The Sentinel=record., 1914-01-30
IN HIS DENIAL THAT AMERICAN FEDERATION CAUSED FAIL
 URE OF COPPER STRIKE.
TALKS PLAINLY ID MINERS
Takes the Leaders to Task fer Their Utterances Against Federation and Says Financial Aid Could Not Be Given the Union.

Indianapolis, Jan. % Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, defended that organization in a speech late today before the convention of the United Mine Workers of America against charges made by Chas. H. Mover, ! president of the Western Federation of Miners. and others in the conven- ti,n. Mover charged that if the cop per strike in Michigan should be lost it wouid be due to the inactivity of 1 the executive board of the American Federation of Labor.
 Gompers declared it would ba i'm copper mine strikers of Michigan, and possible to levy an assessment for the denied that the organization is "re- actionary. worm-eaten and dead" and | that the executive council is made up of booze fighters
 After Gompers had concluded Me | Donald announced he would speak to the convention tomorrow and ask ed the federation president if he would be in the City. Gompers said he would remain here as long as he : possibly could and still keep an en- gagement in New York City at o'clock Saturday afternoon Mover said he also would speak tomorrow unless called out of the city tonight
 Frank J. Hays, vice president of the miners introduced Gompers and explained that he appeared before the convention to answer charges against the federation and it's execu- tive council.
 Taking newspaper reports as q criterion" MT Gompers began. the most important work this convention has done has consisted of attacks on the American Federation of Labor and it's officers and discussing wheth- CT the presidents salary shall be in creased $1,000 a year. I don't know if the charges in the newspapers are true, but it was printed that it was declared in the convention here that the American Federation of Labor is 'reactionary, fossilized, worm-eaten and dead Is the newspaper state. ment true?"
 Amid loud cheers Mcdonald said:
 q made those statements and oth CTS like them"
 "Only Mcdonald answers Comp CTS continued ~Of the eleven men who compose the executive council eight are teetotalers, who never touch drop of liqu1r Two of them are as moderate drinkers as many man who ever takes a drink For myself, take glass of beer when the days work is done. I challenge any man to prove that | am not as good a man mentally and physically as ever was. and l reached my siXty-fourth year last Tuesday
 "Fossilized and dead mean the same. but I submit, that an organi zation cant be these and at the same time reactiouary. for that means go- ing backward. The history of the or ganiaztion shows that it is not dead
 Gompers here directed attention to letters which he has over the sigma ture of Duncan Mcdonald and pub lished in a Chicago newspaper in 1914 He read from one of these, which tended to show that the cost of liY- ing in the fourteen years preceding his increased so per cent, and that the increase in wages amounted to 20 Der cent. He said the miners would not admit they were 40 per cent worse eff than they were four teen years ago.
 Mcdonald interrupted to say that lse obtained the figures from a sta | tistieian employed by the federal government, and that they applied to all classes of laborers, as whole
 .I suppose I shall have to submit to interruption from everyone of the 1,510 delegates. if they desire said Gompers. They have their rights here as delegates. while have none
 "It is absurd to say that the miners the tailors, the carpenters and the women who work in the sweatshops
 ar any of the tclers of the land II you please" said Gompers, are worse
 afr now than fourteen years ago. The
 statement is so bereft of reason that