The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1911-02-08
ARGUES LIABILITY;
1 MRS. PETERS AND HER SEVEN
. WATCH OVER BODY OF DEAD
/ FATHER, KILLED DALI Y TOLL
Discuss Attempted Protection of Widows and Chill
dren While Dead Laborer's Wife Gathers Her Lit
tie Brood About Her.

cial club last night and argued
and considered and recommends
ed and protested on the liability
law, the law which will help wid-
ows. and children when the toll
ing father is killed.
And Mrs. Abraham Peters,
down at Bismarck. gathered her
brood of seven little one about her
and looked out on the dark and
hopeless future.
Abraham Peters was work.
ing man. He labored for the
Danaher Lumber company. His
$3.50 a day never went very far
on those seven little ones, and
their clothes are plain and their
fare has been likewise. But he
was doing his best. He was rails
ing a family to become future
citizens OF the state. He was
toiling from early morning until
late at night trying to stave off
starvation and make a home.
He was sick recently. The
struggle had been too much and
he had to quit. But with renew
ed strength he went back to work
this week.
Yesterday he cut loose a train
load of logs and one of them flew
up and crushed him.
They bore the lifeless body
home and laid 1t before the widow
and her seven.
Rich contractors and employers
who drove to the meeting in au-
tomobiles last night we're much
concerned about the rates for
payments of fees under the La
bility law should be monthly or
otherwise. They were concerned
over the salaries of the commits
lsioners who are to run the law,
and voted to raise their pay to
$4,000 and $4,000 a year, but
What About the Seven?
No one seemed to think of Mrs.
Peters and her brood of seven,
sitting in her cherries home at
Bismarck, breadwinner gone,
children cold and hungry and fac
ing the world without hope.
1t was the unconsumed wealth
produced by the Abraham Peters
of the state that has made the
men rich who ruled the liability
meeting last night. The strong
hands of Abraham Peters and his
class have been digging the wealth
out of the hills and cutting 1t out
of the forests, and the employers
have grown rich while Peters has
grown poor and finally offered up
his life on.a pile of 100-foot logs
for an altar.
Employers whine over the rates
in the liability law.
They are fearful that some de-
tail is going to hit them hard.
But how about Mrs. Peters and
her seven?
Is any employer grown rich off
the labor of Abraham Peters and
his fellows going to be hit as
hard as this widow and those ia
therless children?
Who produces this wealth, any
way, over which there is such a
wrangle concerning the distribu-
tion? Does 1t all come out of the
brains of the rich, as they some
times seem to intimate?
Tacoma's chamber of commerce
and Commercial club and Tacoma
manufacturers and employers
have been assiduous in finding
objections to the liability law be-
cause it was going to hurt the
rich, they thought.
Which of them wants to change
places with Abraham Peters?
What objector wants his wife
to change places with Mrs. Peters
with her seven hungry little ones?
That liability meeting last
night was held with the partici-
pants sitting on $50 leather
chairs, their feet dangling on
$500 carpet.
Mrs. Peters and her seven oc-
Icupy little home where the price
iof one chair would cover the
whole household outfit.
Her voice was not heard in that
Injecting, except as 1t echoed
Through the faint and rather timid
lutteranees of few scattered al
boring men who found their way
into the session.
The voices of her seven little
ones as they gathered around
their dead father could not be
heard for the chug-chugging of
the automobiles outside
| That liability meeting should
have been held not In the Com
mercisl club, but at the little
Peters home in Bismarck.