Douglas Island news., 1908-02-26
The Alaska Labor Union.

llS GAldShd AdOOA SAAAOAA"
 The meeting of the Alaska Labor Union at Odd Fellows Hall last Friday evening was perhaps the best one yet, and the importance of the organization, to this community, and it may be to all of Southeastern Alaska, may now be estimated. At this meeting perma- nent officers were nominated and the charter was closed with registered mem bership of something over one hundred.
 The membership of this organization is limited, and no applications will be acted on favorably unless the applicant is citizen of the United States or has declared his intention of becoming such. This limitation, while it may exclude some very good men, makes the organization, what all labor unions in the United States should be, strictly American. While we fondly believe in the rights of labor, we also believe in Alaska for Alaskans and America for Americans. and that aliens who refuse, when the opportunity is given, to be- come citizens of the United States, should be content to take an entirely secondary position in matters of poli- tics and industrial affairs. Indeed the thought is extremely repulsive that Americans should, in their own coun- try, be dictated to by aliens. If men of intelligence who come to this coun- try from foreign lands wish to have a voice in our affairs let them take upon themselves the garb of citizenship. We have no wish to belittle the worth of the naturalized citizen, for we realize that be who becomes a citizen from choice may be much superior to him who is merely a citizen by the accident of birth.
 An application for mem bership must also be accompanied by an admission fee of S2.OO, and the monthly dues are fixed at fifty cents. Members who may become sick will draw from the organization a weekly benefit of ten dollars for ten weeks. In case of the death of a amber, s8O.OO will be ap- propriated by the organization for funeral benefits.
 However, the one thing that dis tinguishes this labor union and gives it position in the fore front of Ameri- can organizations, is the stand it has taken in regard to the settlement of labor disputes. It is certainly the part of wisdom to recognize that those dis putes must arise, and the question of their settlement is one that has agita- ted the best brains of all civilized nations for many years. The one weapon of the times that are past has been the strike; and how the working men in all parts of the country have suffered during the struggles of the strikes; how men and women and children starved and suffered when works were closed pending a settle ment of troubles, real or imaginary. Those things, those terrible battles, when the willy agitator was appealing to all that was worst in men, and in- citing them to deeds of cruelty and violence, those methods are a part of the past and have been outgrown, largely, by thinking people. But the old methods have not been discarded, except on the discovery of new opos, new methods that appeal to the bright est and best intelligence of the work ingman of today. The keynote of that discovery is found in the simple word Arbitration"
 Meanwhile, the laborers are not the only ones who have used their best brains in trying to solve the problem The employers of labor have also been