The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1914-02-27
WILL FIGHT
LEGISLATION
EMPLOYERS ASSOCIATION TO
FIGHT ANY CHANGE IN THE
HOURS AND CONDITIONS IN
LUMBER INDUSTRY.

Secretary John B. Jones of the EN-
ployers' Association of Washington in
his recent annual report to that body,
brought out the alleged fact that with
in the past year the association has
increased tenfold and now comprises
all the largest industries of the state
1t is claimed that the logging, shingle
and sawmill, and fishing industries are
largely represented at the present
time in the association. Mr.. Jones re-
ported that the association is prepared
to cope with the demands of labor
leaders for an eight-hour day and a
closed shop contract, which the lumber
interests have refused owing to the
long continued stagnation in the in
dustry. He reported further that the
lumber mill owners and loggers had
decided against any change in work
ing hours or conditions.
There you have it, from an authori-
tative source, that the effort of the
timber workers of this state to shorten
their hours of labor is to be met by
the opposition of the State Employers
Association, a branch of the National
Manufacturers Association. Possibly
it may explain the ultimatum issued
by the lumber manufacturers of this
city. We have no positive knowledge
to that effect, but we imagine that the
Everett manufacturers are also men,
bers of this association. In another
column we have told who and what
the officers of this state association
are. We do not underestimate the re-
sources of such a combination. We
realize that they are fully capable of
going to any length to defeat the de-
mands of the workers for a shorter
workday. Without an instants hesita-
ton they would plunge this state into
industrial chaos and commercial de-
preston that their own will might be
law in their own particular industries.
Every effort would be made to fasten
upon the strikers the odium of respon-
sibility for a condition of business de-
preston that might ensue. Through it
all bear this one fact in mind: that
the right to organize and the right to
strike if necessary to improve work
ing conditions is as sacred as life it
self and that to give up that right
means the surrender on the part of
the workmen of their manhood.
The demand for an eight-hour day is
for a minimum wage of 1925 per day.
Fourteen years ago in this city COM
mon labor in the mills was receiving
$175 and $500 a day; today it is re-
ceiving scarcely more and in some in
stances less. Yet the price of nearly
every article that enters into the ne
cessities of life has risen far beyond
the rise in wages. He who would pre-
tend that a workingman can maintain
a home, cloth, feed shelter and edu-
cate his children on less, is an idiot.
Then it follows that the man with a
family receiving that wage is denying
his dependents the necessities of life
or is taking his children out of school
and making them bread-winners. Then
society is subsdizing that industray,
They cry of the great benefit the mills
have been to the city in making pay
rolls. No industry is worth more to
than what it pays in wages
and working conditions. Get that firm
ly fixed in your mind. If it pays less
than a living wage, imposes excessive
hours of toll that sap the strength of
the workman, compels children to
work to exc out the wages it pays to
the head of the family, then that in
dustry becomes a parasite upon the
community rather than an aid to its
industrial progress. 1t is time we
quit talking about the aggregate size
of our city's payroll, the number of
the millions of feet of lumber we ship
to the worlds markets, and enquire
under what conditions the men live
whose labor makes those things pos
sible What is the relation between
low wages, long hours and grinding
economy, children running at large
upon the streets or working when they
should be in school, illeteracy and
Not that we claim that Ev-
erett ranks with crowded eastern in
dustrial centers in this regard; it does
not, but such condition is not so far
away if labor is denied the right to
organize for its own protection, Bear
in mind, if you please. that 1,197,372
aliens entered this country
during the last fiscal year, that 9S6,355
of these were between the ages of IA