that a sacrifice must be furnished that its unholy appetite might be appeased, specifying that some union workman or workmen must be supplied to assuage its unnatural and abnormal hunger. The record of events is too well known to make it necessary to recount them in detail. That "the end justifies the means" became the slogan, is patent. With all the forces of greed compactly joined, there began a campaign of vandalism, the like of which has never before found lodgment on the pages of our American Republic's history. A prominent member of union labor was selected, J. J. McNamara, and one at whom the finger of suspicion had never before pointed, whose life had been characterized by an uprightness of purpose and loyalty to the cause of labor, and whose activities in every walk had drawn to him the commendation of his fellows. To give the stage the proper setting and to involve other trades than the iron workers, J. B. McNamara, the brother, was selected for the sacrifice. With intrigue, falsehood, and an utter disregard for all forms of law, applying individual force, conniving with faithless officials, the two McNamaras were rushed in fevverish haste to the scene of the alleged crime. The rights of these two men have been trampled upon, wilfully, flagrantly, and wantonly. Every man, even the meanest, under the constitutional guarantees of our country, is entitled to a trial by a jury of his peers, and every man is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Thus far the proceedings have been outside the pale of those guarantees. The charge has been lodged against organized labor, and two of its members are now before the bar to answer to these charges. What is the duty of the organized labor movement? What shall be our course? What efforts shall we put forth to see to it that justice shall finally obtain? The intellect, heart and soul of the men of labor yield to no body or class of citizens in their fidelity in obedience to the law, and their history is replete with instances of sacrifice that humanity may be protected. If within the ranks of labor there are those who commit infractions of the law, then they should be punished, but there should not be instituted a double standard of justice-one for the wealthy malefactor and another for the workman. The organized labor movement believes that the McNamaras are innocent. Upon that belief there devolves upon us another duty. The accused men are workmen, without means of their own to provide a proper defense. The assault is made against organized labor equally with the McNamaras. If we are true to the obligations we have assumed, if it is hoped to forever settle this system of malicious prosecution of the men of labor, our duty is plain. Funds must be provided to insure a fair and impartial trial. Eminent counsel has been engaged. Arrangements are proceeding that a proper defense may be made. The great need of the hour is money with which to meet the heavy drains incident to the collection of evidence and other necessary expense. Every man who was connected with the kidnapping of the McNamaras will be prosecuted to the full limit of the law. It is proposed that the interests of organized labor shall be fully protected, and punishment meted out to detective agencies that assume to be superior to the law. The rights of the men of labor must, shall be, preserved. The men of labor, unlike the hostile organizations arrayed against us, have not vast sums of wealth to call upon, but they are imbued with the spirit of justice, and are ever ready to make sacrifice for principle. The trial of the McNamaras is set to commence on October 11. In the name of justice and humanity all members of our organizations are urgently requested to contribute as liberally as their abilities will permit. All contributions toward the legal defense of the McNamara cases and for the prosecution of the kidnappers should be transmitted as soon as collected to Frank Morrison 801-516 G street N. W., Washington. D. C. who will forward a receipt for every contribution received by him, and after the trials a printed copy of the contributions received, together with the expense incurred, will be mailed to each contributor. Fraternay, Attest FRANK MORRISON, Secretary. SAMTEL GOMPERS Presiden: American Federation of Labor. Approved by the McNamara Ways and Means Committee. To raise necessary funds for the defense, the Committee on Ways and Means has derised rarions projects: (4) The issuance of a McNamara stamp which might be affixed at the back of envelopes or upon letter-beads for use in official and other correspondence in the trade union movement and by 63mpathizers generally; these are sold at 1 cent each. 12. The issuance of McNamara buttons, protesting against kidnapping, sold at $4 per hundred. (3) The committee has had made a motion picture, which has been and is being exhibited to convey to the public generally rightful pictorial information as to several instances connected with the outrageous entry into the offices of the Iron Workers and the kidnapping of McNamara, part of the proceeds of the picture to be turned over to Secretary Morrison. The committee recommends: That the members of national and international unions contribute liberally through their respective locals and internationals. That central bodies appeal to workmen and other right-thinking, liberty-loving citizens for voluntary contributions. That labor and friends of labor and to the cause of justice hold protest meetings against the kidnapping and the persecution of the McNamaras. That the labor and friendly papers publish and keep standing an appeal for aid and assistance to the defense fund and the kidnapping prosecution: that the names of contributors be published in the labor press and that the proceeds be weekly transmitted to Secretary Morrison. And, further, by every honorable means within our power, the obligation be met in order that sufficient funds may be at the disposal of counsel and their assistants and for defraying the necessary expenses of experts and witnesses. Every dollar thus far received has been, and all moneys received in the future will be, placed in the hands of counsel in these cases for