The morning journal-courier., 1907-12-17
Miners Leader confesses to Civic Federation That oper ators Are Not So Bad
 As Painted.
ELIMINATE THE STRIKE
General Grant Strongly Advocates Re- installation of Army Canteen-- George ". Perkins Lauds
 Mir. Mitchell.

New York, Dec. 16.-Peaceful rela- tions between labor and capital was the theme tonight at the eighth an- nual banquet of the National Civic fed eration, whose members, composed of widely known financiers. employers, labor leaders, publicists and other prominent citizens, gathered in confer ence here, to-day to discuss remedies and legislation for various questions now affecting the body polite. over 700 sat down to dinner. The session of the federation to-day was given over to the discussion of the currency ques- tion, Andrew Carnegie, James Speyer, Horace White and Postmaster General l. Von Meyer expressing their views Andrew Carnegie declared that relief must come through asset currency based on trade bills The federation, without committing itself to any defi- mite plan of reform, adopted a resolu- ton that congress after careful con- sideration should pass as speedily as possible, consistent with security and safety, some measures which will im- part to our currency system greater elasticity, so urgently demanded throughout the country The federation s will be in session here two days, General Grant said that while he \ himself was total abstainer, he re- & garded the carteen as the lesser Of two z zevils and that until the civil authori- ties closed vicious resorts near military &of the canteen in the army
 # John Mitchell, the labor leader and Zone of the prominent members of the Federation, was given a round of ap- plause when he rose to speak, He said Ehe considered 1t the highest duty of every man with the welfare of the country at heart to work toward de- gree of peace and plenty Mr Mitchell said:
 80 far as have been able to con < trol the affairs of my organization it has been toward the cause of peace. Iappy would be the day if strikes, pckouts and attendant evils were no nore. l am not sure that the time gill come in our lives. But is 1t not letter that we sit down and reason 1t hut and see if reason cannot take the i lace of force
 a ''I do not know if the people of New fork realized that two years ago they F light have had to again undergo the srrible times of the coal strike of 1902. < Iut that is true That would have f hppened had not ten men got togeth-
 and talked, operators and workers,
 men to men.
 W I found the operators when l came meet them, very different men thar
 had imagined from the newspapers from what they said at the White
 ouse. For 1 had believed that the
 presentatives of capital were mer
 fthout any sympathy, any regard for
 ose whom they employed That was
 fore I met them. have learned diff
 rently since,
 George W, Perkins, before speaking
 the profit sharing plans, paid trib-
 3 to MT. Mitchell, saying that great
 al of the progress made in the rela- pns between capital and labor in the
 gt five years had been due more to
 standards and work of Mir. Mitchell
 an to any other man MT. Perkins
 scribed the profit sharing system ot
 steel corporation.
 President Eliot of Harvard univer-
 y, who said that he represented in
 executive committee neither capital
 labor but the public which had tC
 lr the cost of all industrial warfare
 Jared that the individual states
 Id not, but the federal government
 ast control the vast commercial as.
 tations which seek monopoly.