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Show r " " I POSSIBLE STRIKES. . T?ROM day to day, news comes from various parts of the country i. of threatened strikes. There was more or less of it during the war . " from places where workingmen were getting higher wages than they i ever dreamed of, and since the armistice, there has been more of it. t The Mooney affair has brought out many a covert and open threat on "l L the part of labor to stop the wheels if anything happens to him, and f aside from that, there are numerous sympathetic strikes going on '- k in different localities where men are walking out because other men P in other establishments are not; getting what they ask. fr; There never was a time in the history of the world, when labor in every line was receiving what it is today, and if the increases keep up, the time will come when it will be utterly impossible for the average av-erage employer or company to carry out any contemplated plans necessitating the employment of labor, skilled or unskilled. I The tendency of government ownership of great utilities has within.the past two years shown usthe spectacle of what was swiftly becoming a governmental aristocracy, and if the government owned them all, what chance would the laborer in any of them have to strike, or to interfere with, cripple or dominate such things. Labor should stop and reflect, especially when a proposed sympathetic strike is about to be launched, stop to consider the injustice to those by whom they are employed as well as to their own and the public generally. Unless they do the day will come when the majority of the voters vot-ers of the country will take the matter into their own hands, and put an end to the business by arbitrary laws under which workingman may work for a fair wage or starve. The matter cannot be considered too carefully. If labor insists on making men and companies who are not offenders, against whom they have no complaint, sufferers for the differences of the union with other men and companies, if upon them vicarious atonement is to be I' exacted, the majority of the voters will settle the matter before any one realizes what has happened. When unions combine and insist upon compelling men and cor- porations to submit to what they, individually, would never submit to, t then they are wounding American pride and the American sense of justice in a way which causes men to compel jntice if not execute B revenge. I Union men should be most careful whenever attending meetings ' at which new demands are to be considered or there is a possibility of declaring a strike, for in every crowd there are blatherskites who l would rather see a thousand men thrown out of employment than to do honest work themselves, and this class are prone to come to the surface, and if possible obtain office in a union. . f More and more, laboring men should be reflecting on the pos- ' sibility of a legal way through which to settle their difficulties those i between employer and employee. The difference between barbarism and civilization is that the first is ruled by the law of might, and the other by enlightened laws. It is high time that labor unions should consider what laws would 'v be just between them and the men who djrect the world's work. A vi ' ik |
