VOLUME XXXVIII

The following communication and circular were received by Secretary-Treasurer Hays a few days since, and in compliance with the request made therein our ideas of the results in case of the adoption of the proposed plan are expressed:

DENVER, COLO., February 20, 1911. Mr. J. W. Hays, Editor Typographical Journal, Indianapolis, Ind.:

DEAR SIR AND BROTHER-By request of the closer affiliation committee appointed by Denver Typographical Union No. 49, I enclose a copy of a voting blank this committee is sending to all locals throughout the International jurisdiction, and ask you to give it space in the earliest number of THE JOURNAL possible, so that it may have the advantage of that thorough discussion that all matters of any economic import to our organization should have before any action is taken. If you think it worth your while, some editorial comment as to its shortcomings as to accomplishing what it aims to accomplish, from the point of view of the editor, would be appreciated by the committee and the membership at large. Fraternally yours,

NUMBER THREE

adelphia-on the Saturday Evening Post-while the pressmen stay at work, is suicidal.

Ten times as much time, energy and money are spent on strikes as should be, for a fifth of the workers can not beat the organized capitalists, ably assisted by the other four-fifths of the workers staying at work, who are also ably assisted by the rest of the working class, commonly known as "the public," observing strict impartiality by purchasing the things produced by four-fifths union labor and one-fifth non-union.

The following self-explanatory communication from the allied trades council of Denver was concurred in by Denver Typographical Union No. 49, and a committee appointed to secure the sense of other local unions in the matter, with the object of submitting some proposition to the International Typographical Union convention which will be in line with the majority opinion, and bring about that condition of real organized labor so much to be desired:

To the Local Unions and Members of the Printing Trades:

Time was when a trade union was unnecessary to the material welfare of any one compelled to work for wages. The supply of labor was such that any individual could negotiate satisfactory wage and working conditions without aid from any other individual.

As the method of production changed from that of individual to that of large industries, where numbers of wage earners were employed by huge business concerns, it became apparent to the wage earners that, under such conditions, they could no longer regulate their wages and hours individually, the result being that the members of each craft banded together and used their collective strength to enforce their demands. Thus was born the craft union.

For years each craft union acted as formerly the individual had acted; that is, each craft union felt itself strong enough to negotiate with the employers satisfactory wages and hours of work.

As in time it became apparent to the individual that he could no longer force his employer to grant his demands, so it is now becoming apparent to the members of craft unions that, as individual crafts, they are unable to cope on the economic field with their strongly intrenched and powerfully organized employers.

Taking lessons from our employers, the time has now come when the bitterness and enmity created in the past by the various crafts scabbing upon each other should be torn from our memories, and

that we should cast our united strength in a mold that will place us in a position to enforce such demands as we, in obedience to our material interests, choose to make upon those who hold us in wage slavery simply by performing the function of exercising ownership of the printing plants in which we are employed.

That your membership may be placed in a position to take some intelligent action on this very important phase of the labor movement, we offer for your consideration the following rough draft of an industrial form of organization, and request you to instruct your delegates to your next national convention to work for their incorporation in your international laws and that they be made a part of all contracts entered into by local and international bodies:

1. That an allied trades council be established in every city or town throughout your jurisdiction.

2. That each local allied trades council be composed of three representatives from each craft.

3. That all disagreements between any craft and the employers, which would in any way affect any other craft, be referred to the allied trades council for settlement.

4. That all contemplated changes in wage scales or hours of labor be first referred to the allied trades council. When agreed to by that body, all organizations allied with the council will be bound to support such demands as the craft requesting support may have made.

5. That all contracts or agreements, if any be made, by and between the various crafts and the employers shall become operative from the same day and date.

6. That whether any shop operating under the allied trades council agreement shall be union or "open" shall not be a subject for arbitration.

7. That any contract or agreement, if any be made, by and between any craft and the employers shall become null and void in case any employer attempts to operate any one of the allied trades departments with non-union labor.

We would earnestly request your union to consider and vote separately on the seven numbered paragraphs of the allied trades council communication, and register your approval or disapproval of same on corresponding number below the dotted lines, affix the seal of your local union, and return to F. C. Birdsall, postoffice box 681, Denver, Colo. Attached to the above circular was a ballot for voting on the propositions submitted separately.

Proposition No. 1 in the circular is all right so far as it is applicable. Of course, we have many small towns in which there are no organizations of the printing crafts except typographical unions, and in which it would be impossible to organize allied trades councils.

