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Show THE . CITIZEN we can give, although at random, a correct interpretation of his condemnation. He was tried on a charge of murder and conspiracy to murder. It was admitted that hq did not participate directly in the bomb throwing at Chicago. His culpability arose from the fact that, as editor of the anarchist paper he had been publishing, week after week, inflammatory articles egging on violent men to do just that which was done by them when they hurled the bomb among the platoons of police in Haymarket Square. The trial judge held that the responsibility of Parsons for the crime was as great as that of the men who engineered the outrage and took part in its execution. The precedent set by the judge in that case may serve as a luminous guide in the trial which is likely to result from the arrests now being made of bomb plotters connected with the Gary conspiracy. Governor Altgeld of Illinois, who was a brilliant and able man with a strong bias for German radicalism and socialism, was the protagonist of the public opinion stirred up against the judges decision. For lyears the decision was criticised, but it has crystalized into an authoritative precedent and it can be said truthfully that :it wiped out insolent anarchy as if by a lightning stroke. The conspiracy of that day, although it climaxed in such a spectacular fashion, was by no means nationwide. It was bolder, more violent than the present conspiracy, but quite manifestly was far from being as dangerous as the plot of our own time. Then small coteries of' anarchists in our larger cities struck a few wild blows at government ; today anarchism and revolutionary radicalism are working to establish the dictatorship of a class. Labor is being systematically influenced and the chief radicals are coolly going about the task of trying to obtain control of the American Federation. Already such flaming Bolshevists as Foster and Fitzpatrick are in the saddle, while Gompers, sick and aged, has lost the energy and resolution of his younger days and seems able no longer to hold back the mob of radicals who seek to circumvent him and take from him the orderly army of labor which he did so much to recruit and drill. Two despotisms are struggling today for the mastery of the world the old despotism of imperial power, the new despotism of class dictatorship. America is threatened by both. As a member of the League of Nations the United States is invited to pledge itself to guarantee imperialism all over the world and many millions of our people are blinded by the camouflage which disguises this invitation as an offer of moral leadership to guarantee civilization. Within our gates the despotism of Lenine and Trotzky, as bloody and ferocious, as black with passions of the lowest type as any tyranny recorded in history, is striving to establish its reign through class domination and millions of laboring men have been deluded by the fair mask of human sympathy which covers the monstrous purposes of those who have assumed leadership in this effort to overthrow the American republic. , 9 I of nations which may serve as an exemplar to that world-wid- e League of Nations which was founded on the 28th of last June. Thus Great Britain is to have a league within the league. Is there any good reason why the United States should not have a league within the league? Our league could play the British league and have players to spare. Some may say that, after all, Great Britain will have only six votes at most. They may even contend, with President Wilson, that six votes are a mere trifle if not a bagatelle. If six votes amount to nothing then, of course, seven votes would amount to no more and eight votes would be just as bagatellish. Merely for the purpose of keeping the books straight, however, we will mention other votes possessed by Great Britain. The league admitted as a member the independent nation of Persia probably at Great Britains urgent request and then Great Britain gobbled up Persia. By means of a treaty Great Britain took over the government of Persia which will be administered by expert advisers from London and vicinity. In accord with the terms of the treaty Great Britain will loan Persia $10,000,000 at 7 per cent, after borrowing the money in the United States for 5 per cent. But, of course, that is another and a different bagatelle. As we were about to say Great Britain obtains a seventh vote by controlling Persia and an eighth vote by controlling Hejaz the Arabian nights Kingdom of Hejaz over beyond the Jordan. New York state with its morethan 10,000,000 inhabitants is more dominion of Great populous and richer than any and was thrown Britain, for India, of course, is not into the voting scale merely for good measure. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri and California compare favorably in wealth and population with any of the dominions of the British empire and are virtually as If our league cannot get fifty-on- e votes we should, at least, insist on getting ten or twelve votes for it and if we can obtain them we should be as willing to call New York a nation as Great Britain was willing, suddenly, to look upon Canada and Australia as nations rather than dominions. self-governi- ng self-governi- ng self-governi- ng self-governi- ng. WAGES WILL NOT FALL can prices be reduced without reducing the cost of labor? is which has begun to worry some students of the present economic situation. They can see only a vicious circle in which increasing wages will produce higher prices. Those who are anxious on this score might profitably study economic history. The workman himself will be enlightened and edified by comparing the advance in wages and prices during a long period of years. Just after the Civil war prices went to a level not far below that THE U. S. LEAGUE which prevails now, but wages were far below the standard of today. 400 per cent the League of Nations will be the British League of In the last half century wages have increased 300 and WITHIN No less a despite the fact that working hours are shorter. personage than the admirable Sir Robert If we limit our study to the last two or three years we shall get iCSrdcn, premier of Canada, tells us as much. In view of his statea distorted view. During that period prices have risen out of proment we believe that it might not be unwise to form an American even to the substantial increases in wages. Consequently states and thus we can have an American portion league of the forty-eigthose who observe only the recent effects of labor on prices are apt to league within the larger league. To these could be added Porto Rico, think that wage increases necessarily mean price increases. As a the Philippines and Alaska. Thus we would have a majority of our matter of fact certain commodities are selling for much less today own in the big league and could exert an even greater influence than than they sold for fifty years ago although the men engaged in proJohn Bull expects to exert by getting admission tickets for his whole ducing the commodities are working for two or three times as much family and the servants. as they obtained then. In an article contributed to the New York Sun the premier reWhen shorter hours began to be introduced in industry the surcounts with much satisfaction the efforts successfully made to have prising discovery was made that, in numerous instances, the workman dominions of the British empire, Canada and the other produced almost as much in nine hours as lie had produced in ten. nacharter member And when the working day was shortened to eight hours the protoother with India, included as in the following fashion; duction tions of the league; The premier sums up per unit was oftentimes about what it had been in the ten-hoEach nation (in the British system) must preserve unimpaired period. its absolute autonomy, but it must likewise have its voice as to those Many employers have aroused the ire of workmen recently by external relations which involve the issue of peace or of war. So declaring that the only way to reduce prices is to increase producd that the Britannic Commonwealth is jn itself a community or league tivity by making each laborer more efficient. The HOW . ht self-governi- ng full-fledg- ed ur short-sighte- |