Show A VAIN MOVEMENT A movement is on foot looking to the holding of a conference in St Louis next December of representatives of the various labor parties and factions with a view to harmonizing the discordant dis-cordant elements and organizing a national na-tional party for work during the Presidential Presi-dential campaign Mr Henry George will be present and it is expected th this t-his land theory will be adopted in the platform The movement lacks one element essential to success Perhaps three fourths of the votes cast at any election are thrown by workingmen We mean by this men who labor with their hands for wages If these voters would or could agree as to policies and men all other political parties combined could not stand against them Whenever they nnite as they sometimes do in cities they carry eyerything before them But it is this that is lackingthe ability to agree They will not harmonize har-monize and work together long enough to accomplish anything In New York State today there are three distinct party organizations all marching under the labor banner and hating each other quite as intensely as they do old political pol-itical parties Besides only a small percentage of the workingmen have dissolved their connection with the old parties believing they will be better protected by continuing with the organizations to which they are attached attach-ed With only a partial union of I the labor interests a few years ago the workingmen actually gained control of the great state of California a state which boasts a larger proportion of men who are not classed as laborers in the sense of toil for wages than any other in the Union but no sooner did the workingmen get into power than they returned to their old ways split up into factions and went immediately to work to overthrow themselves They succeeded in this most completely and today the workingmens party of California if it maintains an organization organiza-tion will find it difficult to raise funds with which to pay for printing campaign circulars The St Louis movement will not inspire in-spire the old parties with fear because of this known tendency and persistence of the working people to political disunion dis-union No platform of principles can be patched up that will be satisfactory to the numerous factions If Mr Henry George shall insist upon his pernicious doctrines he will alienate the intelligent laborers who aspire to property ownership owner-ship andif the Socialistic class shall get in any of its vicious work the patriotic element will depart When the workingmen learn political politi-cal wisdom when they will reason and think for themselves and not submit to the guidance of the demagogues and ambitious knaves who are ever ready to mislead they may have thingsttheir own way and until they do learn they can profit themselves most by keeping aloof from socalled laboring mens parties |