care and be governed by conditions here. Hope and believe much good will result from Monday's conference, arrangements for which we appreciate deeply."

The report of Secretary-Treasurer Draper was of a highly gratifying character. It showed an increase in receipts within the past ten years from $611 to $8,906. In every particular the report showed growth surpassing all previous records, the increase in membership last year alone being 7,731 and in the revenue from per capita tax of $2,151.74, making a total membership of 40,728 directly affiliated, representing 628 unions.

A number of resolutions of importance to the trades unionists of Canada were dealt with by the Congress, among which was one condeianing the "Lemieux bill" and asking for its repeal.

This resolution caused considerable discussion, many friends of the bill opposing the repeal. The following amendment was made and carried: "That the trades immediately affected by the Lemieux act be requested to submit to the Executive Council of the Congress the necessary amendments to make the bill effective from the working class standpoint, and that the Executive Council be instructed to obtain these amendments to the act, and that in the event of the government refusing to grant these amendments a referendum be submitted to the trades affected by the act, and that the Congress pledge itself to that vote."

The report_of_Organizers W. R. Trotter and R. P. Pettipiece were very interesting, showing the progress made during the year in organizing.

Rev. Dr. Shearer, Secretary of the Department of Moral and Social Reform, of the Presbyterian church in Canada, addressed the Congress at some length. The general tenor of his address, which was an admirable one, and heard by the Congress with the closest attention, was to invite the active co-operation of organized labor with the Department of Meral and Social Reform of the Presbyterian church to attain results which are their common aim. In this connection, I desire to say that the Rev. Dr. Shearer represents the Presbyterian church in Canada in the same manner as the Rev. Charles Stelzle represents that denomination in the United States in the Department of Church and Labor. It was decided by the Congress to send out a circular to all affiliated unions and friendly unaffiliated unions asking for a ten-cent assessment to defray the cost of keeping W. R. Trotter, as agent of the Congress, in Great Britain, for the education of the public there regarding immigration to Canada, and other purposes.

Mr. J. Kier Hardie addressed the Congress on political action. He held that trades unionism without political action is lopsided. Labor must, said he, enter the political arena if it is to successfully combat the forces opposed to it. Mr. Hardie remarked that while he was personally a Socialist and hoped for the triumph of Socialism at the earilest possible time, he desired most of all to effect a united trades unionism.

He

showed in England where the term "Socialism" has no such restricted meaning as in Canada and the United States. He argued that in this country there were all the materials for a great Socialistic movement, but he would say in all kindness that with the present attitude of the believers in socialism and the champions of organized labor pure and simple, it meant a divorce of interests resulting in permanent injury to both.

The present position of the Socialistic party in Canada he would describe as that of Phariseeism. The autocratic attempt to force their ideas upon the people did not tend to the uniting of the ranks of the workers.

In conclusion, Mr. Hardie urged as vital that the political movement must be financed by trades unions.

Mr. Hardie was presented with a handsome ebony, gold-headed cane by the Congress, at the conclusion of his address, to which he suitably replied.

In concluding this brief report, I desire to say that it is urgent upon the various International organizations to have their organizers visit Canada as often as possible to assist the Congress in organizing the unorganized help; keep the organized within the fold and oppose the efforts of the National movement, which is gaining considerable headway in some sections of the Dominion.

The Congress while in session disposed of a great deal of important work which is bound to be of lasting benefit to the wage earners of Canada, and on every possible occasion during its sessions the delegates voiced their confidence and high regard for the American Federation of Labor and its officers.

The many courtesies shown me by the officers and delegates of the Congress will always remain one of my most pleasant memories.

Quebec was chosen as the next place of meeting, and the following officers were elected:

President, Alphonse Verville, M. P., reelected unanimously.

Vice-President, James Simpson, re

elected.

Secretary-Treasurer, P. M. Draper, re

elected.

Fraternal Delegate to the American Federation of Labor Convention, P. M. Draper.

Fraternally submitted,

HUGH FRAYNE, Delegate.

Secretary Morrison: As there is very little business before the Convention this afternoon, and I see in the hall a gentleman who is giving a great deal of his time to work along the same line as labor organizations, I would move that he be invited to address this Convention for a short time. The gentleman I have in mind is an eloquent speaker, and many of the delegates have heard him. I refer to Mr. Raymond Robins of Chicago.

