Waterbury Democrat., 1901-05-17
PLAIN TALK
Secretary Fulton Has a Confer
 enCe With His Men.
DOES NOT BELIEVE IN UNIONS.

But Has the Interest of Every Enl- ploye 1of the Farrel Foundry at HeartTold the Men What They Might Expect from the Company He Believes in the Shorter Work l Day, But Does Not See How Labor l Leaders Can Bring It About-The l Impending Strike Is Now the Sole \ Topic of the Hour-yiews of Several 1 We'll Known People On the situa- I tion-F. E. Wilber Says He Was l Asked to Hire Non- Union Laborers For the Clock Factory.
 At the Farrel Foundry and Machine l Co this morning, W. E. Fulton, secre-
 tary and treasurer of the concern, l gathered the men together and had . l heartSto heart talk with them, and be- l fore he got through he left no doubt l upon their minds as to where the com
 pany stands upon the demands of the l union. The matter soon reached the public ear and shortly after the con- 1 ference, if such it might rightfully be l termed representative of the Demo
 crat called upon MT Fulton and re- l quested that he furnish few para 1 graphs of what he had said to the men 1 for publication. He received the re- l porter very courteously and spoke sub stantially as follows:
 For some time past I have been l thinking whether I ought to speak to | the men on this subject or not, but I kept putting it off until this morning, when decided to take the bull by the l horns and make q fiat-footed statement on the question and then let them de- eide for themselves. 1 told the men l that I represented the office and that 1 was just as much an nNemploye of the concern as any of them, so that our interests were mutual, interwoven so
 infinitely that they were one and the same and that one could not be in jured without the other feeling it. I referred to the fact that when I came here twenty-five years ago the Farrel Foundry and Machine Go was q mod est concern compared with what it is to-day. At that time it employed but seventy men, while now iS has 400 em- ployes on it's pay roll. At that time
 1 could shake hands with all the help
 and call them by name, while now
 could not call fifty of the employees by name. 1t would be a great pleasure
 to me to be more intimately acquaint- ed with the help, but anything of that
 ly ;rI i,,+ 4 Iox ss ,,+t trh h hf of. The number of employees have in creased so rapidly that a man in my position cannot keep track of them. I referred to MT Lewis, who is now reputed to be q wealthy man, and re- minded them that forty years ago he
 was a poor man so far as the worlds goods were concerned, but that he was rich in the sense that he had an in- domitable will, ambition, lofty ideals and other things that mean more than money to a young man, and that armed with these he forged his way to the front among the manufacturers of this state.
 Regarding the union. said that I knew nothing except what l had read in the papers, but I qualified this by stating that knew little more about it thar what learned from the papers because I had read and studied it's constitution and bylaws and saw many things in them which to my mind meant a great hardship upon all who would assume the obligation they imposed. I said that this shop could not be run according to the constitu- ton of the union and advised any of the men who had joined it to consider whether such a course was wise or not; to examine into the obligations fl,nr 1,aI fol- f1,ny sl then place themselves in the manu- facturers' position and see if they would sign such an agreement as has been submitted to them by the organ ization.
 T said q few words about the nine hour day, adding that I had no objec- tion to it or to eight hours, but that such an arrangement would have to be made by others than MT Gompers, MT O'Connell and Mir Donahue. I said that the only way these gentlemen could effect changes in the manage ment of this concern would be by pur- chasing some of it's stock and then get ting control of the board of directors I was particular to impress upon their minds that we wanted none of them to leave, but at the same time I dis abused them of the notion, if any of them ever entertained such an idea that the demands of the union would be agreed to. I urged them very strongly to have nothing to do with the union, but while doing this took occasion to inform them that we had no intention of expressing any one. By this I meant that if man could see his way to doing full justice to this concern as an employe and at the same time remain in the union, all right, but I stated very explicitly that I could not understand how any man could serve two masters and do justice to both; in other words, that, to my mind, q loyal union man could not be faith full employe of the Farrel Foundry and Machine Co"
 Here Mir Fulton paused and the re- porter noticed that he was very much moved by the ordeal he had just gone through. Continuing, he said: T spoke to the men because I felt there was sense of propriety in my doing so at this time No doubt many of them wanted to know what course we had decided to pursue and I thought 1t right that I should apprise them of our intention. I told them I could be consulted at the office to-day and to- morrow and that I would be at home to them at my residence all day Sun day I did this to assure them that I ho