The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-05-29
KANSAS COMMENT
THE FoUR-HoUR DAY.

Probably you have observed tnat
the Industrial Workers of the World
don't do great deal toward living
up to their far-flung name, and devote
many precious moments to the manu-
facture of plain and fancy disturb
ance. Whenever the /. w. w. Cab
breviated like their working hours)
gets strong in community, the popu-
lat1on is apt to devote much OF Its
time to marching in the parade. or
languishing in JAIL and very little to
the useful pursuits which might add
to the bank accounts.
There's a reason, as they say in
Battle Creek, and it has lately leaked
out. In fact, their leader, Bill Hay
WOOD, who has put up at many of the
leading jails from Boise to Bangor, is
now preaching 1t. He is advocating
the FOUR hour day in order that his
Followers will have more time to
the good of the order. OF course 1t
wouldn't seem consistent for believers
In the four-hour day to accept situa-
lions where the hours of toiling and
spinning were eight or ten. Such con-
filming toll might interfere with the
propaganda and is to be Stunned.
Ihey don't propose to be wage slaves
as long as they can live on oratory
and torch lights.
Which is frankly overdrawn. Many
OF the followers of the 1. w. w. are
hard workers who earn all they get
and then some, perhaps, but they are
to maintain fat-headed leaders in lux
ury or in Jail, either, for that matter,
to tell them things which can only
get them into trouble.
People have come to recognize the
eight hour day as a desirable dis
lance in many lines of endeavor, and
more of them will accept that, unless
fool leaders crab the game by de-
handing a good deal more than those
interested are entitled to, or can hope
There q good of
to be done in the world; a good deal
more than is being done, and there
is no reason to believe it can be ac-
complished by cutting the shift and
putting more people to work. There
aren't that many loafers, regardless
of the way they poster busy people
AtchiSon Globe.
THE IRON HAND.
The Iron Hand Of the Law is no
fiction, as many a poor devil has found
to his own undoing. In the federal
prison at Leavenworth is a man 50 years
old, who has been in prison for 40
years. He was convicted when he was
10 years old of. the charge of holding
UP and robbing a stage coach that car
ried United States mail. He was con-
victed on the testimony of a woman,
and has for 40 years declared that he
was innocent. Until now he could not
be paroled, but a recent law permits
Liz ICA AACAo III 4CuSIdl pIlSODS TO DO
paroled, and he will probably be the
first to be released under the law. The
pardon board more than half believed
his story, and admits that he may
have been innocent. If he did not COM
NIT the crime, can you imagine the
feelings that must have been in him
by night and by day for 90 years?
Think, if you can, what your feelings
would be if you were taken today and
wrongly convicted of a crime and sent
for life to prison. The old charitable
and philosophical view that the law
took, namely. that it is better that a
hundred guilty men escape than that
one innocent man be punished, seems
to be peculiarly applicable to James r.
Todd, who has suffered in prison from
youth to old age for a crime he perhaps
never ommitted.-Lawrence Gazette.