Therefore workers have voluntarily associated themselves in unions. They have worked out demands for justice and have succeeded in having many of these included in work contracts. This they have done by their own economic power without outside assistance. And the doing has not been easy. In the early days to be a union man was to be a marked man, was to be blacklisted by employers and hounded from place to place. being a social outcast, the butt of ridicule and buffoonery. red blood, determination, conviction, and consecration to those days.

Often it meant It took courage, be a unionist in

The unions have been the schools of the workers where they learned the lessons of democracy and independence.

In the unions workers have learned their rights and how to get them. The workers have learned that betterment comes only through their own efforts and diligence and that to work directly for securing desired purposes is economy of labor.

The power of the unions and the success of their activities have been due to their voluntary character.

What unionism has done for wage-workers is open history. A summary of its achievements during 1913 is found in report to the International Federation of Trade Unions, published in this and last month's issues; a review of the progress of 1914 may be found in the Executive Council report to the Philadelphia American Federation of Labor Convention, and for previous years in former convention reports. The Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes recently published a pamphlet entitled, Wage History, showing what unionism has gained for those workers. The September, 1914, issue of the AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST contains a symposium of achievements of workers through organization. Other organizations have similar data.

But in addition to results there is another test of unionism-its influence upon manhood and womanhood. There are no more aggressive, resourceful, progressive men and women in the world than those who belong to the American trade union movement. The trade union movement of the United States is the most militant, virile labor movement in the world. The unionists are the embodiment of self-reliant independence, they infuse democracy into all relations of life. They are making sacrifices in the endeavor to induce other workers to join them in the voluntary movement for the betterment of industrial conditions.

Now certain political actionists and benevolent outsiders present to trade unionists the proposition that regulation of hours of work and wages be placed in the hands of political agents-minimum wage and universal eight-hour laws for private industries have been persistently advocated and trade unionists have been denounced because they have not favored them without reservation. Yet the surrender to outside authority of power to determine hours of work and wages means also to place in governmental authority either the enforcement of such determinations or the punishment of those who refuse to yield their freedom.

This change means that agreements and adjustments to meet changing conditions will cease to be voluntary. It means that unionists will lose the right of initiative, hence their fine independent spirit. It means that trade unionists will cease to be an aggressive, determining force in industry, but will become an auxiliary to a bureaucracy under commissions, wages boards, etc. It means that trade unionism will lose its virility and the power to protect the workers.

Can the workers agree to any proposition that will weaken or embarrass unionism?

Can the toilers afford to trust the determination of the terms of their contracts to work to agencies over which they can at the best have only indirect control?

Is human nature so constituted that the workers can trust matters affecting their real liberty in the hands of "disinterested" outsiders?

If the workers surrender their right to determine the terms of contract, are they not endangering also their right to reject terms? If that be true, what becomes of their industrial freedom, the right to control or withhold their labor?

When contracts are determined by governmental agents they take on the character of official state pronouncements, and a strike against conditions of work becomes a strike against state authority. In order to maintain state authority fines and prison sentences for strikes are the inevitable next stage of development, as is amply manifested in Australasia where such agencies have been most fully tested. Whatever name this may be called, it results in industrial slavery for workers.

Rather than to take one step in that direction, trade unionists maintain that it is far better to endure the ills we have at present, and to continue to work out industrial betterment upon principles that are true and tried.

Labor's progress has not been spectacular, but it has been sure. It has made for wholesome development.

The trade union movement has always accepted the assistance of outside agencies which could advise, educate and make easier the work of industrial betterment, but it has emphatically demanded that determination of personal relations must be held by the workers in their own hands.

The trade union movement has secured the enactment of laws that assure to the workers freedom for working out their own welfare, and has asserted claims to legislation to promote life, health and safety, objects that are outside the province of collective economic action.

Trade unionism has been the great revolutionizing force for industrial betterment and progress. It has been the one protection in which the workers could put their trust. That is why trade unionists oppose a plan to subordinate it to other agencies-the trade union movement is the hope of the workers. Don't you see, Mr. Weinstock?

Shall a democratic people delegate its police authority to private employers?

GOVERNMENT
BY GUNMEN
MUST GO

This is the question which arose in West Virginia, Michigan, Colorado, and in many other localities where employers have sought to hold employes in subjection, and has arisen anew in New Jersey. Use of police authority by private individuals or in the interest of private individuals is one of the most menacing, most disturbing conditions affecting industrial relations between workers and employers.

The development of the modern state was characterized by transferring the exercise of constituted authority from individuals to representatives of the government of the people. To permit that authority to be usurped again by individuals means the undermining and destruction of representative political institutions. Yet that is the meaning of the government set up in industrial contests by means of professional gunmen.

These gunmen are in the employ of private detective agencies. They are usually men who have been dismissed in disgrace from the regular police force, the professionally reckless, and the outlaw classes. They are an institution that exists in no other civilized country. They are sent from one state to another, wherever an employer needs force to aid him in defeating the demands of his employes who protest against the imposition of poorer, or who aim to secure better, conditions or their rights.

In New Jersey, the American Agricultural Chemical Works (a Rockefeller concern) last fa'l reduced the wages of the workers in its six plants at Chrome, Carteret, and Roosevelt, New Jersey, from $2 to $1.60 a day. The impression prevailed that the wage wou'd be restored on or about January 1. But when the company failed to keep its promise, the men struck. A few days afterward the company issued circulars stating that the company could get all the men it wanted for 16 and 17 cents per hour, but would give perference to former employes if they would return to work at once. The men refused.

