The American Employer A MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE BUSINESS Editorial Comment The A. F. of L. Convention at Seattle No. 5 On the morning of November tenth, the thirty-third annual convention of delegates representing the various constituents of the American Federation of Labor was called to order in the Hippodrome, at Seattle, Washington, by President Samuel Gompers, and having been addressed by Governor Lister, Mayor Cotterill and President Marsh, of the Washington State Federation of Labor. all of whom welcomed the delegates most cordially, adjourned to participate in a parade of the principal streets. Among the distinguished guests reported as present were the Hon. William B. Wilson, federal Secretary of Labor, and Mr. Anthony Caminetti, United States Commissioner General of Immigration. Soon after the opening of the session, the report of the Executive Council, which includes the Secretary's and Treasurer's reports, was formally read and copies distributed among the delegates; and it can certainly be said for it that no more interesting, enlightening or significant report was ever filed at an A. F. of L. convention. Following the financial and statistical sections is a lengthy summary of the activities of the several departments of the Federation during the past year, wherein the personnel of the respective committees on Labor and the Judiciary of the federal Senate and House of Representatives and their probable friendliness to the cause, the approval of the provision that no part of the appropriation for enforcing the anti-trust laws should be spent in prosecuting organizations of labor, and the history and prospects of the labor-trust exemption, anti-injunction, trial by jury in contempt of court cases, seamen's, workmen's compensation, immigration, convict labor, Bureau of Labor Safety, Bureau of Health, industrial education and other bills now pending in Congress are dealt with at length, as are the creation of the federal Department of Labor, the Industrial Relations Commission, and Board of Mediation and Concilliation, and the achievements in securing workmen's compensation, minimum wage for women and other remedial laws in the states. The subjects of freedom of speech and the press, international peace and initiative, referendum and recall, and measures designed to insure popular government and relieve labor from restrictions are also lengthily dealt with and the Gompers, Mitchell and Morrison contempt case now pending in the Supreme Court of the United States, the Danbury Hatters' case, the so-called "expose" of the National Association vi Manufacturers, the strike of the West Virginia coal miners along Paint and Cabin creeks and many other matters, principally internal jurisdictional disputes. are fully discussed. An address was delivered by Secretary of Labor Wilson that has been widely quoted and commented on in the press throughout the country, and the substance of which we give elsewhere in this number. George L. Berry, Pres dent of the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union, is said to have been the first to startle the convention with a proposal to combine organized labor, the women's suffrage forces and the Socialist party into "one grani glorious political power that will make the old parties sit up and take notice. "If I am not mistaken," he asserted on his arrival in Seattle, "something political is liable to be said on the floor of the convention before it adjourns, and if somebody else does not do the saying, I will do it myself." "Look what Roosevelt did with the Progressive party," he pointed out. "Roosevelt with only a few weeks to work in organized a party that made the G. O. P. look like thirty cents. If we organized such a movement and put a punch in it, w could do likewise." The convention, however, by an overwhelming vote has adopted a declaration of principles that would seem to preclude the carrying out of such a scheme. As quoted in the newspapers, this declaration reads: "While political developments are encourazingly progressive and should be continued and further developed in the future, we believe that the time has not ar rived when with due regard for the economic movement, still young and hopef in organization, a distinct labor political party should be formed.” "We are confident," it continues, "that when our present political activities have suitably matured, a new political party which will be amalgamated the reform and humanitarian forces which will represent and stand for the protection and supremacy of human rights, giving legislative expression to the sound econ omic and political position that the producers of wealth are entitled to their full share of the value thereof, and as opposed to a party in which may be found the forces representing and holding supreme the so-called rights of property. and whose legislative goal would be the guarantee of continuation of the system which puts the dollar above humanity. We are hopeful that in such a develop ment there will be continued and greater activity to organize the unorganized into their respective or new unions, and that in their federated relationship general political activity will be given constant and ever increasing attention, so that with the complete organization of labor in the economic field there will be safer and greater opportunity for the creation and formation of a political labor party or a party pledged to the conservation of human rights, whatever the party's name may be. For the present we recommend continuation and development of labor's nonpartisan political position, namely, that the program and policy declared by the American Federation of Labor as authorized by its convention, through the Executive Council, and the organized workers throughout the country, be reaffirmed, and we urge that this program and policy be pursued in subsequent campaigns." A resolution of importance that has already been adopted is one providing that in cases of strikes and lockouts, no union shall send its members back to work until