The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1894-02-07

Representative Walker Brings the Demo-
cratic Leaders to Task for Asserting
That Signatures to Petitions from Work
ingmen Were Forced by tho Employers
WASHINGTON, Feb. T. Representative
! j. H. Walker, of Massachusetts, has ad-
dressed the following letter to Chairman
Wilson. of the ways and means commit
tee: 49,
Dear Sir-The- remarks made by You
on Jan. . being held out of the record
until Jan. 23, fourteen days, deprived me
OF the opportunity to call your attention
and that of the house to them, as has also
your absence from the house because of
i'll health since they appeared. learn
that your Ill health will detain you from
the house for quite a period after today.
and take this, the only opportunity |
have, to publicly call your attention to
some remarks made by you in the house
on Jan. last, as follows:
| Mr., Wilson-Mr. Chairman, there Is
nothing different in the methods OF the
protected industries from what they have
always been in the past. except that with
greater power, with the command OF
greater wealth, and assisted by the com
| mereial crisis and the hard times, they
are exercising over their own employees a
| coerciye power that fills the petition boxes
| OF this house with their petitions. IL
| locking out is not coercion, in the estima-
ton of the gentleman, | would like to
| know what does constitute it. II is sys-
tenn of bulldozing that Is resorted to on
such occasions. The manufacturer lock
out the employees, and they can afford to
do it. because they have accumulated
surplus that needs a market, and are
falsely and brutally attempting to make
! men believe that 1t is done by reason of
the pendency of the. new tariff bill. My
mail is filled with private letters from
| workingmen in different parts of the
country engaged in the protected indus
tries, telling me how they were drawn up
like cattle and virtually forced TO sign
these protests, and begging me not to be-
lieve that they really signed the petition
in earnest
"As representative in part OF Massa-
chusetts, the manufactures and employees
in which arc criticised and included in
your remarks above quoted, and in their
behalf and in behalf of all the manufac.
turers in the north who are members with
| me OF various business organizations, and
more especially the wage workers who
petitioned you'll deny in whole and in part
your statements made in the extracts from
the address above quoted pronounce
each and all of them, aside from your
statement that letters have been received
by you purporting to sustain such state
ments, as unqualifiedly untrue.
''For the purposes of this contention
and to develop the proof OF your state
ment above quoted not only pronounce
each and every one of them untrue, but
that they were deliberately made by you
to discredit, break the force of and de
stroy the rightful and legitimate infu-
ence of the petitions Of wage workers EN-
| ployed in the manufacturing Industries
then being presented to the United States
house OF representatives. demand of
you that you prove the charges you have
made against the wage workers and
manufacturers to which | hereby call
| your attention, or withdraw them.
'Youri assumption that it is your duty
to protect the writer's of letters to you,
\ upon the contents of which you make any
such statement, is wholly uuwarranted,
| being based as are the statements com
| planned of, upon wholly untrue asstlmp.
| tions.n