The motion was seconded and carried. Mr. Robins was introduced to the Convention by President Gompers, and said:

Mr. President, Fellow Delegates, Fellow Citizens, Men of Labor, Men and Women Who Work and Think and Have Some Large Purpose in the Common Life of the World: I am glad to talk with you for a little while this afternoon as one man speaks to other men, and as a man speaks to his friends. Underneath all this great struggle that marks the conflict of labor in the world of men is really a great idea. And every form of that struggle is simply an expression in one aspect or another of a great idea; and the divisions between men and society, earnest men, capable men, who divide, on the one hand, friendly to organized labor, and others who divide, on the other hand, in sometimes bitter enmity to organized labor, is really, when it is sifted down, to be determined upon one real principle underneath the whole struggle.

The Danbury Hatters' case, injunctions granted by judges at night while propped up by pillows in their beds, with nobody present but the lawyers for the employers-all these conflicts are to be explained on one ground. That ground is this: the whole conflict in this country and in the world between the men of labor on the one hand, and the men opposed to labor on the other hand, is this: that the men of labor are advancing and affirming and declaring and maintaining the citizenship values of the working man; and the other group is advancing and maintaining and advocating the profit values of the labor of man; and the whole struggle comes out of the point of view whether or not you are interested as a citizen of the Republic, as a man, in the citizenship values of human labor, or whether you are interested chiefly in the profit values, the property values of human labor as an asset for certain individuals, or people, or corporations or employers. There is the whole conflict, and you will find intelligent and able men whose minds are devoted to the question of the money side of the conflict, who become so biased and so set in their judgment that they lose sight of the human values in the controversy altogether. They do not care especially for child labor, they do not care especially to stop women from those employments that break down their health and destroy their possibility of becoming mothers. You can get the basis of the conflict on whether the group is interested most in the human values. the citizen values, or most in the property values, the profit values of the men. There are able and honest men sitting as judges in high courts who believe that judgments in protection of property rights that are manifestly in destruction of human rights are really good, because they see only the property values in the controversy.

And this brings me, men of labor, to the thing I am glad to say in this Convention this afternoon. The problem before labor in America and the world is a problem of interpretation. It is a problem of getting out the citizenship values in the possession of organized labor, and forcing the recognition of these values upon the men and women of fair purpose and honest intentions in the community and in the state and in the nation. There are more fair-minded men than there are of the other kind. There

are more people in the world who want to do the right thing than who purposely want to do the wrong thing; and while there are those implicated in the steal directly, men and women who profit greatly out of the social injustice and wrong in the industrial situation of our country, they will never be the people who will lead in the cause of labor. It is also true that when you convince a man or woman, whether they are friendly to labor or are opposed to labor, that the values of manhood and womanhood and childhood are involved, you break down the efficiency of that man or woman in opposing the just demands of labor for the future. All over this country there are large groups of men or women not directly engaged in the struggle who do not understand themselves and their relationship to the struggle. Two millions of working men, more or less intelligent, on the one hand, and half a million employers, more or less intelligent, on the other hand, and a great mass of men and women in between who have not the true values of this struggle in their mind, and who, if they do have the true values, would support many of the just demands of labor. It is a problem of interpretation, a problem of making the real human value manifest to many men and women not directly interested personally in this struggle.

While organized labor fought its battles on the industrial field we made advances. You know that struggle intimately. You know that when labor with its committee met with the committee of the employers and sat down at the table and discussed the demands of labor we made advances. We made advances because the great human values under our contentions carries us on in spite of the ability and the greed of the opposing forces. But there came a time in this country about ten years ago when a great number of employers began to form into more or less secret organizations. They were called manufacturers' associations in some cities, employers' associations in some states, citizens' alliances in some towns; but the purpose behind them all, regardless of the fair promises and fair-spoken words, the definite and organized and powerful purpose was to break down trade unions in every industry in this country. How did they go about it? Not by discussing it the open. They went about it by forming lobbies in various legislatures, by forming a lobby in the Congress of the United States. by engaging the services of lawyers who were friendly to special judges-who had the "pull," as it were, of friendship and past favors upon judges on benches in state and federal courts. Let us speak the facts as they occurred. Organized labor then found itself contesting on the industrial field with the more or less fair manufacturers of the country-and I wish to say there are some manufacturers who are as fair and reasonable and decent men as can be found anywhere, and we are mighty glad to have those men. We found ourselves dealing with them, on the one hand, in the industrial field, while the other group, the employers of scab labor,