all the others involved shall have effected settlements with the employer. Another was introduced providing for the appointment of a committee to "study the needs of organized labor in its work of defending itself against lockouts and in its aggressive work to advance the interests of labor wherever strikes or lockouts may be declared, especially to devise and report back a plan whereby power may be placed in the hands of the American Federation of Labor to levy, collect and disburse, in accordance with rules to be provided, a tax upon each member directly under the jurisdiction of the Federation, or any na tional or international union affiliated with it, for the purpose of meeting the expenses of any strike or lockout of a national character, or in cases involving the general interests of the labor movement." This is said to be a preliminary step towards devising some means of financing such strikes as that now in progress at Calmet, Michigan. A resolution was adopted urging Congressional investigation of the coal miners' strike in Colorado. The subject of immigration-which is acute on the Pacific coast just now because of an expected unprecedented influx which it is supposed will be attracted by opportunities incident to the opening of the Panama canal-came in for the fullest discussion, both at the sessions of a special convention known as the Western Labor Immigration Congress, and at the sessions of the American Federation. At the conference resolutions were adopted favoring the enactment of a law extending the Chinese exclusion act to cover Japanese, Koreans, Hindus and all other Asiatics, also requiring an alien to be able to read and write his own language, to be eligible to admission to the United States. With but five dissenting votes, the convention of the American Federation adopted resolutions demanding the exclusion of all Asiatics and a literacy test. for Caucassians. As we go to press, the convention is still in session, but it has already. made progress with the consideration of the committee report on the recommendations of the Executive Council and in the settlement of internal jurisdictional disputes. As to the efforts to procure labor trust exemption, anti-injunction, seamen's, workmen's compensation, and other legislation, the Executive Council is instructed to continue its activities. Among the proposed measures endorsed are those to increase compensation for postal clerks, to provide more facilities for the federal Department of Labor, a bill for the establishment of a federal Bureau of Health, another for the requirement of additional safety appliances on railroads, including automatic stops, and bills providing for the abolishment of convict labor and the Taylor system of scientific management in government shops. Respecting this, the report of the committee waxes eloquent. "A more diabolical scheme," it declares, "for the reduction of the human body to a mere machine never was contrived." As to the rival organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, Mr. Gompers in one of his speeches, remarked that he was weary of hearing criticisms of the Federation by the I. W. W., that it would be a sorry day for labor when it stooped to meet the charges of such an organization as that. In course of time the lively opposition that was manifest at the beginning of the sessions to the continuance of the Gompers regime in power fizzled out and Saturday, the 22nd of November, he was elected President for another Mr. Morrison was unanimously re-elected Secretary, and Mr. Lennon Treasurer. year. Views of the Secretary of Labor Press reports of the proceedings at the convention of the American Federation of Labor, at Seattle, attribute to Mr. William B. Wilson, chief of the new federal Department of Labor, a remarkable expression of views. In his address to the convention Mr. Wilson is said to have "bitterly condemned" the attitude of the Michigan copper mining companies in their dealings with the striking miners and to have warned them that a new conception of title to property was in process of formation. "They say their property is their own," he is reported to have said, "that they have the right to do with it as they please. Maybe they have, but those who take that position have a false conception of the titles to property. Law has created those titles primarily for the welfare of the community. Society has conceived that the best method of promoting the welfare of society is to convey to individuals titles in real estate and personal effects. If any individual or corporation takes the ground that the property is his own, that he has the right to do with it as he pleases and fails to consider the fact that the title has only been conveyed to him as a trustee for the welfare of society, he is creating a condition that will cause society to change these titles when, in its judgment, it deems it for the welfare of society to do it." Mr. Wilson is also reported to have addressed his audience as "fellow unionists", and to have condemned the employment of strikebreakers. "I wish," he is quoted, "to see created in the Department of Labor a bureau of information to be handled as our weather bureau of information, where, with the aid of government employes scattered over the country, we will gather information of where men can find employment, the wages, hours of employ ment, conditions, whether a trade union is recognized and whether any trade dispute exists where the employment may be had, and then condense that information into a sheet that can be posted in every place where men congregate, so they will know where employment can be had and the kind of employment." This would seem to answer the question that has been going the rounds as to whether the new federal division is to be in fact a department of labor or a department of union labor. The above quoted warning would seem too to indicate something we had not suspected that the views of the Secretary are decidedly socialistic in tendency. Such utterances by high public officers only encourage senseless revolt. They will never bring about the industrial peace and prosperity for which their authors ought to strive. Mr. Gompers on the West Virginia Strike. Not to be outdone by the others who are publishing partisan reviews of the incidents that attended the great strike of the coal miners in the Paint and Cabin Creek districts of West Virginia, Mr. Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, has a fifty-five hundred to six thousand word article in the current number of The American Federationist under the resounding heading: "Russianized West Virginia. Corporate Perversion of American Concepts of Liberty and Human Justice. Organized Labor to the Rescue." Some thriller, this! "The long, hard struggle of the miners of West Virginia," he tells us, "still goes on;" then apparently with much sorrow, adds that "That statement carries with it little significance to many, but to those who know conditions among those mountaineer miners and who are gifted with some imaginative insight, it brings up a story of a most desolate life and of great social injustice; it leads to dreary little mountain cabins. hardships and monotonous, grinding toil without many of the necessities or the comforts of life and with all the degredation attached to an economic despotism under which the workers were compelled to spend their meager wages at the companies' stores, powerless to influence conditions of work. unable to free themselves from enslaving debts." We thank Mr. Gompers for this lucid indication of what is sought to be conveyed by such expressions as he uses in the above quoted heading of his article, for we had long been wondering at the villainous character of the charges that have been made in the labor press generally against the operators of the mines in that part of the country-against even the executive authori ties of the state, her legislature and courts, the militia, the private guards, the non-union men called in to work the mines during the strike and against everyone who dared to try to protect property or to proclaim or enforce the law. Now at last we are beginning to understand. It is only to those who are "gifted with some imaginative insight" that such a story as he relates is brought up. After reading the testimony before the investigating committee of the United States Senate, we had thought there must be some such explanation. We wish, however, he had explained how, during this long struggle, which he says began way back in July, 1897, the miners managed to endure the "monotonous, grinding toil, without many of the necessities or comforts of life", and how they contrived to get into any sort of debt, whether "enslaving" or not, if their wages were so meager and their condition so pitiably degraded. How did such men manage to persuade the companies to become their creditors at all? We should have thought the risk too hazardous for grasping, greedy coal barons to undertake. And why is it that (as shown by government statistics) the wages at the unionized mines in such states as Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania were much lower than those at the non-union mines in West Virginia? Because the men there worked fewer hours a day, perhaps? Anyway, the cost of living could not have been any less, and Mr. Gompers says the West Virginia miners, who got higher wages, had not enough with which to buy "necessities". So why did organized labor not go to the rescue of its own union miners in those other four states instead of to the rescue of the nonunion miners of West Virginia who were being paid more for their work? And where did the union miners of the other four states get the money with which to support the West Virginia miners and their families in idleness during the year or more they were out on strike if these union miners were getting less for their work and the non-union men had found it so hard to live on their own higher pay? And why, in the settlement with two of the Paint Creek companies, did the officers of the union bind its members to return to work at lower wages than these companies had offered to pay before the strike was called? Is it true, as stated by non-unionized operators, that this was a concession made in consideration of the grant by the companies of the right of check-off? This "check-off", by the way, is the very effective device whereby the miners' organization secures its own income by obtaining payment of the dues of its members directly by the companies to itself, and this prevents the backsliding of any of the members who might otherwise feel inclined to drop out-which it is very likely many would if, as it said, the dues are $1.50 for each member per month and they are so hard put to it to get along on their wages as Mr. Gompers tells us they are. But, unless he will vouchsafe some further lucid explanation of all this, we shall still be left to our "imaginative insight" to divine why, if his statement of facts is correct, the interference of the union has not simply put the recently unionized miners "between the devil and the deep sea", so to say-for their membership in a union which, to obtain a concession that will secure its own income, sends them back to work at less than they could have gotten if they had not struck, would not seem to have improved their condition very much over what it was when they were at the mercy of those greedy coal barons, who nevertheless paid them more than was being paid by the operators in the other states. "One of the things," says The Industrial Weekly, of Syracuse, N. Y., "which made some of the delegates to the New York State Workingmen's Federation Convention at Utica last week sweat a little around the collar was when the Label Committee was making its report to the convention in which it was stated that only seven girls are employed but part of the time, in only one factory in the United States, making union label collars." In other words, "seven girls make all the collars for union men in the United States!" the paper declares. Phew!-and there are more than 2,000,000 union men |