Show TH OF GOMPERS As Viewed by The Independent it Shows That Does Not Receive a As we understand goes to jail one Mitchell-nine and Morrison six months for the offense of publishing their paper the names of firms that union labor does not that for continuing to publish these J lists after an injunction from the court prohibited them from doing What Both Sides It seems that certain firms refused to recognize union union labor therefore refused to patronize those The fact that these firms did not recognize the labor unions was published broadcast arid was made no by private letters to every other similar firm in the same business in that It was perfectly fair for any firm J to refuse to employ union labor or refuse to recognize the labor It was equally fair for the labor unions to refrain from patronizing that We that it was not illegal for these firms to make known to other firms that they did not recognize the labor We also think that it was not illegal for the newspaper organ of organized labor to publish the names of those firms that did using the do not such and such or any other words that would inform the members of the union of that But the proprietor of the labor union which published this was brought into court upon the charge of leading a boycott against a busi- ness and of destroying its property by this The court issued an injunction ordering Gompers to refrain from publishing such Gompers went on publishing and with his is to go to prison for contempt of What is Gompers' But for what does Gompers go to Merely for doing what The Utah Independent did in advising people to patronize home merchants rather than eastern Merely for doing less than Lon J. Secre- tary of the Merchants association did a short time when he denounced the mail- j. order business and declared his in- of using the organization he represents in an effort to de- feat the enactment of a civilized parcels post He did this of on the ground that it would extend the mail order but who can say whether he was as fully justified in his open advocacy of boycotting the mail order houses as Gompers Who can say that the merchants of Salt Lake City are not in the same situation that Gompers was originally Who can say that the Independent ought not to go to jail along with-every other paper in Utah that has ever advocated all have done the patronizing of some firms in preference to Of course there is Gompers' courage that ought to Any man who dares to do what he thinks is right especially any American who dares to speak his convictions after a court has ordered him to hold his tongue and lay down his pen-deserves to be in the Yet if Gompers is guilty of any real crime beyond offending the what is Haddock guilty What are all the merchants guilty of who stand with Not merely contempt of a probably mistaken but contempt of the Roosevelt which favors the parcels post and guilty of a sort of constructive treason in attempted to the passage of this What About the Rest of If Gompers should get one year in how many years for Haddock and the merchants who have conspired to injure the business of the mail order houses How many years for the editor of the Independent and those of other papers who have done the same But it is said that Gompers published after he was told to therefore he must take the whereas if the court had told Haddock and the Utah the Independent and others to they like proper meekly hold their peace Do you really think they We cannot answer for the others but the editor of the Independent prefers jail to the loss of the right of free even if that assault upon American liberty is concealed under the form of a court as to the business firms who cited Gompers for the crime of boycotting their what is it that they have done in notifying other firms that they not certain men or the members of certain unions They have in this not merely to injure but to starve men into submission to their In blacklisting the working-man they have attempted to deprive their families of their right to In trying to prevent the employment of the wage earners in other factories they are trying to starve the families of the In attempting to deprive the bread winners of their natural right to they are attempting to bang and famine upon innocent mothers and children in the humble homes of Not a Square The extraordinary solicitude of the courts to punish the labor whose acts were not but represented simply the abstract rights of the the long drawn out farce in the courts whenever a pretense is made at getting at the leaders of high finance who so and continuously plunder the whole nation for their own the punishment of labor for using the relatively ineffective the shielding of the capitalist from any real penalty for the death-dealing blacklist these and other signs of the times are driving men to believe that the boasted has become a crooked tragedy of recent years in this We say nothing as to the relative degrees of wrong in either the the the watered or the final refuge of the As a matter of we detest the whole lot of them they are all civilized agencies of and What we do say is that every workingman in America has again had lesson that he must not attempt to do any of the things that capitalists have always done with the utmost |