The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-06-24

Colorado is the First, That's All, and will Therefore Enjoy Peace While the Rest of the Country Battles. Colorado is suffering just now from the expression, current in the newspa- pers of the land, "Lawless Colorado. | The f1end who touches off an internal machine near Victor, while the morn ing of June was yet black, exploded the human passions pent up in the fa- nous Cripple Creek mining district, which had been the pivotal point of the most stubborn struggle between organ ized labor and organized employers on record.
 | The explosion of passion against the Western Federation of Miners has fur nished the newspapers of the country with material for exciting headlines, l giving the outside world the impression that Colorado is in a condition of anar- | chy and that terror reigns.
 But Colorado is not lawless. The fact l is that this state has been the first large battle ground of a natural and in evitable struggle which every state, not
 entirely agricultural, will have to go through. There have been many
 strikes elsewhere vastly more exten-
 sive and much more exciting and spludged redder with blood than the lpresent conflict in this state, but they
 were not of the same fiber and did not mean the same.
 The spirit of Colorado people is to try the new things and adopt the new
 ideas. Denver is an automobile city. The women of the state vote. And or
 ganized labor in Colorado is ten years
 ahead of unionism in the east. The
 western Federation of Miners had
 pressed forward to power and an in l1uence which have not been achieved
 in the east, and which most people
 there only understand, vaguely, as ex- isting in Australia The metalliferous
 miners of the far west had attained force and influence that the unions in
 the east are only trying to reach and hoping to achieve in the future.
 For example, the terms of settlement
 of the coal miners strike in Pennsylva- mia, which the officers of the United
 Mine Workers called victory, were re
 garded as defeat by the Western Fede-
 ration of Miners, which is not affilia- ted with the American Federation oi
 Labor of which Gompers and Mitchell are leaders, but maintains proud anc
 advanced independence.
 And, Just as the force and influence of the miners organization here were
 ten years ahead of the power gained by
 organized labor in the east, the opposi'
 tion to labor unionism on the part o1
 corporations and employers was equal. ly ahead of the feeling aroused in othel
 places.
 In the east the argument is over the closed shop versus the open shop; 1T ! Colorado a large number of citizens grew to believe that the demand for tn, exclusive employment of union mer was unlawful and a contravention O the constitutional rights of all citizens land. therefore, labor unions should bt suppressed in so far, at least, as the. refused to work with non-union men. The natural consequence of these con fiioting developments of sentiment ant belief was a trial of strength, and tn laudable effort to enact an eight -hou workday law in mines, smelters, or mills and other dangerous places of Ia , n bor furnished the occasion for a deci
 sion of war between the mine owner
 and corporations and other employer and the powerful labor union of whicl the states prisoner, MT. Mover, is pres lident.
 The situation in Colorado left n