way, to be taken over later as a permanent member of Mr. Rockefeller's staff. A 'union educational campaign' is to be conducted, and the country is to be flooded with articles by college professors and others bitterly denouncing trade unions. And at the very time when he prepares to circulate Prof. Stevenson's intemperate and amazing defense of industrial absolutism and tirade against trade unions, Mr. Rockefeller enlists the aid of Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King, expert on industrial relations, to devise specious substitutes for trade unions that will deceive, mollify and soothe public opinion while bulwarking the employers' arbitrary control.

"Yet it is important to remember that Mr. Rockefeller's character and policies are important only as showing the possibilities inherent in an economic and industrial situation that permits one man or a group of men to wield such enormous economic power, and through that power not only to control the destinies and dictate the circumstances of life of millions of wage earners and for entire communities, but to subsidize and control to a large degree those agencies that mold the public opinion of a nation. Even should Mr. Rockefeller change over night, those possibilities of evil would remain inherent in our economic and industrial situation, as a menace to freedom and democracy." Every important statement of fact contained in the report, it is said, is established by quotations from the correspondence or testimony of responsible executive officials of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company or of Mr. Rockefeller and members of his personal staff. The report contains copious extracts from the testimony and correspondence of Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., and Starr J. Murphy, his personal attorney in New York, J. F. Welborn, President of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, L. M. Bowers, Chairman of the Executive Department of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, The Rev. Eugene S. Gaddis, Superintendent of the Company's Sociological Department, during the strike and until February, 1915, and others.

The report in discussing the Company's rejection of President Wilson's plan for a settlement of the strike, says:

"Mr. Rockefeller not only rebuffed the President by denying his earnest request, but, if the letters of his agents may be relied upon, he apparently deceived the President and the public by means of the Company's letter of rejection. This letter was written by President Welborn in collaboration with Mr. Ivy L. Lee, a member of Mr. Rockefeller's personal staff, whom he had sent to Colorado for the purpose. Mr. Rockefeller's personal staff in New York had become impressed with the strong public sentiment supporting the President's proposal, and in drafting their letter of rejection to the President, Messrs. Welborn and Lee inserted the following:

"A plan to secure harmonious relations in some industries or sections of the country would not necessarily apply to our peculiar conditions. We are now developing an even more comprehensive plan, embodying the results of our practical experience, which will, we feel confident, result in a closer understanding between ourselves and our men. This plan contemplates not only provision for the redress of grievances, but for a continuous effort to promote the welfare and the good will of our employes.'

"This letter was signed by Mr. Welborn and was dispatched on September 18, 1914. On the following day, September 19, Mr. Welborn wrote to Mr. Murphy, Mr. Rockefeller's personal attorney in New York:

"I appreciate your very thoughtful letter of the 16th inst., with suggestions for consideration IN THE EVENT OF ITS BEING NECESSARY TO PROPOSE SOME PLAN TO TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT PRESENTED TO US BY THE PRESIDENT.”

The political influence of the Rockefeller Company and its associates is declared to be greater today than ever before, as a result of the failure of the strike. The report says:

"The Commission is told by Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King, expert on industrial relations for Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., that Mr. Rockefeller's will and conscience are today the most potent factor to be considered in any effort to bring about an improvement of conditions. While physical and material conditions in the coal

camps may be improved to some extent as a result of the publicity given to existing abuses, these improvements, if they come, will be granted as a charity, and there is yet no indication that the inhabitants of the coal camps are nearer the achievement of industrial and political democracy than they were when the strike began. On the other hand, the arrest, prosecution and conviction of union officials and strikers, with the aid of attorneys and detectives in the employ of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, and by direction of public officials placed in office largely through the company's influence, indicate plainly that the reverse is true. How the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company obtained the new lease of political power by which it procured these prosecutions is well shown by the following extract from the testimony of Mr. L. M. Bowers, chairman of the executive department of the company, given before the Commission in Washington on May 24. Mr. Bowers had testified that the company turned 150 men out of its offices on election day to work for prohibition, which was bound up with the candidates of Mr. Carlson for governor and Mr. Farrar for attorney general. Both these candidacies were successful.

"Mr. Bowers: 'Let me explain. I don't mean we turned them out to carry the election. It was on election day, but we were out on the campaign and had a fight on and had practically no funds to carry on a campaign, and they wanted men to do the work, to do the ward work and distribute literature and all that sort of thing; and the coal operators, not only the coal operators but everybody that was interested in the question of prohibition at the election turned out their office men, and I had been-by the way I had nothing to do with picking out that one hundred and fifty men, and I did not know it until the next day after they had been out.'

"Chairman Walsh: 'Didn't you use the prohibition sentiment that was strong in the State to get support for what you called the law and order platform, that was, for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and the others to aid in the ruthless prosecution of the strikers and the

union officers, and a relentless policy of suppressing those men?'

"Mr. Bowers: 'It was all interlinking and locked together.'