Proposition No. 2, in the opinion of the editor, contains the essence of the entire proposition and also the most danger to the membership of our organization. This provides that allied trades councils shall be composed of the same representations they now have, namely, three from each organization. Under this proposition there can be four or five organizations in the council with the same representation that the typo

graphical union will have. This means that it is possible for the typographical union to be outvoted on any proposition at the ratio of twelve or fifteen to three. In some instances the vote would be even larger than this. While it is not intended or desired to question the honesty or integrity of any representatives of the other printing. crafts, we still must consider it from the possibilities that may confront our subordinate organizations, and when we create a situation where typographical unions desiring to change conditions in composing rooms must depend upon the sanction of the representatives of five other organizations, then, indeed, will we be placing ourselves in a position which we do not believe the typographical unions care to occupy. The same element of selfishness that is contained in all of us must appear in organizations of the kind provided for in the proposed agreement. This being true, if the wages and conditions of the other organizations were satisfactory to their members, it is not likely that they would place all their organizations in jeopardy for the purpose of assisting the typographical union.

The third proposition provides that any disagreement that may arise between our craft and an employer (we say "our" craft here because the circular quoted above is addressed only to members of typographical unions and must be considered from this standpoint), which would in any way affect any other craft, be referred to the allied trades council for settlement. Under the proposed affiliation it is fair to presume that any disagreement which might arise between the members of our craft and an employer would, or at least should, affect the other allied trades. This being true, all agreements that we sought to make would be subject to ratification by the allied trades council, and for this reason meets with all the objections that we have to section 2. It would mean that if we had a disagreement with an employer this disagreement must be referred to the allied trades council, and any settlement made by the allied trades council must be accepted by us. We do not believe the typographical union has yet reached the point where it is willing to submit its disagreements to the pressmen,

the press assistants and the press feeders, together with the bookbinders, the photoengravers and the stereotypers. While it may be considered that this is looking at the agreement from a pessimistic standpoint, it nevertheless is the point from which the members of the typographical union should consider it, because it is likely that under an agreement of the kind proposed these are just the conditions we would be called upon to meet.

Section 4 of the circular provides that all contemplated changes in wage scales or hours of labor be first referred to the allied trades council. Here again we would have a situation where it would be impossible for us to change conditions or wages in any city in the country without first securing the consent of a majority of the other allied trades.

If the objections to the first four paragraphs of the proposed agreement could be overcome the last three paragraphs would be all right and acceptable on most any contract.

As stated above, the circular being sent out from Denver is addressed to members of typographical unions, and in this article we can only consider it from the standpoint of the typographical union. However much may be said in favor of the various organizations connected with the printing industry getting together and working in harmony, it must be remembered by our members that our superior organization and large membership places us in a class by ourselves, and naturally must result in our unions considering the points that are involved from a standpoint different from that which is liable to be assumed by the smaller and younger organizations. would be only natural for them to vote together upon the various propositions that would come before an organization of this kind. Taking the organization next in point of numbers to our own--the pressmen—and this agreement would give that organization representation in many towns from three, four or five organizations, as the pressmen, the web pressmen, the flatbed pressmen, the press assistants and the press feeders. These unions are composed of members controlled by one international union, but they would vote as units in an allied trades council and

It

would place the typographical union at a very decided disadvantage.

Muzzling the Magazines.

If the three-column story published in the New York Press a few weeks ago is true in even a majority of its details, to J. Pierpont Morgan must be awarded the palm for being a most successful press muzzler. At any rate, the story has been the cause for much comment and speculation. That the press can be muzzled when occasion requires is proven by calling to mind the warning sent out by C. W. Post to the newspapers to refrain from any comment on the successful suit for libel (in which a $50,000 verdict was rendered), instituted by Collier's Weekly against the elusory individual of Battle Creek. Now the New York Press claims that there are only three magazines in the United States that are not "susceptible to Wall street control," and, of course, one of them is Collier's Weekly. According to the Press article, Morgan already owns periodicals with a circulation of almost 3,000,000, or, taking a basis of four readers to a magazine, with a reading public of 12,000,000. It is asserted that those magazines which the Wall street wizard does not own outright, he controls "by suggestion." The magazines thus controlled by Morgan's suggestion, it is alleged, have a circulation of 2,000,000. The Press continues:

The combination of periodicals under the fostering care of J. P. Morgan is not regarded kindly by magazine owners. While there are publishers who are independent of banks, yet the combination tends to put them on the defensive. There is a probability that their advertising might decrease. The persuasion that could be used by Wall street financiers in swinging big blocks of advertising to friendly magazines is apparent. Even though a national advertiser lives in Oshkosh, he may find it difficult to get banking accommodations if he refuses to place his advertisements in magazines friendly to Wall street.

