OCR Text |
Show TRUTH IN H!GH"PLACE3. "" A CcmgreMnn Deal. In Cold ract. That Kelate to the Labor Question. The following excerpts are selected from a recent speech delivered by Congressman Con-gressman Turner in the house of representatives: repre-sentatives: "If the American operative gets more than he did twenty-five years ago, ha produces more and he gets more for the very simple reason that he earns more." "There is still another and, in my judgment, more potent factor in the advance ad-vance which labor has made, and that is the workingmen's organizations. It is not labor, but organized labor, that has commanded the attention and won the respect of the capitalists of the country. Every advance that labor has made, every step f urther in the march of civilisation, civili-sation, every added dollar to the wages of the day's toil, every minute stricken from the hours of toil, have been the results re-sults of hard fought battles, won by organized or-ganized labor , against capital, often against organized capital." "To the bravo and fearless men who have sacrificed time and money and position po-sition in organizing labor, in defending its interests, in claiming for the labor man at least a small share of all the blessings of advancing civilization to these men and to the workingmen themselves them-selves is due the credit of every victory that labor has ever won, and there are small thanks duo to the capitalist.wheth-er capitalist.wheth-er individual or corporation, who has yielded only as little as he could, and that when absolutely compelled to." "But the very fact that labor organization organi-zation is necessary in this country shows the onward strides of the money power. Thirty years ago labor was fairly compensated, com-pensated, with little or no friction between be-tween the employer and the employed. Labor that formerly rested in peace, secure in the thought that in tliis land of the free a day's toil commanded a day's pay, now sleeps upon its arms, a vast, an organized, a disciplined and a watchful army, seeking, not undue advantage, ad-vantage, but maintaining itself as best it can against the encroachments of the money power of this land." "In every manufacturing town, in all our great cities, upon every railroad in this great laud, by the looms of every mill, beside the forge of every workshop stand today thousands of wage workers who are wage workers only; who have no hope or ambition of being other than they are; who cannot earn enough to educate their children; who are without the sympathy of their employers, and who have no hope of any change in their condition unless it be a change of degree and not of kind that is, they may hope for shorter hours or better pay, but they cannot and do not expect to be anything other than they are." |