The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-01-25


 largely increase the cost of public build ings and other works, and of every arr ticle specifically manufactured for the Government; that, by adding greatly to the cost of powder. torpedoes, armor. projectiles of all kinds, guns and ships. 1t win cripple our navy, and that, while increasing taxation upon the people at large, 1t will impair our industrial su- ,premacy among the nations.
 When the present scheme of extending the jurisdiction of the general govern ment by the use of Government con tracts was first devised, five years ago, the bill covered all steamboats and rail roads carrying Government mails. Rail- road and steamboat interests were aroused. and began to make opposition. Finally the bill was amended so as to exclude transportation. Then railroad and steamboat companies seemed to lose ir,erest in the question. This was an oversight. If the present bill passes, the next bill of the labor leaders will reach out further. As Mir. Duncan, one of the labor leaders, said in his argument before lale colnnnttee:
 We are out for an eight-hour bill, and we are going to keep at it until we get it. If it cannot be gotten in one way, it will be gotten in some other way"
 Justice requires 1t to be said that he qualified this statement by saying. in substance, that their intention was to keep within the law. But for what that law may turn out at last to be we may refer to the vote of the socialistic lead- CTS substitute at the Federation of La bor at New Orleans.
 The other object-lesson before us Is, as have said, the recent coal strike. That was not simply conflict between capital and labor: it was a war over a neces- sity of life. A national calamity was barely averted. As it Is, the price of coal has been enhanced not only to every manufacturer in the land Ohus tending to increase the cost of every article en- tering into domestic life, to the detriment of all consumersy, but increasing suffer- ing among the poor, which is only partly averted by the charities of the rich.
 This coal famine illustrates pointedly the power of those legally irresponsive and arbitrary labor organizations possess-a power which they may. nobody knows when, exercise over the production and transportation of other necesaries or life.
 As for the other party to this strike, the coal companies, they and the railroad comr anies, if they had any part in 1t, are al; corporations, creatures of the laws made by the people, and if they have done wrong. they should be dealt with by the law-laws as it exists or laws to be made. Ninety days more of contention between miners and opera tors would have brought upon large portion of our country a disaster com pared to which the vast armies of Ma poleon perishing in the snows of Russia would have been a pleasant picture.
 The present anthracite commission Is, happily, composed of men who, by reason of character and position. are entitled to and who possess in a larger measure than any other commission ever estab- lished to consider like questions the con- fidence of the whole country. It Is sin cerely to be hoped that they will measure up to the great opportunity that is be- fore them. and that, setting forth the causes of the great anthracite strike and the methods by which it was conducted, and laying bare the motives that infiu- enced and the agencies employed by the two parties thereto they will render such a judgment as will be of lasting and permanent value to the country.
 If the charges of wrong and oppression made by the miners against the operators be true. the country ought to know it., that the State of Pennsylvania, by the exercise of her police powers as sov- ereign State of this Union. may apply the proper remedy If, on the other hand, the miners. no matter what the reasonable ness of their demands may have been, instead of using lawful and proper means to enforce them. have resorted instead to boycotts, intlmldations, cruel assaults, arson and dynamiting, the country ought to know that, too. If this is to continue to be land of liberty, regulated by law, public opinion must withdraw its sympathy from vlolators of the law, whether they be operators or miners. This anthracite strike commission has now in hand greater opportunities for good than have ever been offered to any similar body of men in the previous his- tory of the country. Their statements will be accepted by the public at large as authentic.