The March 28th number of the Veekly News Letter of the American. ederation of Labor contains an artile by Mr. Samuel Gompers, its presient, entitled "Bartlett-Bacon Bills Retore to the Workers of America Ownrship in Themselves". The BartlettBacon bills are the ones now pending n Congress that are intended to exmpt labor organizations from the opration of the Sherman anti-trust act nd limit the power of the courts to ssue injunctions in labor disputes.

This article in the Weekly News etter Mr. Gompers calls a "breve" whatever he means by that. One might fer that he meant "brief" if the artile did not contain somewhere between en and twelve thousand words, and if e had not stated in it that he was npelled "to submit in this way, peraps rather voluminously, whatever of formation or experience" he had "on he subject under discussion".

On consulting the dictionary, howver (the Standard), one finds that the ord "breve" has another meaninga royal or papal commission or manate." Perhaps that is the sense in hich Mr. Gompers used it, for he ays: "Since current discussion has een largely upon a matter of vital mportance to many millions of people hose welfare has been entrusted to our keeping" (presumably Congress', ot the Federation of Labor's, though, s it appears in the Weekly News Letr, the breve is not, in terms, adressed to anybody in particular), “and

since special interests have endeavored to prejudice the minds of legislators and the public and to place them at variance with the contention of the workers, there rests UPON ME an imperative duty, not only to those upon whom the dead weight and burden of industry have ever fallen, but to you, that you may avoid being placed in opposition to labor's contentions without having had them fully and completely presented for your consideration."

Upon him this duty rests! Let Debs and Haywood and the other big leaders beware! According to a recent admission of the Secretary of the Federation on the witness stand, there are about 30,000,000 wage workers in the country and the Federationists number only a little over 2,000,000, and, according to the last estimates, the population of the country aggregates nearly 100,000,000, yet it is on Mr. Gompers, as president of the American Federation of Labor, that this imperative duty rests to instruct Congress as to the laws it should enact! True, he says in this same breve, or pseudoroyal mandate or bull, or whatever he intended it to be, that his presentation "has not been from the legal viewpoint"-"for I am not a lawyer," he adds; *** "nor can I herein make a sociological or even an economic" (even an economic!) "presentation of the subject."

But what difference does it make whether he has any whether he has any knowledge of