in

the labor skinners, the labor crushers, were organized and bringing their power to bear upon the legislatures and courts of the country. In Illinois, where it has been my privilege to live for some time, we have a good many men and women working to-day in occupations that may be called dangerous trades by reason of the machinery used and the conditions of the industry. There is not one word on the statute books of Illinois which really protects those men and women from crippled hands and lost limbs, from crippled bodies and lost lives in those industries. As a matter of fact to-night the men and women in Illinois in dangerous trades are less protected than men and women in Finland-and we think Illinois is a civilized community! Now what happened? Organized labor bore the burden of the struggle, just as organized labor has been the power behind the passage of child labor laws and all laws that really save the life of man. They took up the struggle and presented a reasonable and fair bill in the legislature in the state of Illinois. It was about to be passed. The Manufacturers' Association of Chicago and Illinois sent to the legislature its secretary, an able and clever man, who is not too careful of the truth when he makes statements about labor men. He established a lobby and had one or two very able and clever lawyers at his shoulder all the time. He began to make arguments to the legislators and they were not all addressed to the mind: some of those were addressed here (touching his pocket). Some of those legislators built nice houses when they went home, although they did not have any money when they went to the legislature, and they were supposed to get only $1,000 for their year's service! That bill was lost. Is there any fairminded man of any political persuasion whatever who can bring himself to object if organized labor in the state of Illinois says. "As long as you fought us on the industrial field we were content to remain on that field and we wanted to stay there. but if you retire and bolster yourself up behind a lobby on the political field and begin to contribute to the election of legislators for the purpose of betraying us, and begin to contribute to the campaign fund of judges for the purpose of getting unfair injunctions against us, in the name of men and women and children in the state of Illinois, we will go into politics and drive you out."

That is the general situation when you get down to the real facts. Then you will find organized labor has been content to discuss its issues on the industrial field, but the other fellows have not been. They have had their power, their education and ability, but they did not trust that. They never sat down to discuss a proposition with us that they did not have two or three trained lawyers ready to help them on the monied side. I have sometimes sat in such a controversy when it seemed to me that if God Almighty had come down and said a certain thing was good for the workers they would have objected to it. I have no objection to lawyers. I have known lawyers who were honest, but I

tell you, my friends, you have to sift pretty close to find them. That is the situation that has faced organized labor in this great nation of ours; and if organized labor, responding to the action of employers of scab labor, follow them up and drive them out of the political forces of our people that were made to serve the whole people, I think organized labor will be doing a service to the whole nation and not to any class.

You can not escape this struggle. The strongest organized union that may look down on the field and say, "We are safe" is deluding itself if it makes any such statement anywhere in the industral field. As a matter of fact, the strongest union isn't any stronger in the last analysis than the weakest union, and we have to learn that great truth. The working class will stand or fall together. And when I say "class" I do not mean class in any foolish, doctrinaire sense. I mean the men and women who really earn what they eat in any capacity, whether it be by mind or hand. Those people have got to get together against the people who are the common plunderers of the whole nation, regardless of class.

on

Now, my friends, when I say we can not escape this struggle, on what grounds do I base that statement? Not guess work; I base it on facts. I want to say to you, men of labor, you who represent America's toiling thousands, that I know something of the labor end of the game also, something of unorganized labor in a Southern mine where I worked day after day for twelve hours a day, side by side with colored men, and got a dollar a day for the work. That is not specially high wages! We were not organized; we were poor, common white trash on the one hand, and poor, worthless niggers on the other hand, and we were making people rich while we worked there. We were good enough to do that. I didn't like it; I don't deny that for a moment. I broke away and went to Alaska. I was one of the bunch of men who went up there and fought their way over Chilcoot Summit and down White Horse Rapids. I was one of those who did well. Most of them went broke. When we passed on over the great frozen stretches of Alaska in the spring of '98, we stopped on a cliff that looked out over Behring Sea to the utmost limit of the Western continent of North America. And the great cold there worked the same magic the great heat does in the desert. It lifted up far over the tops of the icebergs and the great ice sea the cliffs of far Siberia, seventy miles away, and we saw on the horizon the cliffs of that old Asia, that ancient human hive from which came forth the men that made Western civilization. didn't know what it meant then. I turned back and went through the valleys and over the mountains of Alaska and made a stake, so I am free to be here to-day. Now I know what it meant. It meant that the great frontier, which for a hundred years gave an opening to the surplus labor of America, had passed forever from the

