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Show THE SEARCHLIGHT A Report To Labor Your decision not to seek the enactment into law of any major legislative program in Utah and Idaho during the war emergency has not been received by your opponents in the spirit of conciliation and good will that you anticipated when your policy was adopted. Your enemies failed to understand, perhaps intentionally, that you desired unity and peace on the production front so that greater effort might be centered on the prosecution of the war—that you purposely refrained from embarking on a new program of labor projects because you felt that economic controversies in Utah were out of place at this time and should be postponed until victory for American arms was attained. Instead of welcoming your conciliatory attitude and joining hands with you in maintaining peace and tranquility in matters affecting labor and collective bargaining, your intractable enemies formed an alliance with the unholy intent of destroying the legal basis that protects your right to a decent living. They interpreted your gestures of cooperation and good will as a sign of weakness—as affording them an excellent opportunity to attack the safeguards that have taken you years to build up. Their technique included a smear campaign against you. They attempted to impute improper and unpatriotic motives to you as a means of destroying your standing before the Legislature, that you might be crippled more easily. They raised a false hue and ery, inferring that you were not doing your utmost to meet your country’s war needs. They organized a public clamor through the columns of the unserupulous Deseret Evening News for the purpose of prevailing on legislators to strip you of your established labor laws, cutting them to pieces one by one. They threatened at least one legislator with reprisals affecting his business to get him in line against vou. They threw the weight of organized agriculture against you through their iron grip on the leaders of the Farm Bureau. And they moved their catspaws and pawns in the House the same ease and of Representatives certainty that they with would move them on a chess board. When their hypocrisy was exposed and checkmated they threw off all pretense and make-believe except their ludicrous insistence that they were acting solely for your welfare* They merely wanted—so they claimed—to sandpaper a few of the rough spots off you to make you more presentable in a Deseret News economy. Their direct attack came with the debate on House Bill 168. That measure passed the House by a vote of 33 to 24. That vote, published in detail elsewhere, in this issue, reveals the make-up of the coalition against you. The vicious grip of Clyde C. Kdmonds on the machinery of the Farm Bureau 1s fully disclosed. And Clyde was on hand to see that nothing slipped. The Farm Bureau alliance—via) Edmonds, Welling et al—with Gus P. Backman’s Chamber of Commerce was shown in all its predatory beauty. Sugar interests, banks, mining companies, smelting coneerns, utilities, railroads, and other ruling corporations, operating through the Backman-Edmonds combine were revealed as the actual manipulators of the Farm Bureau, and of the so-called farm vote in the House. That combine, acting for pillaging interests, held the whip hand in the House. Twenty-four staunch friends of labor and democracy proved too few. In the Senate the same lineup was discernible, but less powertul. Spokesmen for the combine were determined and persistent. But labor had enough good friends and well-wishers in that body to escape serious harm. By a narrow margin of one vote the enacting clause of HB 168 was stricken in the Senate. Labor was given a respite. For the moment it escaped disaster. But you are not yet out of the woods. Most (Contined “It man is truly and on page remarkable Edmonds are 5) how about concerned your welfare. BackLike the News, they don’t want to break up collective bargaining and reduce your living standards and wages just to make greater corporation profits for their employers—it’s to help you. approaches Divine Magnificence. Such altruism |