The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-01-29
THE LATEST MOVE OF LABOR'S
ENEMIES.

ENEMIES
I The opponents of the rock crusher at
Folsom, which is to say also the owners
of very few private rock crushing
plants, have now resorted to the scare
method to accomplish their ends. They
find the present Legislature strongly
Republican. They, therefore, shake in
the face of the majority the plank
adopted by the party in State conven-
ton last August concernig convict
labor
That plank declares vicious competi-
ton" by convict with free labor to be
an evil, and especially in the matter
of imported convict made goods. 1t
declares that the party will favor wise
and judicious legislation in the prem
ises and that it will protect and fos-
ter free labor against: the s'evil effects
Of convict labor" There is a clause
also favoring the employment of con-
victs in work upon country roads. This
platform plank the opponents of the
State rock crusher plant triumphantly
cite as ''clincher' upon the majority
in the Legislature.
But the plank in no wise binds the
party man to vote for measures which
will do injury to free labor, and that is
precisely what will happen to workers,
material men, manufacturers, builders,
stone cutters and a host of others in
the central portion of the State, if the
rock crushing plant is abandoned, even
in part, as is proposed in one bill.
! 1t is as capable of demonstration as
that two and two make four that the
State rock crusher is direct, imme
date and large promoter and protector
of free labor. Conceding it may have
lessened labor for few men, in two,
not one of which furnishes as good trap
for road metal ais that from the State
quarry, which has given long and
steady work to a hundred for every one
it has caused to make a change of en-
ployment.
The plank of the Republican platform
distinctly pledges itself to so act in OPP
| posing convict labor, as to best pro
| tect and foster" free industry. If by
closing the State plant against cities
free labor, skilled labor, productive in
dustry, day laborer's employment, team
work, building, granite cutting and
Settinc oradinC u,ooadapoizino side
walk building, preparation of grouting,
erection Of new homes and their out
! fitting will be checked, if not abso
lutely stopped, then to shut cities and
towns out from the benefits of the
| State plant will be the antithesis of pro-
lection and the fostering of labor.
That can be shown. 1t has been
shown. Hundreds of thousands of dol
lars were expended with labor last year
| and the year before in Central Cali
fornia, not one cent of which would
have been spent except for the oppor-
tunity to secure trap rock at a decently
low figure. Old trap rock prices would
have simply paralyzed all that output
of money and have closed down on
street improvement, sidewalk extension,
building along the unimproved streets,
and SO on.
Do the private quarry men, skulking
behind the skirts of free labor, suppose
for one moment that the towns and
cities win pay them 50 and So for road
metal of an inferior quality, or even
for as good as that of the State, while
country road builders are permitted to
purchase better material from the State
for thirty cents? Yet that is precisely
what it is expected will be done.
The Republican party will always
prove true to the cause of free labor.
1t was its champion when it had no
other on the face of this globe. It stood
its friend through contumely and re-
preach, and the battles storm. 1t will
not deny it now. Bit every Republi-
can legislator in either house who takes
ten minutes to inform himself as to the
facts in this case will be convinced that
a vote to close down the rock crusher
is a. vote not for free labor, but for ex-
toa-tionate, exacting and grinding own
ers of private quarries. That it is a
vote not in protection of and to foster
free labor, but to close the door of op-
portunity in its face; the equivalent of
saying to the people of the cities Of
Central California, I'VE deliver you
over bound hand and foot to the tender
mercies of private rock crusher pro-
prietors, we do this in the interests of
free labor, that is to say the few work
ers who may have been possibly de-
prived of some labor in private quar-
ries, but regardless of the thousands of
workers in mill, factory, store and
street. who will be deprived of labor
by inhibiting the use of State material
in the construction of streets which are
essential to city progress and the slim
uhation of all lines of free labor"
The party declared against the EVIL
effects of convict labor" in its platform
last August. In the case in hand the
effects of the convict labor in question
are SO far from being "evil'' that they
are all good, beneficent, stimulative OF
free labor, protective of it, furnishing
the ground work and incentive for its
prosperity, and without which it will
: suffer most grievously.
Il There are now projected over seventy