Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1899-09-26
PEOPLES PULPIT.

Reply to the WapeIlo Ciuar

81 ~ nePAy ~ ho WAPcIO OASHr Zoe
Editor Courier: ! notice in yester-
DAYS Courier statement by the Wa
pelio Cigar company, i. e., Emil Fecht,
In regard to the prevailing conditions
of the cigarmakers of Ottumwa. If
Mr.. Fecht had tried, he could not have
written an article any more open to
criticism than he did.
Tn the first place he states that he
pays cigarmakers from $1,000 to $11.50
and shippers SO per week. Now, a
day laborer gets so a week, and l be-
lieye that anyone will admit that's So
per week is not a very great premium
on skilled labor, when it is taken into
consideration that cigarmaker serves
an apprenticeship of three years, at
about SD per week, in order to become
AZ skilled workman.
He SAYS: "Our employees have no
grievance and are willing. to work"
If that is the case, why did
some of them quit? If they are. salts
fed, why are they not WORKING now?
Next. Mr.. Fecht tries to belittle the
union shops and extols the merits of
the nop-union shops. Now, there is
one union factory in this city which
employs seven men, and the trade of
those seven men is worth more to the
merchants of this town than would be
the trade of fifteen boys and girls.
Mr.. Fecht says that shop employing
and paying seven men the union scale
is s.of no benefit to a town 1t is in.
Then Mr.. Fecht calls attention to the
fact that the non-union cigar shops
all purchased lots in the Dain addi-
ton. 1t is possible that there are quite
ainumber of institutions in town which,
If they We're getting as much work
done for as little money as the nom
union cigar shops are, could also have
purchased lots in this addition.
Then Mr.. Fecht speaks about "pre-
JUDGE and labor fanaticism," and is,
In the same paragraph, using utterances
calculated to engender prejudice
AGAINST a plant which is. not yet here,
and also those which are here now,
and are monuments of labor as well as
capital. He closes the paragraph with
the question: 'Shall Ottumwa con-
tinue to flourish as a manufacturing
center or shall she go down now?"
I ask are not the wages paid in every
manufacturing center the GREATEST fac
tor in building it? No one recognizes
that the employer must succeed in Or
der for him to have employment, and
no one works harder or more. constant.
~ for his employer than the member
of trade union. But success in bust
ness does not consist in merely making
out of that business the difference in
what an employer is paying and what
he should pay his worlSmen. Or in 9th
er words living off the people who
work for him.
/ will also call Mr.. Fecht's attention
to the fact that the union shops also
started without any bonus and are la
boring probably as hard as he did to
build np business, His denunciation
of unions is uncalled for, because there
was not union man walked out OF
his shop. and the whole trouble is not
that of organized labor, but purely
that Of laborers who were not organic
ed. II is. however, fact, and was so
spoken of in the trust conference last
week in Chicago. that organization is
the only means by which the working
man can gain an audience with the
corporate wealth, and that the trade
union is no longer looked upon by pro-
gressiye employers as Commanding"
attention. but deserving it. Aats
Julius Fecht on CIgarmakers, Strike
Editor Courier ere are some facts
relating to the cigarmakers' strike by
a former workman who is now an em-
plove.
The writer has worked in this and
other cities for years; has established
his factory out Of his savings; has
stood by it through good and bad
times; has brought trade and money to
Ottunfwai at heavy expense, and has
given his undivided attention and care,
throughout a lifetime. to the Develop
nent of this. his own Ottumwa factory.
But all this seeming prosperity seems
to be at an end. and how ii came about
I will try to tell the public. There APP
peared, last Tuesday morning at the.
front of the writer's factory, a process
sion of men, boys and girls, part of
them only, cigarmakers, and by evil
IDENTIFY preconcerted action, they were
Joined by three of his workmen- cigar
makers. No demand had been made,
or no grievance presented. The pro-