But the profit probably is a minor consideration with Morgan. Wall street has complained for many years about muckraking, corporation publicity and exposures that have hurt the stock market. Morgan and his associates have felt the sting of the editorial lash in newspapers, magazines, and comic papers. They long have wished for a way to control editorial policies and prevent attacks on corporations, because untimely publicity has

spoiled many of their plans. Morgan and his allies have tried at various times to work out plans for the control of newspapers in this and other cities. The dread of magazines has been so great because they are read with care by the wealthy and they have a great influence upon the investing public. Wall street financiers long have appreciated the value of what they consider proper publicity, and at the same time they have feared ruthless exposure of corporate evil.

The object of such an organization would be to make its component publications more profitable and also to control their editorial policy. Although there is no direct evidence of such a plan, the article in the Press concludes with the following prophecy:

Within six months the entire complexion of the magazine world will be changed. The publications which Morgan is gathering together will be widely known. Independent magazines may find a fight on their hands, but as events cast their shadows before them, so the shadows in the magazine circles today have got many persons guessing and expecting important developments to happen soon.

The story in the New York Press doubtless was inspired by the taking over of the American Magazine by the Crowell Publishing Company. It seems that Thomas W. Lamont, a recent acquisition to the Morgan banking firm, controls the Crowell Company, and consequently it is the opinion of many that the editors of the American Magazine will be less "radical" and more cautious in the future.

It would be little short of a calamity to the American public should the prophecy of the Press prove true. We all know that the so-called "muckraking" periodicals have been of immense benefit in exposing frauds, and not the least of these has been Collier's Weekly, which has rendered the people invaluable service, spurning the dirty dollars of all known purveyors of fraudulent products, and not only refusing them advertising space, but denouncing them in its editorial columns.

ACCORDING to the biennial report of the state auditor, the Kansas printing plant is credited with saving $100,000 during the past five years over what would have been expended had the work been done by private concerns. This would seem to be a sufficient inducement for other states to follow the example of Kansas.

"Big Six" Honors Greeley.

The centenary celebration of the birth of Horace Greeley was fittingly celebrated on February 5 by New York Typographical Union No. 6, of which he was the first president, when the members and their families filled the large New York Theater and listened to eulogies by several famous orators. Albert J. Beveridge, United States senator from Indiana, declared Greeley the prophet in his time of a brighter day for those who toil. He painted a vivid picture of the "old and savage theory that the workingman is merely merchandise like a sack of flour or a bucket of coal," and told of Greeley's struggles to change this condition. The Indiana senator said, in part:

The labor problem is the fundamental problem. Believing this, Horace Greeley was, in his time, the prophet of a brighter day for those who toil. The great journal which he founded became, in a critical period, the trumpet of American conscience; yet even above his fame as one of the most brilliant journalists the world has produced stands his renown as a champion of the rights of labor.

Even in his early manhood Horace Greeley saw that simple and sublime truth that the laborer is not merely a commodity. The old and savage theory that the workingman is merely merchandise, like a sack of flour or a bucket of coal or a thrashing machine; that the life energies of man, woman and child should be bought in a labor market at the lowest price which the competition of hunger made possible; that the employer need not think of the employe as a human being, but only as a working animal to be used until exhausted and then cast aside-that idea is the child of brutal barbarism.

It came down to us from the hideous past. It has built more hovels and prevented the building of more homes; placed more broken human beings. in their graves and filled the abiding places of mankind with more misery and woe than all the wars that have cursed the world. To Horace Greeley this idea of human labor was horrible. More and more the principle of brotherhood is making its conquest of our industrial and commercial life. For the present progress and final triumph of the idea of the laborer as a human being, as much, if not more, credit is due Horace Greeley as to any other single American intellect. His declaration that "Man was not made merely to eat, work and sleep" went to the hearts of his countrymen when he uttered it and comes to us today like the burning words of the Hebrew prophets.

