The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-09

in a second provision their bill made legal in labor dispute any act or agreement
 by or between two or more persons that would not have been unlawful if done by a single person. In other words, this bill legalized blacklisting and boycotting in
 every form, legalizing, for instance, those
 forms of the secondary boycott which the
 anthracite coal strike commission so reservedly condemned; while the right to
 carry on a business was explicitly taken
 out from under that protection which the
 law throws over propert. The demand
 was made that there should be trial by
 jury in contempt cases, thereby most se-
 riously impairing the authority of the
 courts. All this represented a course of
 policy which, if carried out, would mean
 the enthronement of class privilege in it's
 crudest and most brutal form, and the de-
 struction of one of the most essential functions of the judiciary in all civilized
 lands
 The violence of the crusade for this leg
 islation, and it's complete failure, illus trate two truths which it is essential our
 people should learn. In the first place
 they ought to teach the worldngman, the
 laborer, the wageworker, that my de-
 manding what is improper and impossible
 he plays into the hands of his foes. Such
 a crude and vicious attack upon the
 courts, even if 1t were temporarily suc-
 cessful, would inevitably in the end cause
 a violent reaction and would band the
 great mass of citizens together, forcing
 them to stand by all the judges, compe-
 tent and incompetent alike, rather than to
 see the wheels of justice stopped. A
 movement of this kind can ultimately re-
 suit in nothing but damage to those in
 whose behalf it is nominally undertaken.
 This is a most healthy truth, which it is
 wise for all our people to learn. Any
 movement based on that class hatred
 which at times assumes the name of
 ''class consciousness, is certain ultimate
 ly to fail, and if 1t temporarily sue
 ceeds, to do far-reaching damage. Glass
 consciousness" where it is merely an
 other name for the odous vice of class
 selfishness, is equally noxious whether in
 an employers association or in work
 ingmans association The movement in
 question was one in which the appeal was
 made to all workingmen to vote primarily,
 not as American citizens, but as individ-
 uals of a certain class in society. Such
 an appeal in the first place revolts the
 more high-minded and far-sghted among
 the persons to whom it is addressed, and
 in the second place tends to arouse
 strong antagonism among all other classes
 of citizens, whom it therefore tends to
 unite against the very organization un
 whose behalf it is issued The result Is
 therefore unfortunate from every stand
 IL.
 will be learned by the socialists if they
 ever succeed in establishing in this coun- try an important national party based on such class consciousness and selfish class interest
 The wageworkers, the workingmen, tho laborng men of the country. by the way in which they repudiated the effort to get them to cast their votes in response to an appeal to class hatred have emphasized their sound patriotism and Americanism. The whole country has cause to feel pride in this attitude of sturdy independence, in this uncompromising insistence upon acting simply as good citizens as good Americans, without regard to fancied-and
 improper-class interests. Such an atti- tude is an object lesson in good citlzen- ship to the entire nation.
 But the extreme reactionaries, the per- sons who blind themselves to the wrongs now and then committed by the courts on laborng men, should also think seriously as to what such movement as this DOT tends. The judges who have shown themselves able and willing effectively to check the dishonest activity of the very rich man who works iniquity by the mis- management of corporations, who have shown themselves alert to do justice to the wageworker, and sympathetic with the needs of the mass of our people, so that the dweller in the tenement houses, the man who practices dangerous traue, the man who Is crushed by excessive hours of labor, feel that their needs are understood by the courts-these judges are the real tnllwark of the courts; these judges, the judges of the stamp of the President t-elect. who have been fearless in opposing labor when it has gone wrong. but fearless also in holding to strict ac- count corporations that work iniquity. and far-sighted in seeing that the work in gman gets his rights, are the men or all others to whom we owe it that the ap- peal for such violent and mistaken legis- la tion has fallen on deaf ears, that the agitation for its passage proved to be without substantial basis. The courts are jeoparded primarily by the action of these federal and state judges who show in- ability or unwilngness to put a stop to ] the wrongdoing of very rich men under modern industrial conditions, and in abil- ity or unwillngness to give relief to men 1 of small means or wageworkers who are crushed down by these modern industrial conditions; who, in other words, fail to CONTINUED ON PAGE 1o.l