The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-02-07
Professional Cunnen Disguised
 As Detectives
DisgracefuI Conditions of Af-
 fairs Exist in Colorado.
PRIVATE SOLDIERY
 TO BE BANNED
Government To Insist Upon As suIning Its Full RespOn-
 bility.
(By Our Stan correspondent.)

(By Our Staff Correspondent.)
 Washington, Feb. e-shan private tdetective'' agencies in this country be permitted to maintain standing armies for hire to capitalists to be used by the latter in crushing labor disputes? This is the question rais- od by Secretary of Labor Wilson in his first annual report to Congress. He recommends legislation. prohibit ing bands of armed men from crossing state lines. E Out in Colorado and in the copper district of Michigan a state of actual civil war exists. In each case armed workers, striking for better conditions in their work, are pitted against arm ed mercenaries-profess gunnen- recruited by the so-ca.lled detective afford to pay for them.
 The rest of the country is at peace. But it is actual warfare in these strike zones. In Colorado some 60 or 80 neW-made graves testify to the san guinary nature of the conflict there. How did the bloodshed start? When the coal companies imported private mercenary troops, supplied to order by detective agencies These. same private soldiers, it is declared. were fresh from other bloody service in West Virginia and elsewhere. This condition would be tolerated in no other country on earth Why it can exist in America, whose jealousy for home rule is a chief national char acteristic, is almost beyond compre- people have not yet awakened to the lmonstrous@@ sort of business being I transacted by these detective concerns. Secretary Wilson has called attention : to it in such a way that popular in- dignation is sure to be aroused.
 1 I've Azr7n i1ar t1aa xv1fr %I71
 election of civil officers, including the officers who maintain the peace and do the police duty. Therefore as Sec retary Wilson points out, when a strike comes in 9 community and suddenly there arrive strange men, armed to the teeth. blood-thirsty and i swaggering. looking for trouble, and assuming an authority which is not | legally, theirs, the average American citizen, no matter how peacealb1e he may be, is apt to see red and nourish murder in his heart Disorder all ways follows the importation of these mercenary soldiers. It sis no wonder that strikers begin arrning themselves
 when the private troops arrive.' -sz s- l After the Homestead strike Congress investigated this traffic in private sol diery, and both the majority and min orfty reports denounced the practice I ' 'Exasperated strikers will not nolest or resist the officers of the tsta4e. when under exactly similar circumstances they will assault the watchman or guard hired by the corporation was the report. The Judiciary Commit tee, at that time. however, did not believe that the Interstate Commerce Act gave the federal government au- thority to stop the practice
 The authority over interstate traf- 1 fic has since broadened. MT. Wilson observes, The Mann white slave law tSnows that persons a s we'll as DrOper.
 ty comes under the Jurisdiction of the government in interstate traffic. Sec
 retary Wilson's conclusion is as fol. flows: There would seem to be no reason
 now why the trans portation of private troops, or private police. or arm e6 guards, or armed mobs, whether by employers or strikers, from one state
 to another under cofnmerciaI contracts Eshouid not be regarded coming full ly within the scope of congressiona.
 authority over interstate commerce.