proper expenditure. The trial opened at Los Angeles October 11 in impaneling of the jury, the progress of the trial being watched with the closest interest, not only by labor union membership but by the country in general. Any review of the trial, so far as it has proceeded, it is not my purpose to present at this time. In considering this case, attention should be given to the article, "The McNamara Case," appearing in the June, 1911, issue of the American Federationist, and the editorial in the July issue under the same title. THE TRIANGLE SHIRT-WAIST FACTORY FIRE. In the first week of April last 143 employes of the Triangle Shirt-Waist Company came to their death through the burning of the company's factory in Washington Place, New York. No event ever taking place in this country occasioned severer denunciation of a firm of employers. It came out that the employes working in the two upper stories of the ten story building were so placed while at work that escape during a panic was almost impossible. Doors which opened inward were locked; barely space for one person to move at a time was left between the rows of sewing machines; the goods being worked up were of a flimsy and inflammable character, and no fire drills had ever been performed by the force. The Chief of New York's Fire Department later testified that it would have taken more than an hour for the employes to make their escape through the fire exits provided. When the fire occurred most of the employes, of whom nine-tenths were women, were left to the dreadful choice of burning in the workrooms or leaping to their death from the height of the ninth or tenth story of the building. A public demonstration of labor took place in New York on Thursday, April 6, at the time at which many of the victims were being buried in another part of the city. The number of persons marching at the demonstration was estimated at from seventyfive to one hundred thousand. The procession was one of the largest of wage-earners ever taking place in New York. It attracted half a million spectators along the lines of march, in spite of a heavy downpour of rain and the muddy streets. In the numerous investigations, official and otherwise, following the burning of these poor wage-earners, the fact was brought to light that very few factories in the clothing trades in New York were fire proof or so arranged as to prevent similar catastrophes. The Legislature of New York created a commission of nine (to which I have been appointed a member) to act without compensation, for the purpose of making a thorough investigation of the safety of workers in regard to sanitation, dangerous machinery and fire. The Commission has had several sessions and contemplates thoroughness in its investigation and recommendations. In view of the cruel and blind selfishness of a class of employers in regard to the health and safety of workers in several parts of our country, it is urgently recommended that our State Federations and city central bodies in industrial centers demand not only the enforcement of existing law in factories, workshops, mills, and mines, but also the promotion of injury as to the needed laws for better-aye, humanly considered, absolutely necessary-sanitary home and workshop conditions, including safety from dangerous machinery and from fire and panic. LADIES' GARMENT WORKERS' STRIKE. Cleveland is one of the chief centers of importance in the ladies' garment trade. It being the policy of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union to improve and to more nearly equalize conditions all over the country, an attempt was made to so organize the Cleveland workers at that calling as to enable them to support the requirements of the general scale. A combination of rich and powerful employers determined to break down all attempts at organization. The consequence was a strike, which was declared early in June. By the middle of the month the number out was about eight thousand. On the first of August, the number out was still six thousand. For weeks and months since, the strikers stood firm. The strike has been characterized by oppression by the police, by a stubbornness of the combined employers which puts their business in jeopardy, by the loyalty of the strikers to one another, and by the extraordinary amount given in relief by the wageworkers of the trade throughout the country. The strike has cost the union $20,000 a week. Much of the time of the strike has covered a good part of the dull season in the trade. The Cleveland manufacturers have for years pursued a selfish and dictatorial course toward their employes. It has been the custom elsewhere in the cloak and skirt shops, union or non-union, to adjust prices on the various styles of garments through a committee representing the piece workers, known in the trade as a "price committee." The Cleveland manufacturers are the only ones in this country who never have followed that system. The employes were obliged to accept the prices fixed by the employer or leave the shop. They have never known what their wages were until their pay envelope was opened. The Manufacturers' Association on every occasion has rejected the peaceful advances of the officers of the international union. They stood for no collective bargaining in any form. They insisted upon dealing with their employes, who are chiefly women and children, individually. The demands of the strikers are a fifty-hour week, no Saturday afternoon and no Sunday work; the abolition of charging for use of machines, power and material; the abolition of subcontracting; a minimum scale for week workers, and price committees for piece workers. Regardless of the immediate outcome of this contest, if labor and the sympathetic public will give their moral support to the struggling ladies' garment workers, their cause will surely triumph. THE BALDWIN STRIKE. On the 26th of last May, 1,200 of the 14,000 employes of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, in Philadelphia, Pa., were laid off, the cause, as alleged by the managers, being merely a reduction of the working force. But among the 1,200 were sixty out of seventyfive of the shop committeemen of the machinists, together