not, it will be of a less amount. That is all there is to the proposition.

The conclusions jumped at by some opponents of life insurance in our unions are, apparently, mere presumptions, backed up by no data to prove them. For instance, one correspondent from San Francisco, last month, says, speaking of the International Typographical Union entering the life insurance field (whatever he may mean by that expression): "Our officials now occupy about a dozen rooms in a modern office building, at a rental of $325 per month. With life insurance added, I presume they would require about two whole floors, or possibly the entire building. Your assessments would start with $1 per month and would soon reach $2 and $3 per month." What does the writer expect to do by such, a statement? Scare somebody? Does he take the rank and file of our membership to be so unfamiliar with mortuary possibilities as to be influenced by such bare statements, that can, with a few moments' reflection, be knocked to pieces? Or, does he really believe what he says, and which, if analyzed, means that it would require a much greater force to write checks for $200, $500 or $1,000 on the death of a member than it now does for $75? That the payment of said larger amounts would cause our printers to die off two and three times faster than they do now, when they only get $75? How absurd!

There are reasons why I believe $1 per month would not be quite sufficient to pay for $1,000 insurance, while that proportion is and has been sufficient to pay the smaller amount of $75, and one reason is, that the larger protection would hold our members to their membership through life more largely than it does now, and to that extent the death rate would be or might be increased, but never doubled or trebled. This point I tried to make clear in my November article. The possibility of the printers' union ever coming to the point when there would be none but old members in it, the same as some fraternal associations have found themselves in, in the past, is not a tenable position at all, for the fact remains that our young men are and will continue indefinitely to be coming into the printing business, and, consequently, the union, not for the sake of the insurance or other benefits, but as a means of earning a living. The cigarmakers' union is a good example of how that works. If the payments of large benefits, that necessarily carried heavy assessments or dues with them, would be held to act as a deterrent to young men to enter the trade or the union, then this organization has proved the contrary, for with a membership of only 1,016 in 1877, when it had no dues to speak of, it began to grow with the introduction of international benefits, and the larger the benefits became and the larger the dues, the faster the membership increased, until today the members of this organization pay international dues of 30 cents per week, and there are nearly 50,000 members.

Another bugaboo to life insurance in our union is the fact that we depart entirely from all insurance practice in such matters, by insuring all alike. I mean by that, that we mean to give this benefit

to the physically unsound the same as the sound. That is held to be a grave danger. But is it? Let's see. A young man, to join the printers' union, has to serve four or five years, at least, at the trade, be fore he is eligible. It is true, he may have developed tendencies in that time that would bar him from other insurance, but he is not going to know that probably four or five years prior to that time, making it possible that his one and only object in getting into the trade was for the sake of the insurance. With the purely insurance companies or associations this is different. To them the physical examination is absolutely necessary to keep themselves from being overloaded with physical wrecks; but the experience of all these companies and associations is that this examination is of value only for the first three years of the member's connec tion with the company or association. After that a normal condition exists that places the risks on about the same plane as the general community enjoys for equal ages.

If the death rate for the last eighteen years has been hardly thirteen to the 1,000, and included all classes and kinds of physical conditions, the future will not be much different, for the continual upbuilding by the young printers will keep things normal. No possible benefits that the printers may see fit to give themselves, or inflict upon themselves to support, will ever stop the necessity for printers, and it may as safely be concluded that any of these benefits, that a majority of the union members will vote upon themselves, will not be so burdensome to the minority as to drive them out of the union or the business.

In conclusion, let me say, I am not making these points especially as a boost to a maximum of $1,000 insurance, but they are as applicable to any increase as to the $1,000 figure. A safe and sane proposition would be one increasing our burial benefits to $200 or thereabouts. Beyond that I should prefer to see some other benefits established before further increasing the burial insurance. This course, I believe, is even agreeable to many of those who have argued against an insurance of a maximum amount of $1,000 as being something impossible to be done by the International without disastrous results. If we give ourselves the $200 increased burial benefit the machinery for administering it need not be increased, for, as I have before stated, it takes no more time to write a check for $200 than for $75, and I don't think the printers will be inclined to die any faster for the $200 than they have been doing for the $75.