"The company's deep interest in prohibition quite slips President Welborn's mind when he writes to Mr. Rockefeller the following exultant letter, dated Nov. 6, 1914:

"My Dear Mr. Rockefeller:

"According to the figures received today, which are practically complete, the plurality of Carlson, Republican candidate for Governor, over Patterson, is approximately 33,000. The plurality of Farrar, Democratic candidate for Attorney General, over his next opponent, the Republican, is almost 38,000.

"Farrar is the present incumbent in the office to which he has just been elected, and has been about the only reliable force for law and order in the State House. His re-election serves to emphasize the sentiment in favor of law and order, expressed in the election of the main part of the Republican ticket.

"Mr. Farrar has been very actively engaged for several months in connection with the work of grand juries in various coal counties, where indictments have been brought against those who participated in the rioting.

"(Signed) J. F. WELBORN." "Mr. Rockefeller also forgets the prohibition cause, on account of which Mr. Bowers says 150 men were turned out of the Company's office as election workers. He writes:

"Dear Mr. Welborn:

"I have just returned to the city, after an absence of several weeks in the South with my wife, and find your letter of Nov. 26th regarding the gratifying plurality for Carlson for Governor and Farrar for Attorney General. It would seem that the election of this Republican Governor and the re-election of this Democratic Attorney General, both of whom have established clear records as to their strong stand for law and order, would indicate that the sentiment of the people of Colorado is for law and order, quite irrespective of party lines. 'Very cordially, "(Signed) JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, Jr.'

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"In pursuance of the 'law and order' policy on which they were elected, Governor Carlson and Attorney General Farrar have proceeded vigorously with the prosecution of union officials and strikers. Their most conspicuous success came with the conviction on a charge of murder in the first degree of Mr. John R. Lawson, member of the executive board of the United Mine Workers of America and the most conspicuous Colorado official of that organization. Mr. Lawson is an old resident of Colorado. He had worked his way from breaker boy to a position where he commands the respect and friendship of large numbers of the State's best citizens. He has appeared twice before the Commission, and members of the Commission and its agents have investigated carefully his record and character. As a consequence, he is believed to be a man of exceptionally high character and a good citizen in every sense of the term. The judge before whom he was tried was appointed by Governor Carlson after serving the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company as attorney and assisting in the preparation of cases against strikers. The panel from which the jury was drawn was selected by the Sheriff of Las Animas County, an official whose sympathies have been with the mine owners from the beginning. Much of the evidence on which he was convicted came from men in the employ of a detective agency retained by the coal companies. The killing of John Nimmo, a mine guard, by the strikers during one of the many skirmishes between them and the deputies was the crime for which Mr. Lawson was convicted. No effort was made to prove that he fired the fatal shot. He was held responsible for the death of Nimmo because he was leading the strike and was at the Ludlow tent colony on the day of the battle. Nimmo was one of a small army of deputy sheriffs, employed and paid by the coal companies and deputized by subservient sheriffs who had made little or no effort to investigate their records. Thus Sheriff Jefferson Farr, of Huerfano County, testified before this Commission that the men to whom he gave deputies' commissions might have been, so far as he knew, redhanded murderers fresh from the scene

of their crimes. That many guards deputized in this illegal fashion and paid by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company were men of the lowest and most vicious character has been clearly established. That their function was to intimidate and harass the strikers had been demonstrated in the strike of 1903, 1904 and had been made apparent early in the present strike by the shooting to death of Gerald Lippiatt, a union organizer, in the streets of Trinidad immediately after the calling of the strike, by a Baldwin-Felts detective employed by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and its associates and deputized by the sheriff of Las Animas County. In fact, it was to these deputies, then masquerading as national guardsmen, that national guard officers attempted to attribute the murder, looting and pillage that accompanied the destruction of the Ludlow tent colony of strikers later in the strike.

"On August 17th the Supreme Court of Colorado issued an order prohibiting Judge Granby Hillyer, who presided at Mr. Lawson's trial, from presiding at other trials of strikers or strike leaders on the ground that he had been, just prior to his appointment, an attorney for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and the other operators. The Court also issued a writ of supersedeas permitting the Lawson case to come before it on its merits.

"The prosecution and conviction of Mr. Lawson under these circumstances, and his sentence to life imprisonment at hard labor, marked the lowest depths of the prostitution of Colorado's government to the will of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and its associates. It is the crowning infamy of all the infamous record in Colorado of American institutions perverted and debauched by selfish private interests. It is anarchism stripped of every pretense of even that chimerical idealism that fires the unbalanced mind of the bomb thrower. It is anarchism for profits and revenge, and it menaces the security and integrity of American institutions as they seldom have been menaced before.

"Attorney General Farrar's bias in favor of the owners and his conception of fairness is well shown by his comment

on the grand jury which met at Trinidad in August, 1914, and which under his direction returned indictments against 124 strikers and strike leaders. Of this jury Mr. Farrar testified before the Commission in Denver:

"I desire to say here that regardless of the reports that have been made, I have never seen a more fair-minded body of men gathered together under conditions such as prevailed there than were the twelve men who constituted that grand jury, and the charges which were made that they were absolutely one-sided and partisan are absolutely without foundation whatever.'