I

world. It meant that that great Western movement that came out from the East, that came across Western Europe and laid the foundations of human liberty and justice in that "tight little island," then forced its way across the ocean and established on the Atlantic shore the thirteen colonies; then passed across the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, until its waves met the waves of the Pacific, would rest there. It rested there a while, and then the old hunger for opportunity, the hunger of the boy to try his life against the life of the world, drove the men of '98 over the Chilcoot Summit, but it will not drive them in the future anywhere. They will go out into the ocean and drown.

and

To-day, as you sit here discussing the great interests of humanity bound up in the cause of organized labor, in every little town of the country, in every farmer's home, there is a bright-eyed boy thinking of the future, thinking of leaving his narrow surroundings trying himself against the world. Where will he go? He will not go to the frontier; he is not thinking about it; it has ceased to exist. He is thinking of San Francisco, of Denver, of Chicago, of New York, of the industrial centers of America, and he is coming there tonight; he is marching, while you sit here, to come into the labor struggle of the

great industrial cities, with no knowledge of the struggle of labor for a hundred years to get hours and wages, without any knowledge of the strain and labor of countless men and women to make conditions fair. What does he want? He wants opportunities. He will work under any conditions, he will take long hours and small pay, and hope for promotion sometime. He is the ready tool of this combined scab labor group to hurl against the standard of every organized trade in the land.

My friends, we can not escape! Every man of labor here has got to accept the supreme obligation of universal organization, from the man who digs the ditch to the most highly skilled mechanic in the land. There is no man too mean, there is no occupation too servile to justify your lack of organization efforts, not because they will add strength to the union in great numbers, but because the mere fact of organization among them is the protection and guarantee and sure hope of the strongest union in the land. Now, men, that is no mean job. That is a job so big and tremendous that it is only equalled by the tasks before those pioneers who dared to hope for a free nation and dared to lay its foundations on those rocky New England shores. But they had hope. Are we less worthy than our fathers of faith in the future of mankind? Shall we, in the presence of the accomplished fact of a great republic, whether or not it be wholly free-it is at least with conditions of government that give possibilities of freedom to every man and women in the land-are we to be heard to question the power of men in society to organize all industry and make all labor honorable, not in name, but in fact?

My friends, there is a real dignity of labor in the heart of the world. The men and women who actually do feed and clothe and house this country and the world are really worthy of all honor, with all cant and humbug thrown aside. You have got to dare as much in the great pioneer work of organized labor, in the great moral and human values of this industrial struggle as the men of old, the fathers of our land, dared and braved in the interests of political and religious freedom. You are facing, as the inheritors of a great tradition, the third great struggle in the history of civilization. At first the lines of men divided upon the question of the freedom of the human mind. For five hundred years, aye, for a thousand years, that struggle went on, and it was won. It was won for every man and woman and child. The meanest man in this Republic and Western civilization can believe in one God, or seven gods, or no God, if he wants to, and there is no power of Church or state can say him nay. It was no mean gain that came from that great struggle.

And then the dividing lines of mankind formed over the question of political liberty, over the right of every man to have some share in the government of which he was a part. And that struggle expresses five hundred years in which the people of England, among all the nations of the earth, led the vanguard of human progress, and dared to lay down the most permanent and abiding principles on which human liberty shall forever rest. Men can not wait; the great forces of civilization move onward and forward while generation succeeds generation in the life of the world. You men who are inheritors of that great past are facing to-day a struggle compared with which the two great struggles that preceded seem to us as though they were but the material of a summer's day. It is not so, but it seems so. You are facing the third great problem of civilization-the problem of industrial liberty, the problem so splendidly put by the President of this great Federation when he said that the conflict waging now was upon the question of whether a man's laboring power and his purchasing power belonged to him or whether they belonged to somebody else. The problem to-day is to secure for every man and women of labor in the land the right to the possession of their labor power absolutely, and the right to the possession of their purchasing power absolutely, and to have declared by the legislatures and upheld by the courts the fact that employers of America have obsolutely no property right whatever in either the working power or the purchasing power of the workers. We will vindicate that right, not because some of us are eager to undertake the struggle, but because we must vindicate it. We won't be able to have any rights at all if we don't vindicate that right, because this is an industrial age, and industrial rights take the front of the stage in the controversy of mankind.

