The age-herald., 1900-10-30
MIR, HUDSON GIVES
 HIS SIDE OF CASE Replies to the Card of the Build
 ing Trades Council
To the Editor of the Age-Herald:

To the Editor of the Age-Herald:
 Your issue of this date contains a state ment of the Birmingham Building Trades Council regarding ban it is said to have published or placed against me. Had the council published the facts. so that your readers could have understood the cause or reason of their action against myself and the character of that action, should not have troubled you with this state ment. All care about is that your readers should clearly understand the facts.
 The council mentioned, quoting their lan- guage, banned because l was unfair in- asmuch as I did not use my influence to employ union labor" and the Birmingham Trades Council, quoting the language of their secretary to me, banned" because I lam or was putting up building and did not employ union men on the same These are the sole and exclusive reasons they assign for their banning" They do not charge that l discriminated against or refused to employ union labor, or that I discharged any one because he was a member of any union That charge, if made. would have been false. l simply made no discrimination of any employe-carpen- ter, painter, plasterer, mason, etc., and l do not know to this day whether they were union or not. I simply looked to their skill and workmanship for the work required, and not to a knowledge of their associa- tions.
 Now If they "banned for this, and by it mean that they wouldn't patroniZe or trade with me, though I had in no sense discrim- mated against them, and had acted per fectly fair in giving employment to worthy men, I would have no objection to their banning, though 1 have just as much right 10 ban" them for not exclusively patroniz- ing me as they have to ban" me for not exclusively employing them. But they do 4 to 1frC aUo nf al but are sending out their emissarles all around threatening every one having deal ings with me the loss of patronage if they continue business association with me This is what I charge Is a violation of law, an assault upon the mere ordinary rights of a citizen, and utterly unworthy of a respec- table, true and decent American manhood.
 If I had committed any crime or offense against the law or against the rights of any citizen, or even against the constitution and by laws of any labor organization, then there might be some justification of this wanton and malicious effort and purpose to injure me. But the facts are, and they do not deny them, that l simply employed workmen without enquiring as to their af- fiiations. Now, would this for any citizen be an act that was crime or an offense, or in any way improper or the unjust to any one living? And can honorable men take exception to it, or consider a citizen so act ing a culprt meriting the anathemas and an ''organized' effort to destroy his prop erty, his business, his means of livelihood?
 The council writer or writers speak very glibly of "organized labor" Whyl Is there anything very sanctified or sacred or specially angelic about organized labor" that 1t must be spoken of with bated breath for fear a wrong infection may give offense? Do not members of labor unions know that nineteen-twenteths of all the laboring men In this country do not belong to any labor union whatever? Now will any sensible just union man assert that any citizen employing any of these 19,O00,000 of laboring people mus: be put under a