The daily Nome industrial worker. [volume] (Nome, Alaska) 19??-1918, 1913-08-26
The importation of armed guards

by the powerful copper mining COM
panies of Michigan to ostensibly pro-
tect property, and those who will
act as strike breakers, surely can
not with the experiences in West
Virginia fool anyone. These Guards
are being introduced after the Gov
ernor withdrew the military because
there was no reason for keeping the
military there, and the civil authori-
ties were able to maintain peaceful
conditions in the copper fields. The
guards therefore are being introduc-
ed expressly for some other purpose
than merely to keep the peace. The
mining companies have 40 such
Obligation to the state. and there are
regular civil policing authorities
whose duties it more clearly is to
perform that function.
These guards in West Virginia
furnished by the Baldwin agency
were men who were in every sense
of the word desperadoes. They were
the scum of the earth. The leader
at one time was an ex-convict who
escaped the gallows by the skin of
his teeth, three-fourths of them
were ex-convicts who had committed
felonies and who now were hired by
the companies to uphold law and
order" 1t was grim joke in very
truth.
Precisely the same purpose is
behind the importation of these
guards into Michigan where the
members of the Western Federation
of Miners are on strike, as was
manifest in the purpose which re-
tanned them in West Virginia.
If anything could possibly reveal
what is the real power behind the
government it is the fact that the
courts sustain these importations.
The police power is essentially a
Function of government. 1t is an
accepted fact that the government is
responsible for the maintenance of
the peace and the execution of the
laws. For this purpose the govern
ment is armed with plenary powers,
and with armed forces to execute
the plenary powers at their disposal.
But what we see now happen is that
the industrial barons usurp this
function Of government without as
much as by your leave, maintain
their own standing army which will
execute the orders, wishes, desires
and purposes of the industrial chiefs
who maintain them. And the courts
Justify this. They justify the NOV
ing of a standing army privately
owned from one state to another, for
carrying out the wishes of the real
men who are power behind the
government.
The sovereign state of Michigan
does not any longer dominate the
situation within its own borders.
The sovereign State of Michigan must
accept the conditions which the mine
owners dictate through their own
armed hessians, just as the sovereign
State of West Virginia had of neees-
sity to bow to the superior will of
the coal barons as executed through
the private soldiers which the latter
maintained.
This is surely a most interesting
development in the land of the free
and the home of the brave. Here
is an armed force which the people
have no more to say in than have
the Russian peasantry in the con-
duct of the soldiers of their Tar
Not only that but the courts by a
decision handed down see to it that
they cannot be interfered with. 1t
is in fact an astonishing condition,
and one which furnishes food for
thought.
1t is preposterous to say that the
introduction of these armed retain
ers of the capitalist chiefs is
necessity. The State of Michigan
itself has abundant military re-
sources which were withdrawn from
the scene of the strike because the
country was peaceful and there was
no necessity for their presence at
the location of the industrial con-
fict. The civil authorities further
more took the precaution of having
many extra police to do any extra
duty that might be required of them.
but in spite of these things the
guards are now being placed around
the mines and in the mining dis
frict to spread the same red
hell that marked their work in
the coal mining regions of
West Neutrality-suspicious. which