"Following is the composition of this grand jury as reported by Mr. John A. Fitch, of the staff of The Survey, an investigator of established reliability and fairness:

"J. S. Caldwell, proprietor of a shoe store. Formerly with the Colorado Supply Company, the company store department of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company.

"James Roberts, public trustee. Secretary to F. R. Wood, president of the Temple Fuel Company.

"Charles Rapp, assistant cashier Trinidad National Bank, of which W. J. Murray, general manager of the VictorAmerican Fuel Company is stockholder and director. Formerly with Colorado Supply Company.

"Henry C. Cossam, rancher. Deputy Sheriff since April 25, 1914. Participated in one of the so-called battles.

"J. H. Wilson, real estate and insurance agent. Deputy sheriff since September 30, 1909. In charge of the deputies who attacked the Forbes tent colony October 17, 1913.

"William C. Riggs, rancher, whose son, W. E. Riggs, has been a deputy sheriff since January 20, 1911, and was in some of the battles in the fall of 1913.

"J. W. Davis, a Trinidad barber. "D. J. Herron, life insurance agent in Trinidad.

"E. E. Phillips, rancher, Hoehne, Colo. "John Webber, a Trinidad merchant. "Frank Godden, proprietor Hotel St. Elmo, Trinidad.

"David West, justice of the peace, Aguilar, Colo.

"Mr. Farrar's bias is further indicated by these additional extracts from his testimony at Denver:

"Chairman Walsh: 'What steps, if any, did you take to ascertain whether or not the military authorities and other authorities of the strike down there were acting in conformity with the constitution and statutes of the State, and whether or not the civil authorities were being deprived in any way of their powers?'

"General Farrar: 'Very little. During the time the militia was there, I was not in touch with the situation in an official capacity, except as it came to me through the Governor with the exception of one or two instances. General Chase and I did not have any conference. He was at Trinidad, and during the time the militia was in the field I was not at Trinidad although on two occasions I sent my deputy down to Trinidad, in order to be able to assist along certain lines which were then under discussion. And I therefore say that my relationship with the military authorities was largely indirectly through the Governor. I did, of course, know in a general way what was being done down there, and what lines were being followed; but it was not a definite daily report or information coming to me. I will say further in that respect that there were a number of attorneys in the National Guard, and that some of these were advising General Chase as to the local situation. My advice was, of course, of a more general nature and was always to the Governor with the exception of the two occasions when General Chase and I met in conference here.'

"Chairman Walsh: 'Do you know whether or not the testimony taken before the Military Commission, of which Major Boughton was the head, was preserved?'

"General Farrar: 'No, I know nothing of it. I have never seen the testimony and cannot answer your question.'

"Chairman Walsh: 'Did your office make any effort to ascertain whether or not the civil rights of any person had been violated or abused?'

"General Farrar: 'You mean by this Military Commission?'

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Are we going to make the most of our opportunities politically or are we going to be pawns? A pawn on a chess-board is of little value; it is an ambitionless part of the game; it aspires to nothing, and is pawned when the player sees fit. Remember we have only eighteen labor men in Congress and to do effective work we must have more.

Have you in your district a man who carries a union card who could properly represent Labor in Congress, to put in the field against the one who has misrepresented Labor? If you have, get in behind him and send him to Congress to represent you. You need him, and we all need him.

Freedom of speech, so' dearly bought in

this country, which at the whim of the Chief of Police of Columbus, Ohio, was so arbitrarily suspended for a season, has been re-established by a jury in Judge Berry's Court, who dismissed the charges against all the organizers who only asserted their legal rights in addressing the striking machinists.

The jury should have taken up the case of the police chief who would so far prostitute his high office in the suppression of God-given and law-given liberties of speech. Such things do happen and frequently in the monarchial countries of Europe, but to attempt such a travesty on justice in this country is too much. Such an officer should be impeached and dismissed in disgrace. If that was the procedure, there would be fewer judges and police chiefs who would at the bequest of some employers transgress the legal rights of the people.

We hear too frequently the statement that "a ring or a clique is running the union." The people that make these statements are the ones who absent themselves from the meetings and have no right to offer any criticism of what has been done when they are not there.

A ring or a clique in the usually meant term is composed of a few persons to whom is left the legislative work, for all the trouble is, that the absentees fail to keep on the inside of the ring. If they would all attend the meetings the ring would be so large that all would bear the responsibility for the legislation that was enacted. If all would attend the meetings nobody would be more delighted than the much berated ring or clique.

The member who does not attend the meetings of his local union has no kick coming and should cut out his curbstone knocking.

Of all the agencies for good and the betterment of the human race there is none that gives greater returns individually and collectively than the labor movement. It works silently, persistently, and unceasingly for the good of the people both in and out of its ranks.

Its authority breeds and instills temperance in all things, educates its members