Delegates to the St. Joseph convention, who will have this proposition to deal with in some form, without doubt, will conserve all interests by such a compromise proposition to present to the referendum. It will give a much desired increase to our burial benefit, and will not kill the opportunity for a larger increase, if desired in the future; whereas a proposition for an increase, at this time, to a flat $1,000, would stand a pretty fair chance of being voted down. CHARLES H. WHITTEMORE. Albany, N. Y.

Look before, or you'll find yourself behind. Franklin.

INJUNCTION, CONTEMPT AND FREE SPEECH.

A wrong is done our comrades under sentence -President Gompers, Vice-President Mitchell, Secretary Morrison-when it is assumed that they are defiant lawbreakers. They are authorized investigators, seeking by experiment to find out what the law is on a certain point in which trade unionism is vitally interested. There is no other way open by which the question may be determined. It can not be resolved by the arguments of the contesting parties, nor by the press, nor by law-school discussion. Neither is it to be settled by the decision of a single judge or several judges of the lower courts in one part of our great country or another before whom the matter may come in a haphazzard way or in a phase that permits only a circumscribed view of the subject.

Our comrades are standing up for an interpretation of the law which seems to trade unionists to be not only favorable to their interests, but eventually to the welfare of all citizens. That interpretation is essential to the inviolability of the basis of American institutions-free communication of ideas.

to

It would be an audacious presumption for a layman to obtrude his dissenting opinion in regard either to those details of the law that call for an intimate knowledge of technical practice or those legal problems on the answer to which authorities of the law in general were agreed against him. But here we have no such case. Not details but a dominant broad principle is the question. Not concordance of authorities on that principle, but their discordance is confronted.

Plainly, the law in this case is not settled. Points at issue in the lower courts usually turn These are to on the determination of the facts. be ascertained by the evidence. The facts known, the judges state the accepted applicable law. The number of cases in which the lower courts err in thus interpreting the law, as shown by the appeals, is comparatively few. The higher courts aim at bringing into alignment with settled legal principles, established by legislation or precedent, the Comdecisions in question coming before them. monly, the review judges are guided by principles in the law more or less well established.

But in this case, as brought before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the defendants, having decided it was unnecessary to dispute the facts as alleged by their opponents, asked for the court's decision on a pure question of law which Their case is not they find is not established. one in which the judgment of the inferior court could with certainty be accepted as sound. Up to the stage of appeal three divergent views of what the law is, or ought to be, were presented before the country by learned exponents of the law-the attorneys for the plaintiffs, the attorneys for the defendants, and the judge issuing the injunction. The plaintiffs' counsel had quoted much lore and precedent to show that defendants ought to be punished as malefactors; the defendants' counsel believed they had more than matched such presentation by other offsetting lore and precedent illustrating their clients' innocence and even

patriotism; the judge, disagreeing on points with both sides, leaned toward the plaintiffs, but satisfied neither. When, next, the court of appeals rendered its decision there came, not one clearcut, conclusive, convincing opinion, but two, from three judges, converging, it is true, by a majority of two to one, at a practical judgment affirming only two points in the previous injunction, which contained many points of inhibition.

This new injunction, therefore, actually wiped out much of the law alleged-shall we say made? -by the court under review. A new glimpse at the will-o'-the-wisp law bearing on the subject was substituted for the previous guesses. As a result, the legal working machine which was intended by the lower court as an instrument henceforth automatically to run off injunctions to order was destroyed. In ignoring much in the injunction of that court our comrades would not have disobeyed the law.

The three appeal judges carried their labors further. One of them tried to knock away props, wheels, and connecting belts from the new machine constructed by the two others. He would have retained but one point in the new injunc tion. He would put no injunction on free speech, no matter whether in furtherance of a boycott or not. So the outcome to date is still sad and chaotic uncertainty.

