One of the first witnesses called to testify against the guards stated that he had been a miner for twenty-seven years; that he was contributing to the defense fund of the prisoners; that he was told that he would receive $10 per day for the time lost during the trial.

The failure of the attorneys for the defense to cross-examine the guards who testified, their chief concern apparently being to impress upon the jury that these men were private guards, causes the Chicago Tribune to inquire in an editorial if that is all.

"Men who escaped from the Herrin massacre have been telling the story of their experience," says the editorial. "It is a story of treachery and cold blooded atrocity. It is a story of first hand knowledge and there is no cross-examination by counsel for the defense. At the close one of the latter asks one question: "You were one of the guards sent down by the Hargraves agency?' Witness: 'Yes.' Attorney for defense: "That is all.'

"The theory of defense is 'justifiable homicide.' The story of atrocity is not shaken. It cannot be shaken. Counsel for the defense merely establishes that the witness and victim was a 'scab.' That is all.

"Is that all?

"That is a question not only for the jury at Marion but for responsible unionism and for self-respecting citizenship. Is it justifiable homicide to torture and slaughter men because they are on the other side of an industrial and economic controversy? Is unionism to be granted the right to pass beyond the laws of civilized society, even of civilized warfare, to punish any one who interferes with its purpose? Has a 'scab' rights? Or may any union man kill one at will?

"The men butchered at Herrin surrendered on promise of safety. The promise was broken and they were murdered. They were nonunion men. They were strikebreakers. They were 'scabs', and they were murdered.

"Is that all?"

THROTTLING BUILDING CONSTRUCTION

Restrictive Rules of Plumbers' Union Causes Artificial Shortage of Labor

What was supposed to be the first of a series of open meetings under the auspices of the Association of Master Plumbers was held in Terrace Garden, New York City, December 6. The purpose of the meeting was to bring to the attention of the public abuses said to be fostered by the plumbers' union, and which have created a virtual famine in the labor supply. Employers are forced to pay from $10 to $15 a day for plumbers despite the fact that the union scale is $9.

Samuel Untermyer, counsel for the Lockwood Committee, said over a year ago that he would force the union to reform, but according to the master plumbers they are enforcing their unlawful practices as much as ever. Every journeyman plumber, for instance, is not allowed to have a helper. When two men are required on a job, both must be journeymen. If this one rule could be changed, it is claimed it would cut the cost of construction from 5% to 10% and increase the amount of labor available about 25%.

RESTRICTIONS ON USE OF MACHINES COSTLY

Another rule which makes the cost of pipe cutting 50% greater than it should be and uses 15% to 20% more labor than necessary is the demand of the union that pipe be cut by hand instead of by machinery, and that it be done on the job and not in the shop or factory. Fixtures sent to jobs must be dismantled and re-assembled by union men; cards of union men coming from other sections of the country are not recognized. Then there is the old-time rule which keeps apprentices out of the union and refuses to allow helpers to handle tools, thus preventing them from learning a trade.

PIPE CUTTING NOT SKILLED WORK

"A single phase of the situation forced by the union is enough to show the economic evil that is wrought," says the New York Herald editorially. "Pipe cutting and threading

represents half the work of general plumbing. This work could be done quickly and economically with power machinery in the shops. But the plumbers' union compels the plumbing contractors to have all pipe cut by hand on the job. The cutting and threading of pipe is not skilled work. A fairly strong boy can learn in a day to cut and thread pipe up to the diameter of two inches. But the apprentices and helpers who used to cut and thread pipe are not permitted to do so; the union forbids. In fact, the union does not allow apprentices. It allows helpers, but only one for every two journeymen plumbers. And a helper is no longer allowed to use tools, not even such simple devices as pipe cutters and the stocks and dies that are employed in threading.

JOURNEYMEN BUSY DOING UNSKILLED WORK

"The result of these union rules is that the helpers, who should be busy with work they are perfectly competent to do, are used only as porters for the journeymen. And the journeymen, who should be busy with the skilled end of plumbing, spend half their time on unskilled work and ask $9 or more a day.

