Akron daily Democrat. [volume] (Akron, Ohio) 1892-1902, 1899-09-30
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~ PILLS y
CONSTIPATION
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Quicker than anything else.
10 cents and IS cents-Druggists.
Quicker than anything else.

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great cities today during the morning
or evening hours and We see more
women than men entering or leaving
the shops. factories and mills, and
more little children who should be in
the school or upon the playground
than of men and women combined.
Enter the tenement house district OF
any great city, and especially in our
own state, and we see mothers, sisters
and wives-aye, even baby childhood
and decrepit old age - coming their
hearts blood into manufactured prod
ucts. while robust men walk the earth
in idieness in vain and fruitless
search for employment. Go to the vi
cinity of any of our penal institutions,
even in times Of the worst commercial
depression. and we see their factory
chimneys belching forth fire and
| fame. We hear the whirr and roar of
machinery, we see train loads of raw
material passing in and car loads of
manufactured goods passing out, while
| the factories where free labor was en-
ployed have been driven out of busi-
ness and forced to close their doors
because the proprietors could not meet
the competition OF prison-paid labor
at from Is to 80 cents per man day,
and employed in shops built, furnished
and equipped by the state.
Organized labor has always admit
ted and called attention to the fact
| that the employer of free labor, as
well as the workingman, were both
the victims of this monstrous evil,
from which it was, equally impossible
for him, or them, to escape. so long as
the state itself, by unjust laws, which
it refused to abolish, or just measuses,
which it declined to enact into law,
remained an instrumentality of op-
preston for both.
$50 long as the present conditions
prevail there are two courses only
open to the employer of free labor
either to remain in business under this
wrongful competitive system nurtured,
fostered and upheld by the state, and
under the operation Of which. he must
of necessity be grinder and oppres-
sor of labor, or else retire and leave
the field to his less conscientious COM
petitor.
Thus we have seen the fair and just
employer the victim Of the same
wrongful economic conditions and
laws that, in their operation, have
worked his commercial ruin and
brought poverty. and want to thou
sands of workingmen, who asked no
favor of the world beyond an oppor-
tuuity to earn honest bread by honest
toll. Looking into the dark and forbid
ding future. and seeing the inevitable
results. we have appealed time and
again to the party in power, through
the general assembly. for remedial ac-
ton. and the enactment of such laws
as were absolutely necessary for our
labor. What has been the result?
Republicans to Blame.
I'VE charge the present administra-
ton of state affairs, through its repre-
sentatives in the general assembly,
with having openly aided and assisted
by direct. and at times indirect means
and methods, in opposing all laws and
measures intended, devised and pre-
sented to the assembly for the regula-
tion of convict labor in competition
with free labor and the restriction of
the sale of convict-made goods.
I'm making this assertion we call
to your attention the most notable and
f1asrant recent instance in the treat
ment accorded to what is known as
House Bill Sc, or the Bramley law, in
troduced by Representative Bramley
of the Cuyahoga or Cleveland district.
This measure was drafted at the in
stance of iron Molders' Unions Nos. q
and 21s Of Cleveland. and is framed
on the lines of a similar law in force
FOR over two years in New York, which
restricts the production OF convict
necessities of the penal, leformatory
and charitable Institutions of the state.
Through its practical operation con-
vict-made goods have been banished
from and driven out of the open mar
kets of the state; the detestable prison
contract S. stem, with its merciless and
tyrannical Everseers and brutal bosses
has been abolished penal labor is no
longer menace to the business inter-
ests of the employers OF free labor, and
the wages of the latter are no longer
regulated and gauged by the pitiful
price paid by prison contractors and
manufacturers for the task-driven
product of state and county criminals.
"The Bramley law received the
hearty and unqualified support alike
of organized labor and of just and fair
employers throughout the state, who
earnestly desired to be rid of the
blighting effect of prison competition
in manufactured goods, that they
might be enabled to pay decent living
wages to their empuoyes. Shoulder to
shoulder employees and men worked |
alike for its passage. and brought to
nvon No n q