The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-10-05

you here tonight that if you ever ex-
 pect to get a Workmen's Compensa- tion Act it will be only by building up the Socialist party and by electing your own men.
 But that is another story. I ask you now to look at the record of the legislature of this state. There is railroad in this state which for some | reason wields a strange power When it whispers politicians tremble. When it delivers an order thousand men l rush to do it's bidding. When it scolds the whole crew of politicians | Democrats and Republicans, scurry into hiding. And this railroad wields 1 the power of a god. The people of 1 this state cannot even get abolished a grade crossing which menaces daily 1 the lives of a multitude of cftizens. 1 Oh the blessed railroad, the blessed wealth of the blessed railroad. The l blessed coin of the blessed railroad and the wondrous oil of the railroad
 that lubricates all machines, political 1 and other.
 And now listen to some more little | things. could talk of big things, but 1 friends, its the little things that count I and these are little things. For in l stance, if any train or trolley car driven by a scab runs over a striking l workman the scab shall not be inn 1 prisoned more than ten years. But if
 a striking workman should stand in
 front of a trolley car or in any other
 way obstruct car in motion he l shall be imprisoned not more than 1 thirty years.
 l If any tramp decides that he would 1 like to take lodging in farmers barn he can do that in comparative l safety but if he decides to sleep on a l Bumper or in freight car he may 1 get thirty days and a twenty dollar l fine in addition
 If teamster decides that he wants more wages and quits his team there 1 is no law that will bring him back, but if an engineer stops a train or abandons any locomotive or trolley 1 car he may be fined one hundred dol l lars and put in prison for six months 1 If some frisky lad decides to heave l a brick at an old barn he can do l wants to heave a brick at a freight l car he can be put in prison one year l and fined in addition five hundred l dollars.
 1 These are few examples of the laws made by the railroad that owns l Connecticut
 l franchise, both parties and even the 1 state without penalty but if any poor 1 devil steals a railroad ticket he will get a fine Of five hundred dollars and 1 a jail sentence of one year.
 i Yet the railroad is very consid-
 crate master. It allows the school l teachers to tell the school children 1 that Connecticut belongs to them. The railroad seems entirely satis- l lied to make the laws, run the state
 and modestly give the politicians and l And friends as the railroad makes | laws in it's own interest so it pre- vents the passage of any law in the l interest of the people. In every coun- try of the world there is now a work mems compensation act, which pro 1 tects .worknen in the only property they have; namely: life and lirnb- In | every country of the world, and ever l in our own country, when you take l the property of another man you must compensate him for the loss,
 but you can take a mans limb, or his health or his life, you can confiscate
 this kind of property and you don't | -q<.~. k11c industries conf1scate mans leg or l a mans health, or any little girl or boy, 1aborer loses an eye or finger while at work, they cannot get com pensatien for that loss until they l have fought the matter out in the 1 courts And when poverty meets with l millions in the courts poverty is us- we are the only country left in 1 the world today with law so bar l parous. We are. theeonly nation, pre- powerful corporations to take the limb and health and life of the workers and then throw them on the scrap heap.
 And you all know well what hap pened at Hartford There was bill | to remedy all this. A poor miserable, miserable thing had no chance of passing a corporation owned 1eg1sla-= ture and the Democrats and Repub- l licans fussed and funed and figured and made new deals and lost cards out of the pack and resorted to eV- cry trick known to such political card trickery and skull duggery, every
 single bill providing for eompensation to worlznen was defeated.
 And there were many other bills in the interest of labor and most of these 1 other bills were defeated in that As sembly. There was one, for instance, to enable worlkmen to recover their wages and that was killed There was another intended to do away with l the restrictions upon the unions which now threatens their very existence were bills restricting child labor and bills requiring children to have a cer- went to work, and these bills were
 killed. And there was bill introduce ed providing that the Commissioner
 of Labor should tell poor Italians and other alien laborerS of their legal con- tract rights in this State, and my
 friends, that too, was killed And so
 one labor bill after another was de-
 feated until the workers humbly got
 Mr. Donovan of Meriden to propose
 another bill It was a pathetic little bill humble, modest bill. It was
 children, confined in great factories
 in this state ten to twelve hours
 day. It was a bill forcing the em- ployers to provide toilet apartments in the factories. The bill provided that there should be one toilet room for every twenty-five persons employed, that bill? It was too revolutionary for a Republican legislature and so it was killed.
 | Ladies and gentlemen, I might tell you to night of the millions stolen by
 the interests. I might tell you of
 forests and lands and coal mines and gold mines stolen by the interests I might tell you of the millions in pow
 erty. of the unemployed and of the
 wretchedress caused by this industrial
 system of ours. But some of you re- spect inc man who steals a million
 and despise the man who steals a
 dime.
 And I have told you these stories
 tonight because I want to show you
 lions of acres of land. The corpora
 lions can have their billions of un-