While awaiting developments the union laymen, looking over the scrap heap of legal decisions that have been brought to bear upon organized labor, even within the last four or five decades, need not be unhappy. In this freshest lot of rejected stuff in the foreground-the spokes, bars and brakes made by the lower court in the District of Columbia and thrown aside as of no account by the court of appeals-is bitter discouragement for the union man's present antagonists. Back further on the pile are humps and heaps of that half-forgotten rusty legal framework from which in days not remote was turned out an enormous number of decrees that converted honest workingmen into conspirators because they joined trade unions and went on strike. Further back looms up acres of the oppressive judicial junk which held down the laborers before the days of our revolution and our common schools.

The American wageworkers' power over his rights has largely sprung from his own knowledge -plus votes.

Turning to survey the modern legal machinery, both legislative and judiciary, which gives recog nition to his rights as he sees them, the union man may contemplate it with satisfaction. "Time was," said Judge Taft after he was elected to the presi dency, "when everybody who employed labor was opposed to the labor union, when it was regarded as a menace. That time, I am glad to say, has largely passed away, and the man today who ob jects to the organization of labor should be relegated to the last century."

Agreed. Now, the two main principles for which organized labor contends today are the control of its combined labor power and the control of its combined purchasing power.

In both respects the control has been employed in this country in proportion to the organization of labor, despite the opposition frequently of employers and occasionally of courts. With regard

to the workers' control of their labor power, of bestowing it or withholding it, the courts are now of one opinion. The wage earner is there at liberty. And with regard to his purchasing power the courts, today wabbling, are saying and doing things that look both ways. Observe how much is being declared that is favorable to the union men. A Montana court has recently rendered a decision recognizing the legality of the boycott. In this latest case the three justices of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals agree that "the boycott is a combination to harm one person by coercing others to harm him." Mark that. This court asserts it has no power to compel union men to purchase the goods of a non-union manufacturer. To refuse to purchase and to publish this refusal is their right. That is not the boycott, legally. The boycott, legally, only appears when unionists by threats prevent a third party from purchasing the non-union goods.

Recognizing these points, counsel for the manufacturers' association now tells us: "There is no primary boycott; all boycotts are secondary."

It is legal in effect, says the district appeal court, for all union men to withhold their purchasing power from A; it is illegal to threaten B that they will withhold their purchasing power from him in order to compel him to cease buying from A. In that idea there's clear ground gained over those virtuous opponents of "labor tyranny" who. hotly denounce "the boycott" as immoral, meaning the joint refusal of the organized classes to buy from A. The courts, it can not be repeated too often, recognize this action as not unjust or illegal.

Justice Shepard, in his minority opinion, says: "The persons composing the organization of the American Federation of Labor had a legal right to agree together not to purchase the goods of the Buck's Stove and Range Company. Refusing to purchase those goods does not constitute a 'boycott' in the legal sense." Justice Shepard, it is to be borne in mind, is also of the opinion that the Federation of Labor should not be restrained from "the publication of the name of that company in the 'We Don't Patronize' columns of the American Federationist, no matter what the object of such publication may be suspected or believed to be."

On the whole, then, this investigation of our representative comrades into the law as affecting the boycott and freedom of speech and of the press has resulted in great enlightenment. Much of that misty jumble of notions on the subject entertained in employing and business class circles, and sometimes referred to in the press as public opinion, must be revised in view of this appeal court's work of modifying the injunction of the court below.

These steps thus gained may justify the layman's confidence in his own ability to form a conception of what in certain cases is or ought to be his

rights under the constitution. When he reaches a cross-current of the clear constitutional principles of our republic with a stream of muddy precedents drawn from many questionable sources short of the highest United States court back to Edward the Confessor, his common school education and his American spirit prompt a course of action he is prepared to defend in court or in jail.

Under this democratic government, it is also to be remembered, the opinion of the people in general is the foundation of all law. The mass of citizens can and do go beyond the courts, law. makers and so-called governors in reconstructing constitutions. A powerful body such as the American Federation of Labor, having a definite principle to promote, and supporting it with the dignity and determination shown in the present instance by our standard bearers, may in due course win popular approval over judges, whether of intemperate word, as in the lower court here before us, or of uncertain and diverse views, as in the appeal court. The nation may be persuaded that the views of Justice Shepard and Alton B. Parker on free speech as guaranteed by the constitution

are correct.