The population of these towns in which the plants of the American Agricultural Chemical Company are located is 90 per cent foreign-80 per cent Hungarian and Slavish, 10 per cent Italian, and 10 per cent native born. The same proportions prevail among the workers.

At the beginning of the strike, organization was only partly perfected, but has made great progress since the outbreak of the trouble. Foreign interpreters are necessary to keep one group informed of what is taking place in other groups.

The company then prepared to "protect" their property against strikers who had committed not one unlawful act. A conference was held with the mayor and the judge. As there were only eight police for the town they could not be assigned to police private property. Safety of the streets was guaranteed, and in case of an outbreak a force of citizens to maintain law was promised. But the company was not satisfied, although the strikers had not given the slightest indication of violent purposes. It appealed to the sheriff, who, without authority, assumed the responsibi ity for hiring men from a detective agency to protect the plants. One hundred and fifty men were

hired at $5 a day, which was to be paid by the American Agricultural Chemical Company.

The strikers expected strike-breakers. Unarmed, they went to the station to persuade them not to take their places in the plant. When the train arrived the strikers went on board, but found no strike-breakers They got off quietly. Then the gunmen left the property of the company and, opening fire upon the strikers, rushed down upon them. Two were killed and about a score wounded.

The shooting was unprovoked, unjustifiable, brutal, and wanton. Most of the men injured were shot in the back. None was on the company's property. Not a gun was found on one of them. They were exercising the rights of free men in refraining from work.

A company that desired to compel its employes to work for wages inadequate to meet American standards of living took possession of the public highways of New Jersey, and used armed men to slaughter the citizens and inhabitants of the state.

It is worthy of note that the American Agricultural Chemical Company is the first name on the published list of industries in which the funds of the Rockefeller Foundation are invested. The same labor policy seems to follow the Rockefeller money whether in the east or in the west.

This recent occurrence makes it increasingly imperative that the American people make immediate decision in regard to dealing with this menace to industrial and political freedom-the exercise of police power by irresponsible private agencies.

The time has come for the working people, backed by the consciences of all right-thinking, liberty-loving Americans, who value their rights, freedom, and their very lives, to arouse tl emselves to the duty of ridding our states and our Republic of these roving private armies of Hessians. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," is the slogan.

The private agency strike-breakers and murderous gunmen must go.

RESULTS OF
FOUR YEARS
OF UNIONISM

The agency by which the needle trades of New York City have been educated to the point that they now declare sanitary strikes is organization. The great fight that established unionism permanently in the ladies' garment trades of New York City was the strike of the cloak, suit and skirtmakers, which secured the protocol of September 2, 1910. The impetus of the progress was felt in all the needle trades of the country, and especially in New York City, where four other trades secured similar protocols in 1913.

All of these protocols have practically identical provisions for securing the establishment of sanitary standards and protection for the workers. As a result of organization of a permanent nature among workers where previously spasmodic organization had prevailed, something like responsibility and organization have been brought into the industry. In addition to the usual economic benefits from organization-higher wages, which give the workers the money necessary for better homes, more nourishing food, adequate

clothing; shorter hours, which protect the workers from overwork, and conserve strength-these protocols make special and comprehensive provisions for establishing sanitary standards and conditions among the workers.

A sanitary strike has an irresistible appeal. It is so novel, so progressive, And this development has come in an industry that only a few years ago was one of the worst paid, most unsystematized, most insanitary of all industries. The needle trades have been notorious for the poverty. that characterized the whole process of production, from the employer or contractor or sub-contractor down to the most impecunious employe. It was in truth the worst sweated industry extant.

The needle trades are seasonal and formerly required little capital. Many went into the business temporarily. Makeshift workshops appeared and disappeared with the season too rapidly for regulation by the slow control of governmental health agencies. Any sort of a cheap room or workshop was rented regardless of light, ventilation, sanitation or safety. Employers and employes were alike ignorant of what constituted good healthful conditions of work. Poverty begot ignorance, ignorance begot greater poverty and helplessness. Many workers were foreigners who knew not the language or the ways of our country-they had neither time nor opportunity to learn. As the demands of the season became most pressing these shops, which were miserably inadequate in equipment, sanitation, or even the decencies, sublet work to be done in the more miserable tenements of the workers. The garments of the purchasing public were made in overcrowded living rooms, in dirt and contagion by diseased, undernourished, overworked, underpaid, sweated workers, who through the garments they made visited upon all those who handled or bought them the consequences of sweated labor.

These protocols, with one exception, establish joint boards of sanitary control, consisting of representatives of the workers' organizations, the associations of manufacturers, and the public. In the dress and waist industry, permission is issued to employers who meet required sanitary standards to place upon the products of their shop the white protocol label which guarantees sanitary conditions of production to purel asers.

The last annual report of the Joint Board of Sanitary Control for the cloak, suit and skirt, and the dress and waist industries, gives the guiding principles which have made the work effective. The board has looked upon its functions as educational. It has made its purpose industrial sanitary self-control. It has abolished the old idea of police and detective inspection, and has sought to inculcate in workers and employers responsibility for sanitary conditions. For the accomplishment of this purpose the board has rightly deemed its educational activities as of far greater importance than inspection of shops. The report thus describes the problem that confronted the board:

"Dense ignorance of sanitary and health matters prevailed among the manufacturers and workers alike. Many of the petty competing manufacturers knew little and cared less for the improvement of sanitary conditions in their shops, or for insuring safety regulations. The workers themselves were ignorant of the first principles of personal hygiene, and were so dominated by the struggle for existence, that they could not think of the necessity for humane conditions of their work places. They knew little and cared less for ade