The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1899-09-19

in manufacturing and general business
afford the working classes but tempo
rary relief confer no lasting benefits,
and when the revulsion and reaction
come, as come they must, through glut-
ted markets and overproduction, the
workingman will be cast back again
through loss of employment into the
same old slough of poverty, want and
despair. There must be a reason for
all this, and as thinking men we feel
there must be a remedy which can be
applied whenever an aroused public
sentiment looking solely to the welfare
of the whole people shall decide to give
these subjects that consideration their
importance demands.
GO into the factory districts of any
of our 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 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, baby childhood and decrepit old
age-coining their hearts blood into
manufactured products, while robust
men walk the earth in idleness in
vain and fruitless search for employ
ment. Go to the vicinity of any of our
penal institutions, even in times of the
worst commercial depression, and we
see their factory chimneys belching
forth smoke and flame. We hear the
whirr and roar of machinery, we see
train loads of raw materials passing in
and car loads of manufactured articles
passing out, while the factories where
free labor was employed have been
driven out of business and forced to
close their doors because the proprie-
tors could not meet the competition of
prison paid labor at from Is to 80 cents
per man q 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 we'll 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 measures which it declined to
enact into law, remained an instrumen-
tality of oppression to both.
80 long as the present conditions
prevail there are two courses only open
to the employer Of free labor-either tC
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 a grinder and oppressor of labor, ol
else retire and leave the field to his less
conscientious competitor.
"Thus we have seen the fair and jus
employer a victim of the same wrong
/ full economic condition and laws that
in their operation, have worked his com
mercial ruin and brought poverty ant
want to thousands of workingmen, whC
, asked no favor of the world beyond al
, opportunity to earn honest bread b!
honest toll Looking into the dark anC
forbldding future, and seeing the inev
liable results, we have appealed time
and again to the party in power, through
, the general assembly, for remedial ac
, tion and the enactment Of such laws al
I were absolutely necessary for our labor
What las been the result?
1--WE charge the present administra
tion of state affairs, through it's rep
resentatives in the general assembly,
with having openly aided and assisted
by direct, and at times indirect, means
and methods, in opposing all laws anC
measures intended, devised and presen
=, ted to the assembly for the regulation o
convict labor in competition with fre,
labor and the restriction of the sale o.
convict-made goods.
, "In making this assertion, we cal
, your attention to the most notable anC
F fragrant recent instance in the treat
, ment accorded to what is known a!
House Bill &c. r,the Bramley law, intro
duced by Representative Bramlay o.
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 fol
over two years in New York, which re-
stricts the production of convict-madt
goods to the actual needs and necessi
ties Of of the penal, reformatory anC
charitable institutions Of the state
Through it's practical operation convict
made goods have been banished from
and driven out of the open markets Of
that state; the detestable prison con.
tract system, with it's merciless and ty.
rannical oVerseers and brutal bosses
has been abolished; penal labor is nc
,
ests of the employers of free labor, and
the wages of the latter are no longer
regulated and gagged by the pitifu
price paid by prison contractors anG
manufacturers for the task-driver
product of state and county criminals
"The Bramley law received the hear
ty and unqualified support alike of or
ganized labor and of just and fair en-
DlOyerS throughout the state who earn.
estly desired to be rid of the blighting
effect of prison competition in manu-
factured goods, that they might be able
to pay decent living wages to their en-
ployes. Shoulder to shoulder employ
ers and men worked alike for it's pass
age, and brought to bear every fair and
reasonable argument, every honorable
influence and means to promote it's en-
actments into law.
"It passed the House, only to he pig
eonholed in the Senate, at the behest