Meantime, there is no doubt that the penal sentence imposed on our three fellow-unionists is regarded throughout America as existing simply in a pickwickian sense. The motives of the defendants -being the upbuilding of rights they believe vital to the preservation of American institutions--compel respect in every walk of life. Their prosecutors, in turn, are performing a service to the country in playing devil's advocate in a cause foredoomed to failure.

The promise at present is that the conclusion of this contest will be gratifying to progressive and enlightened men throughout the world. Their sense of justice bade them to look with approval on the enactment of the trades disputes bill in the British Kingdom. Here is a possibility of a step forward also in America in the direction of rendering indisputable a man's right to give out what is in his mind and take the legal consequences as determined by a jury of his peers. New York, N. Y.

J. W. SULLIVAN.

THE HOME AND THE PENSION.

In another month our International legislature will be in session, and one of the most important "acts" for discussion and amendment before that body will be the newly tried pension law. With the Union Printers Home loyally and generously supported, an adequate death benefit and a fair and benevolent pension system well and securely established, I think the International Typographical Union will have enough to do in meeting the exigencies of an imperfect, if not evil, economic system, without experimenting further with dangerous insurance schemes.

Benevolence should be tempered with a spirit of fair play and justice, and I would like to make a few suggestions for the consideration of the delegates. It is well and good as a beginner to take care of the aged first, and safeguard the funds by

all legitimate means; but now that the fund is growing rapidly, instead of increasing the pension to such proportions as to invite abuse, I would suggest that all members, regardless of age, who, through accident or disease, are totally incapaci tated from earning a living, be considered eligible for the pension. I would not change the "twentyyears-continuous-membership" clause, neither would I increase the weekly payment to more than $5 under any circumstances. If an applicant is living in an expensive locality, let the local union add 50 cents or $1 a week to the pension, and carefully investigate the worthiness of the case.

me.

The writer is at present, and has been for over four years, a resident of the Home, and, incidentally, I wish to say it has been a real home to I shall always have nothing but kind words and praise for our Union Printers Home. I have not had a single complaint of a personal nature to make since I have been here. I utter these words with sincere and affectionate gratitude. Yet I ask the delegates to consider my case as typical, no doubt, of scores of others. I joined the union be fore I was 19; I am now 47-more than twentyeight years' continuous membership. I have obeyed the order to strike four times, each time throwing up a good job. I am now totally incapacitated from labor, my case being considered incurable. Yet I am not eligible to the pension! I have the Home, yes. But why should I not be given a chance to change the scene, or to spend my last days with my people? The cost of my "keep" to the Home is about $8 a week. To grant me a pension would be to reduce my "cost" to the International Typographical Union about 50 per cent. I do not say I would accept the pension; perhaps I am better off where I am. But I ask the delegates, why should a printer with my long and honorable career as a union man (I say it with pride) be denied the pension? WILLIAM A. SMITH.

Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs, Colo.

NOT A PARADE BUT A PRESS AGENT. Shall we have a Labor day parade? Detroit chapels voted on this question on June 15, and one of the largest chapels voted, I think, unanimously, "No." Why should we have a parade? To show our women folks what fine steppers we are; or is it to bluff our employers and cheat ourselves out of a whole day's enjoyment?

Bluffs are played out in the labor world. We may better go fishing with our wives and children. Labor "wars" have become a matter of business, organization and long green; and organization and long green are all on the side of the laboring man, as all the world is finding out. The parades of organized labor were a wonderful eye-opener in days gone by; but it is a sorry spectacle now compared with the parade of brains, foresight and executive ability displayed by the leading organizations.

So let us parade the best we have-brains, not bodies. We are not a conquering host who go out to fight with shooting sticks and mallets. Our battles are fought, as the most recent great wars between nations have been fought-behind closed

doors. The side that has the highest stack of chips wins-we win.

Our organization makes the daily press possible; but if the public hears of our doings it is through the medium of some little half-starved labor paper. If we were really alive to the benefits to be derived from properly advertising our many excellent features, conventions and doings, it would soon be a matter of no special comment when a daily paper of large circulation gave us a writeup. Some one defined "Christian Science healing" as a firm conviction that you've got to get well. That is the way we have won in the past; not by any special method. Publicity is the great cure-all; the sun of every righteous cause; that shrivels only the "hard-faced and soft-bodied" degenerate.