with officials of the dozen other crafts in the Allied Locomotive Builders' Council. Two days afterward (28th), this council called special meetings of all the local unions having members working for the Baldwin Company, and at these meetings (30th) the council, in conjunction with the representatives of the international unions concerned, was authorized to take up the issue, and if necessary to call a strike in the works. A committee representing the various trades and the international officials called on Superintendent John Sykes, of the company (31st), who refused to go into conference with them, but expressed a willingness to meet delegated employes of the company. A committee so composed, on conferring with him, the same afternoon, and again on June 1, found that he would make no promises regarding reinstatement of the men. On June 4, in the afternoon, the international officers, after a three-hours' discussion, decided that a strike would be inopportune. The same evening, after a discussion of equal length, the Workmen's Locomotive Builders' Council concurred in this decision. Excitement ran high among members, and some of them attempted to call a strike, late the same night, after the conclusions of their two representative bodies became known. For a week afterward some of the Baldwin employes clamored for a strike, and then numbers began quitting the works, until on June 13 about 12,000 of the 14,000 were out. Their spokesmen alleged that the company's system of "espionage, punishments, discharges, and victimization" was beyond human endurance, and that, despite the advice to the contrary of their council delegates and international officers, they had determined to take the risks of a strike. The company (July 8 refused to entertain any committee from the men unless it was understood that the men return as non-unionists. Public sentiment in Philadelphia was strongly with the strikers and the latter stood by their colors with stubborn resisting power, but as the weeks went by it became plain that their funds were insuficient. By the middle of Angust the contest was over. The lesson that was taught by this action of the wage-workers for a great corporation is the necessity for thorough organization, for a large treasury, and for heeding the advice of officials of experience, who possess a knowledge of the state of trade and employment throughout the country. It is true that on occasions, when practically all the workers of a calling may reasonably be expected to respond to the demands of the more outspoken and venturesome, everything may be risked on a general walkout and a complete tie-up of an industry. Enthusiasm, public opinion, financial aid from many quarters-these may, in such circumstances, stand in the place of the usual reliance of established trade unions on their financial resources. Saccesses, and notable ones, have thus been gained; but the international officers and the local union delegates may usually be trusted to foresee the chances for or against victory. EFFICIENCY. The year has witnessed a discussion on a national scale of the doctrines and practice of "Scientific Management." This new economic gospel has its prophets and its policies, and for a brief time had its crusade. While its leaders professed that its objects comprised many reforms in management, arguments in favor of what came to be popularly called efficiency principally turned upon the idea of getting more product out of the toil of the laborer. The phases of efficiency presented to the wage-workers were those of systems long known, both to indoor and outdoor workers. Included in the scheme were the bonus and piece systems together with methods of contracting and of fining which have long been fought by trade unionists, and also a method of sweating, by which if a stated task were not completed the promised bonus for it was entirely lost and wages fell to a point at which they would have stood on the ordinary day's production. Many absurd or unfounded claims were for a time advanced in support of the socalled Scientific Management." It was said, for example, that in the course of its application, now extending over more than a decade, it had never occasioned a strike. The truth is that only during the last year its attempted introduction has brought on a series of labor disputes, the employes in the navy yards and on other Government work having struck against it by the means immediately at their hand, namely, an appeal to Congress against the changes, and especially the sweating, the system brings into practice. As one book after another, or one pamphlet after another, was issued on the subject, numerous public addresses being made meantime by its supporters, it became more and more evident that the men whose names were chiefly associated with it were not in agreement as to the principles of "efficiency" and its application. It is to be said today that the system has been far from uniformly successful. It has been abandoned in some of the largest works where some years ago it was adopted. The fallacy in the statement that wages were increased by the application of scientific management is now generally recognized. For the time being, after its adoption, the wages of a small proportion of a force may be raised, whereas much of the work usually done by skilled men is turned over to unskilled helpers, working far below the wages usually paid to mechanics. It is plain that the system is not adaptable to most of the work done on time. It has been said that in America 50,000 persons were working under the system. If so, the fact can not be proven by any detailed statistics taken by any census, so far as trade unionists have been able to ascertain. It originated in, and has been chiefly confined to, the workshops of certain large companies which have been notorious employers of non-union and freshly-arrived foreign labor. In large shops it has long been known that certain operations which are performed without variation day after day may only require a low-wage machine attendant, and if the preliminary stages of the work have been systematized, of course the output will be large at a low cost. In small shops, however, and