The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1897-09-01

st. Louis, Aug. S1.-The committee on
resolutions of the convention of labor
Leaders completed it's task this morning
and at 10 o'clock the following platform
was presented to the convention and
finally adopted.
The platform as presented reads as fol-
lows:
'"The fear of the watchful fathsrs Of
the republic have been justified. The
judiciary has become supreme. We W.T.
ness a political position absolutely new
in the history of the world, a republic
prostrate ait the feet of judges appointed
to administer the laws. They ackEowl-
edge no superior on earth and their
despotic deeds recall Milton's, warming
to his countrymen, who bids a man rule
over him above law, may bid as well
eavage beast.
'Under the cunning form of injunc-
tions, courts have assumed to enact
criminal laws and after drawing thus
to themselves the power of legislation
have repealed the bill of rights and, for
viola tions of these court-made laws, have
denied the accused the right of trial by
jury The exercise of the commonest
rights of free men, the right of assembly,
The right of free speech, the right of
travelling the public highways, have lby
legislation, under the form of injunctions,
been made a crime and arm:d forces dis
perse as mobs people daring in company
to exercise these rights. At its last term
the supreme court of the United Stats
decided hat the thirteenth amendment,
forbidding involuntary servitude, is not
violated by arresting a seaman, impris-
oning him until his vessel is ready to
leave port, and then forcib;y putting
him on board to serve out the term
of his contract, a decision under which
the old fugitive slave laws may yet be
revived and striking laborers may be
seized and returned to the service of
their masters. Having drawn to- them
selves all the powers of the federal gov
ernment untn congresses and presiden nts
may act only by judicial permission, the
federal judges have begun the subjuga-
tion of sovereign ststes so that unless
check is soon put upon the progress OF
usurpation, In short time the absoiut-
ism Of federal judges will exist anywhere
over any portion of American SOIL
1.-THE pending strike of coal miners.
starved to feebleness by their scant
wages and by arduous and dangerous
toll, the pending strike for the right to
be fed enough to make labor possible.
has been prolific of judicial usprpationf
showing the willingness of judicial des-
pots to resort to the most shameless de-
fiance of decency as well as of law and
humanity, in order to enable heartless
avarice to drive its hungry serfs back
to faint and die at their drudgery, and
there remains today not one guaranteed
right Of American citizens, the exercise
of which injunction has not somewhere
made crime by these perversions of
constitutional liberty.
1--WE have met here in council together
and have come to the following conclh-
sion, that:
Whereas. the present strike of the
coal miners has again demonstrated the
fact that our so-called liberty is not free
dom, but is a stupendous sham, under
which millions are degenerating while 4
hundreds of thousands of men, women
and children are starving in novels and
on the public highways.
Whereas. this condition has become
permanent for a long and ever increas-
ing number of our population as long as
we permit comparatively small class
Of legalized exploiters to monopolize the