I move that all delegates to the next International convention be instructed to vote for the addition of a press agent to the officers of all locals. The regular business agent may, or may not, be especially fitted for the task; but a press agent we must have. F. W. MOORE.

Detroit, Mich.

THE RIGHTS OF SUBS.

The sub for several past months has been trajected before JOURNAL readers by contributions from friends and foes of the priority law. By some he has been pictured as a palladium, holding aloft, instead of a spear, a copy of the priority law; by others as a buzzard, waiting for his prey.

ca

The regular is the product of legislation, the sub the byproduct. The sub's opportunities for work usually depend upon the necessities or price of others. No sub has a recognized personal right to work a day in a year, and whether, in the effulgence of the priority discussion, the sub has become a palladium or a buzzard, in the mass subs have made no net material gains. The sub is protected from unjust discrimination on the part of a foreman in filling situations-in fact, he gen erally has more protection in that respect than a foreman; but the sub has no protection from unjust discrimination on the part of a regular. A regular may studiously avoid giving work to certain subs. The color of their hair may be of a disagreeable shade, or they may have criticized some act of the regular from a union standpoint, and thereby incurred his displeasure; but the right of the regular to give work to whom he chooses is not questioned. However, the regular may reserve the right to raise his voice in protest against any similar discrimination against a sub by a foreman, showing that he does not permit his personal animosities to stand in the way of his upholding a principle.

Must a sub seeking work stand on his own merits, and, if so, what do those merits consist of, and are they in fact possessed by one sub in greater degree than another? Should not the same principle which prevents a sub from securing a situation by so-called merit forbid him from securing or accepting any work through the same quality or process?

Local unions should be permitted the privilege of adopting some plan providing for absolute fair

ness in the distribution of work among subs, as well as in the giving out of situations. While conventions have voted down propositions looking to rotation in the giving out of work, there are other methods which have not the objectionable features of the rotation system. For instance, the following: The installation of department slipboards having three sections, the intermediate section for regulars and office; the names of subs on slips to occupy one outer section labeled "available;" a day's work to the credit of a sub to be indicated by the placing of his slip on the other outer section labeled "not available;" subs and extras to be selected from the "available" section until it is emptied, when the labels will be shifted and the operation repeated; subs not seeking work temporarily withdrawing their slips, to return them to the "not available" section; new subs to take like position; all subs to be put on for one day only.

By this plan a regular would put on a sub or the office an extra, who, after working one day, would, if not relieved, put on another sub, if there were any. While permitting of selection to a varying degree, an absolutely equal division of work would be secured. M. J. FARRIER.

Baton Rouge, La.

AN EMPLOYMENT BUREAU. Printers desirous of changing their place of residence from town to city, from city to city, from city to country, and vice versa, are almost as isolated in working toward their desires as if no organization existed. The single man, without incumbrance, cap well afford to sustain the traditions of the craft and move from place to placethe chances he takes are moderate, and perhaps the flavor of uncertainty is more or less welcome.

But where the health of the printer, or the health and well being of his family are in the balance, and the daily wage is adequate only to ordinary living expenses-as it usually is the mental strain and worry that come on the printer when he learns that he must seek employment elsewhere is a real affliction. The international scope of the organization and the broad spirit of helpfulness which characterizes the typographical union gives encouragement to the belief that in its wisdom it may be disposed to add to its beneficial features some plan whereby the labor field may be accurately surveyed and reported for the benefit of the craft.

For many years the writer has been in receipt of letters from printers seeking situations in various parts of the country and from employers seeking men of specific qualifications. This work grew to proportions that required some plan of making records, and for some years the Inland Printer has sustained what is practically a free bureau of labor. The service it has been able to do the trade and the help it has been to individuals have been proven sufficiently to satisfy the writer that if the International Typographical Union were to establish such a bureau it would prove not the least important and popular feature of its many beneficent activities. A. H. MCQUILKIN. Chicago, Ill.