The Daily Missoulian., 1912-09-10
minimum wage scales. Governor
Wilson, he said. had condemned this

minimum wage Scales. Governor
Wilson, he said, had condemned this
proposal.
HE states" said the colonel. that
he is utterly against this plank
for various reasons, among them
because he thinks employers, it
the wages Of their employees to the
minimum prescribed by law. Such a
fear is utterly groundless and | do
not think it will be expressed by those
who have studied conditions among
the workers. We do not, at the mo-
ment take up the question of a
minimum wage generally. We know
that in all matters like this it is nee
essary to proceed slowly. We "have
studied the conditions among girls and
women in industry and know the suf-
fering, misery, crime and vice that
are produced by a wage that is in
sufficient to enable q girl or woman
to keep body and soul together in
surroundings of ordinary decency.
Mr.. Wilson'S fears that the en-
ployers of those WomenSif obliged to
pay them proper wage would reduce
all their employees to the same min
imum wage, are groAndless. The em-
ployers who now pay their employees
a starvation wage prove by that fact
that they are paying all their en-
ployes the very least they can get
them to take. If they could reduce
the wages of their higher paid em-
ployes now they would do it. 1t is a
needless apprehension to believe they
would reduce them to a minimum only
if the minimum for the poorest paid
We're raised above the starvation
point. It is an objection of the school
room and will not have weight with
those who know what life is.
Wilson MisIed.
''I believe that Mr.. Wilson, whose
sincerity of conviction I do not ques-
ton, has been misled by the fact that
he has gotten his information from
laws laid down by political econo-
mists who wrote when conditions We're
utterly different.
I'VE in this democracy must shackle
force and cunning anda- fraud alike
and we will not put the weak at the
mercy of the strong, who also are
brutal
II want to point out that Mr.. Will
son and the democrats are not real
ly progressive. They show a queer
kind of toryism in the way they stand
for state rights.
"Questions of general interest
should be handled by the. general gov
ernment."
On leaving the Masonic temple
Colonel Roosevelt wont IN fha Alldi
torium and addressed a MONDAY
meeting of business men. He dis
cussed the progressive party's pro-
posals regarding control of the
trusts.
Il think that in recent years very
great backward step was taken" he
said. by the creation of the So
called commerce court. The creation
of that court came pretty near undo
ing the good we had succeeded in
having gotten done.
Mr.. Wilson, speaking for the DEM
ocratic party has objected violently
to our proposals to regulate trusts,
and said that in turning from that
proposition it was a relief to get out
into the free air of the policy formu-
lated by the great democratic think
ers who made the Baltimore platform.
/ love the implication that thought
had anything to do with the Baltimore
convention. There never was a plat
form in this country so wholly free
from any taint of thought as the dem
ocratic platform. Mr.. Wilson, like
Mr.. Taft. shows an utter inability to
understand or face the real trouble"