"Thus labor is wasted. Thus money is thrown away. Thus young men who might be learning a trade are denied the experience they need. Thus, at a time of housing shortage, construction is blocked by the lack of labor."

LOCKWOOD COMMITTEE TO ACT

The Lockwood Committee has been investigating the charges, and it seems likely that a bill will be introduced at the coming legislative session to regulate and supervise the constitutions, by-laws, rules and practices of labor unions within the state.

We enjoy exceptional advantages, and are menaced by exceptional dangers, and all signs indicate that we shall either fail greatly or succeed greatly. I firmly believe that we shall succeed; but we must not foolishly blink at the dangers by which we are threatened, for that is the way to fail.

-(Theodore Roosevelt.)

WHAT THE WORKER HAS GAINED UNDER AMERICAN CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

Workman of Today Enjoys Comforts and Pleasures of Which His Forefathers Never Dreamed

If we stop to consider what almost all of us enjoy, what the man and woman engaged in manual work enjoy, often with no thought of how they have come to possess it, we shall have a useful corrective of radical distortion and pessimism.

The fact is that the wage earners in America with exceptions confined chiefly to those who have recently arrived and imported with them a considerable part of the conditions which harrow the feelings of our liberals, already possess the things radical propaganda declares they must win for themselves by tearing down the system under which they enjoy it.

Leisure is one of these, yet the bourgeois business man or clerk, on his way home after the day's work, has usually been preceded by the eight hour day wage earner. The radical demands for the proletariat, the higher pleasures of life, books, the play, music. Yet books, magazines, and the press are cheap and universal. The moving picture, at a low price, brings the greatest actors and actresses before the multitude in innumerable neighborhood theaters. The cheap victrola brings a Caruso or a Galli-Curci into the mechanic's cottage, if he wants them.

The children of the poorest laborers are offered essential education at the expense of the state, and so favorable are the economic, social, and political conditions available to every responsible individual that almost every high place in business, finance, the professions, and politics is occupied by a man who began without fortune or worldly influence.

The American rule is not that those on the top rung remain there but that the top rung belongs to the man who has had the energy and wit to reach it from the lowest.

CAPITALISM STIMULATES INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE

In short, if we are not induced by propaganda to fix our thought on the extreme and the exceptional, it is as clear as

daylight that under American conditions the widest well being not only is possible but actually exists. We are told that capitalism is a system of inequity and oppression of the majority, especially of the manual toiler. Yet capitalism by stimulating industry and encouraging private initiative has produced and is producing increasingly a volume of wealth permitting and insuring a comfort, welfare, and steady progress which virtually everyone can and does possess.

The common laborer of today can and does enjoy comforts and pleasures of which the aristocrats of a century ago did not dream. His dwelling is warmer and better lighted than their palaces. When he goes to work he has comfortable and swift means of transportation far beyond the possibilities of an English duke or a French marquis of a few generations ago. Very few plutocrats or princes in the days of their greatness could hear a Caruso or see the greatest actors of their day save on special occasions. They were far more at the mercy of disease and suffered more discomforts than the thrifty and intelligent wage earner of America in our time.

THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

INSURES REWARD FOR EFFORT

In short, capitalism, which is founded on the principle of private property by insuring in large degree the reward of effort to him who will make the effort, has so stimulated invention, organization, distribution, and production that virtually the whole body of the people, in this country especially, but also in less degree in other modernized countries, has been raised by our common efforts to a high plane of physical security and comfort. Assisted by political freedom and social democracy it has made possible intellectual experiences which were unknown to the privileged few of past ages.

Nevertheless, the radical of the communist variety, if not less extreme revolutionaries, would have us return-in a delusion of popular progress to a state of society which existed in primitive times. He would abolish private property and destroy its influence for self advancement, the great force producing the wealth from which we all draw the comforts and pleas