in industries in which the shopwork is not the main factor, the field for the pyramidal labor arrangement, or organization, of scientific management is small. Moreover, the promoters of the system have so extravagantly advertised its claims, and especially their charges of wilful loafing against American laborers, that the general conclusion is that they are mere discoverers of a "mare's nest." They have expected the public to give credence to the absurdity that workmen in general "soldier" to the extent of "one-third or even onehalf of a proper day's work." The public has refused to believe this slander on the American workingman, and the workers themselves have everywhere challenged these traducers to bring forward proofs of their assertions. In view of the fact that America's workers are the greatest producers per man and in the aggregate in the whole world, it is an offense against the common sense of men to ask them to believe that, in shops where foremen are ever on the alert, where the penalty for loafing is discharge, where all the men strive to be among those kept on in dull times, where the great majority of them are responsible fathers or supporting members of families, the workers would by common consent endeavor to deceive and defraud their employers by delivering only half a day's work for a full day's work. All of "Scientific Management" which is built upon this basis of detraction must obviously be disbelieved. As the discussion now stands, the wage-workers have by far the best of it. The system has not been taken up by employers in general. The number that have shown much interest in it form a very small proportion throughout the country. Railroad managers have treated the estimated possible savings to industry by "efficiency" prophets with contempt. It may also be said that employes have been slow to believe that such wonderful improvements could be made in management as they have proclaimed. In a book issued by one of the authors supporting the system, the statement is made that where one point relating to the wage earner was to be improved, nine points relating to the employer could be improved. Inasmuch as the advocates of "efficiency" have failed to make much of a success on the one point pertaining to the workshop, we respectfully invite their attention to the nine points in the office department which await their labors. The verdict on efficiency has been pronounced by society. It has already been relegated to a place on a shelf among the nostrums, sensations, and paraphernalia of magic workers of the past. The American public has not welcomed the spectacle of steel works where, under an inspector, stop-watch in hand, one man is carrying five tons of pig iron where he formerly carried one, or of a bicycle shop where one girl does the work formerly done by three, when she is not carried out fainting, or where in a textile mill a girl is paid for the ordinary day's work after she has striven and strained and almost completed the allotted bonus task of doing two days' work in one. It may be interesting to state that the Committee on Labor of the House of Representatives, Hon. William B. Wilson, chairman, is conducting an investigation into the claims of so-cailed "Scientific Management" or "Efficiency." LABOR DAY AND LABOR SUNDAY. Labor Day is now an American continental holiday as well established as the Fourth of July in the United States. No conspicuous new feature is to be recorded in its observance of recent years, although it may be said that the tendency is less to make it a day of devotion to sports, a considerable proportion of the laboring people now devoting the day, or a part of the day, to a serious study of the important social questions before the people. Meetings and parades on a scale seldom surpassed were held in most of the principal cities. The turn-out of the workers was in some of the larger centers of population double what had been expected, and the enthusiasm and determination of the workers in support of trade unionism and in defense of union principles caused unusual comments in the daily press. Labor Sunday was better observed than ever before. The churches are manifesting a desire to become more helpful to union labor and are certainly coming to a better understanding with its supporters. In many churches in the country, labor men were invited to address the congregations in advocacy of our cause. The number of prominent professional men who contributed articles to the labor periodicals, especially to the American Federationist, on the occasion of Labor Day, was noteworthy, which is indicative of the turning tide in favor of union labor even among those who can not be regarded as wage-workers. ORGANIZERS. The total number of organizers at present holding commissions issued by the American Federation of Labor is 1,594, an increase over last year of 132, when the number was 1,462. This corps of organizers, of course, does not include those directly representing the local and international unions, but is composed only of men and women working without compensation for the labor movement as a whole under the direction of our Federation. In their labors our organizers especially illustrate the zeal, courage and intelligent effort which may always be relied upon in movements intended to promote the common good. There is not one of these organizers but has considered the various methods by which he, or she, might aid their fellow-workers, and has selected organization as the most promising in achievement. Most of them have proceeded with their labors year in and year out, asking no remuneration other than the feeling of having performed a duty. They have been unselfish. They are honored by their co-workers, who know and appreciate them. They deserve the sincere thanks of the delegates here assembled, which I take pleasure in expressing on behalf of the great movement in which we are enlisted. THE LABOR PRESS. The labor press is yearly becoming more harmonious in its aims, its teachings, and in its strict trade union policy. It is less liable today than ever to drift off into advocacy of movements aside from that of trade unionism, which occasionally succeed, but only |