Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-07-26
THEIn L.DOR RECORD.


| Wage earners and the friends of or
ganized labor throughout the State will,
between now and election day, study
the record of A. B. White, Republican
| O. Dawson, chairman of the Republican
| State Committee. Mr. Dawson was
president Of the Charleston Mail-Tri-
bune Company and White was a mem
bre of the Board of Directors. In the
latter part of 1898 the Mail-Tribune I'M
dertook to fight union labor, its Office
became non-union, and on Deem
Der 2Sth Of that year, an official let
| ter, bearing the printed names of the
officers of the company, including those
| of Dawson and White, was sent to a
printer seeking work, in which letter
this sentence occurred:
You must be non-union to the core to
work for us. We don't want you to come
here and monkey with the union
Later the union labor of Charleston
combined against the Mail-Tribune,
| managed by White and Dawson, the
West Virginia Herald, a rival Repub-
lican paper, took up the fight, and
| White and Dawson craw-fished anG
signed the union scale. The Charles
i ton Gazette tells the remainder of the
story in these words:
After it became known that White was
to run for Governor, efforts were set on
foot to square him with the Topographic
cal Union. The district organizer of the
union, then employed as foreman of the
Gazette composing room, was secured as
mechanical superintendent for the Mail
| Tribune, at a salary in advance of the
scale, and an additional stipend was add
ed to his weekly wage, for which he was
to represent the Dawson and White in
terests in the Mail-Trbune Company.
Other influential members of the Typo
graphical Union, who had been persona
non grata at the Mail-Tribune office for
some time, were taken in and given good
Jobs, and all that their influence, might
be secured in helping to clear up the rec
ords made by Dawson and White, before
they realized the necessity of standing
square with organized labor.
In addition to this, Slippery Bill Daw-
son tried to further square himself by
becoming member of the Typographical
Union. But the members of that body in
Charleston were onto his curves, and they
j. the check for his initiation fee, which
/ accompanied his application This is a
fact that not even Slippery Bill will have
the nerve to deny.
The Mail-Tribune is now an union of
fee all right, and it is very probable that
Candidate White and Slippery Bill are
not having much to do with what goes
on there; but the cold fact stands on rec
ord that when, in December, 1898, and
January, 1899, the paper was running a rat
office, and loudly declaring its hostility
to the Typographical Union, making
non unionism to the core a sine qua non
of employment, neither of these political
directors had a word to say for organized
labor, and their deathbed repentance
srnacks too much of fear to be efficacous
in their salvation.
Get in the game. boys; acknowledge
that you were opposed to the Topographic
cal Union, and that you were whipped
into seeing the error of your ways. The
people will have respect for your cour-
age, even if they despise your politics.
And you will know what it is to have
that manly feeling, at least