Ogden Daily Standard | 1914-01-06 | Page 4 | The Mayor of Tacoma and the Unemployed

oo THE MAYOR OF TACOMA AND THE UNEMPLOYED. W. W. Seymour, mayor of Tacoma, Wash., became a member of the ho- boeB union on Monday and made an address to the unemployed, saying: "No man can tell but that some day I may become an active member of your union and any one of you may become mayor of this city." The object of the mayor in Joining the union is not made plain and the purpose of the union Itself Is not sot forth, therefnro we are left somewhat at sea in Judging the mayor's act If Mayor Seymour, In recognizing the army of the unemployed and stooping to take one of the wretched by the hand In fellowship, intended to offer hope to tho most discouraged of men, he did something for which he need not feel shame. There are struggling men who are down and nearly out because misfortune has come to them. The fault is not all theirs. Some of the responsibility is ours their more prosperous, more for tunate brothers. When there is not work for all, some must be numbered among tho hoboes If not some one in our family, then the misfortune must fall on our neighbors. If there are 4,000 men out of work in Butte, 30,-000 30,-000 In Los Angeles, 30,ono in San Francisco and so on over the land how are those men to find employment employ-ment without displacing an equal number of the employed? Our present commercialism makes less jobs than there are men to fill Jobs. Therefore there must be suffering suf-fering privation, poverty hoboes! Recognizing that our social and business bus-iness conditions must drive great numbers of men to the wall, why should we do otherwise than did tho mayor of Tacoma, when he expressed sympathy for thoso who have been crushed to one side In the struggle of life?