Now, men, we can win. We can win because we are right, and because there are more of us. The whole problem today is whether we have got as much sense in getting together and standing together as the scab employers have on the one hand, or as the free working men of Great

Britain had on the other hand. That is the problem. I was talking to a wise and clever pirate of industry, one of the able men whom God gave great gifts to, who had the mind that sees, the mind that grips, the mind that analyzes, and he said: "Robins, you can not win." I said, "Why?" "Why?" he said, "the fool working men of this country haven't got sense enough to get together, and as long as we keep you divided we can skin you any day in the year."

A long time ago one of the wise men of the world said, "A house divided against itself can not stand." It is as true of the great temple of human labor as of any other house built by the hands of men. That great temple has been laid course by course, and bloody fingers have handled the bricks, and hungry women have starved that it might be built, and little children have been deprived of daily food that it might be established among men. I do not believe that the house of labor will fall; but I do know that the house of labor must cease to be divided if it shall hope to stand. A long time ago it was said that the stone which the builders have rejected has become the head stone of the corner; and the stone which the builders of empire have rejected inthe history of men has been the great group of toil. That stone was jected in the history of men has been hearing was when in the great council of the people of Great Britain there was present the members of that despised of toil-who stood group the group there in Parliament for great human values, the greatest values for the empire that had ever been advocated in that great house of Parliament in the history of mankind. My friends, a great labor man of England, with whom some men delight to differ, but who is nevertheless the best expression of my thought of what is best in labor, is a member of the ministry in Great Britain-John Burns. He came up from

the people, and whether or not he is able to stand against the temptations of the times, nevertheless he is the first man who ever sat behind the council table of Great Britain with an intimate personal knowledge of the life of men and women of toil. How long will it be before America, the great industrial nation of the world, has at the council table of her nation some man who, in his own body, has suffered the burdens of common tell, who bears on his own back some of the testimony of the common lot of poverty and labor? Men, it well becomes the Republic to have some man of labor at its council table, if for no other reason than to bear that testimony from the men and women who have made America what she is to-day. It was said by that brave man and follower of the simple carpenter of Nazareth, Charles Stelzle, on this platform this afternoon, that the leisure class did not make good. My friends, I want to add to that just this: The leisure class in the history of mankind never did make good; it never will make good, because it never can. When

ever a boy or girl is raised under conditions where he does not have to work for what he gets, whenever he is surrounded by privilege and opportunity, he becomes careless and indifferent, and his mind and body is not capable of the service that the working child, if he has good food and good air and decent conditions, is capable of giving to the world.

The battle is in better shape to-day than ever before. More men of labor understand what their great work is to be. More men outside of labor's rank are in sympathy with the ultimate purpose, the citizenship rights of the manhood and womanhood of labor than ever before. Let us gather courage, let us dare to believe in each other, let us dare to believe in our leaders. My friends, the other fellows don't dicker and divide their forces in the face of the enemy on the day of battle. God grant that the day will come in the history of organized labor when, after we have decided what is best, we will stand together, submitting and surrendering, if need be, our personal choice in the interest of the common good. I want to say that I look forward to the unity of organized labor, not behind any party-thank God, I dare to be free! I have voted the Republican ticket and the Democratic ticket, and I thought I was doing right each time, and I will vote any old ticket that looks to me as being best for the human values of this country any time it comes to the front. But, men, we have no power worth considering on the political field for any party or any principle until we get together. I don't know what the future holds. Even such a wise man as this old leader of labor, Samuel Gompers, knows not what the future holds. I do know that there is no future of any kind for us until we have sense enough to lay aside personal differences, agree on a program and then stick to the bitter end.

Men of labor, when we fought our way over Chilcoot Summit and went over the glaciers of Alaska there was one truth hammered into us every day of the three years we fought the trail, and that truth was that men can only win when they stand together. One man in Alaska is a lost soul, he is as much lost as an unorganized man in a big factory. You know the condition of the unorganized man. He has that lovely liberty that some scab employers of labor preach so much about, the liberty to work twelve hours a day for fourteen cents an hour and then have his wages lowered so that his employer can contribute $500 to the building of some nice charitable institution. It is that liberty the cat has in a tub out in the lake. The cat doesn't want to stay in the tub-of course not! The cat is at perfect liberty to jump out in the lake any time it doesn't like the tub! That is the way with the unorganized man or woman. They do not have to stay in the shop; they can go out and starve any time they choose. In that Alaska struggle, if one man lay down the other could not go on. You could not do anything without your partner going hand in hand with you. Out of the struggle of that mighty time, and it was a mighty struggle, there came a byword in Alaska, and every one