His battle cry was "A place for every man and a man for every place." He was among the greatest of the advocates of organized labor. It was Horace Greeley who declared that "The aggregate waste of labor and faculty for want of organization in any year exceeds the cost of any war for

five years, ruinous and detestable as all war is. It is palpable fatuity and criminal waste of the divine bounty to let this go on interminably."

Not even today does any economist more thoroughly understand the philosophy of the organization of labor than Horace Greeley understood it three-quarters of a century ago. And no man today expounds with more guarded thoughtfulness or brilliant argument the common sense and beneficence of organized labor than did this journalistic tribune of the people from early manhood to the very sunset of his life. He believed labor entitled to higher wages. Horace Greeley thought that labor, which, jointly with capital, produces this wealth, should get an increased and increas ing share of it.

Even in that day Greeley was shocked at the. lightning-like accumulation of riches in the hands of a few who did little to earn them and the appalling increase of the thousands who asked only an opportunity to work that they might eat. No clearer light ever has been thrown on unjustifiable industrial and financial inequalities than Horace Greeley's remorseless analysis; few stronger denunciations of this wicked condition ever were pronounced since the time when the Divine Equalizer gave to mankind His sacred message 2,000 years ago. Greeley was carefully practical; he did not propose to cure between morning and nightfall all the injustices we have inherited from the beginning of time.

But there were some things upon which he did insist as immediately necessary and not to be compromised. One of these was a shortening of the laborer's working day. The employers thought this meant their business injury-even their bankruptcy. Greeley showed them, instead, that shorter hours and higher wages meant the employers' increased prosperity. The fact that in nearly fifty trades there is at the present time an eight-hour day by agreement between employers and their organized employes; that as a result there is an increased and better product, a sturdier, happier and more enlightened laboring class; that there are more homes and fewer hovels for these laborers and that those homes have more books, music and comforts than ever before, is due to this humane agitation for a shorter day of labor, of which Horace Greeley was one of the first and greatest American apostles.

Child labor is America's peculiar industrial shame. It is a crime against manhood laborevery child laborer at childhood wages takes the place of a man laborer at manhood wages. It is a crime against childhood-every little one has an inalienable, a sacred, right to grow into soundbodied, clear-brained, pure-souled maturity. It is a crime against society; it pours into our citizenship a stream of people weakened in body and mind. It is an insult to our religion, whose

founder said: "Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of God."

Horace Greeley was against it. Even in his day, when greed had scarcely begun to chain us to this body of death, he sought to restrain it-when child

labor in America was a pleasant pastime compared with the black brutality of child labor in America today. What would he say now if he could see the reeking sweatshops, the clouded coal breakers, the thundering mills, where scores of thousands of little ones are being sacrificed to Mammon in the name of a false prosperity? Here is how he summed up his unanswerable arguments for a higher estate for those who toil. "A better social condition, enlarged opportunities for good, an atmosphere of humanity and hope, would insure a nobler and truer character, and that the dens of dissipation will clear to leave those whom a proper education has qualified and whom excessive toil has not disqualified for the improvement of liberty and leisure."

Most of the labor reforms which Greeley proposed and for which he fought already have been realized in part and ultimately and soon will be realized entirely. In short, the day is dawning when the evils that Greeley denounced and the principal reforms which he proposed will be accomplished. And when the sun of that day is fully above the horizon its glad light will reveal Horace Greeley as the heroic figure of that notable epoch for those who toil-Horace Greeley at once that epoch's prophet, philosopher, orator and sol dier of the common good.

William H. McElroy, a former editor of the New York Tribune, told of Greeley's passionate love for work.

Andrew McLean, editor of the Brooklyn Citizen, thought that Greeley's history was a good warning to all journalists to keep out of politics, and explained whimsically Greeley's desires to run for office as being due to a combination of mysterious modesty and a burning desire for fame.

Anent the Postal Service.

All fair-minded and impartial observers will agree that there is something radically wrong with the post office department since the economy program of Postmaster-General Hitchcock has been put in force. To prove that he is an economist, it is alleged that the present postmaster-general remits $700,000 a year in fines on the railroads for not running trains on time, and overworks, fines and cuts down the salaries of the actual workers in the various departments so as to "save" eleven and a half million dollars.

Postal employes are up in arms protesting against the "economies" of Mr. Hitchcock, by which he has almost succeeded in turning an annual deficit in the postoffice