The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1914-07-10
LABOR WINS
FIRST ROUND
FIGHTING AGAINST HEAVY
ODDS REQUIRED NUMBER
OF SIGNATURES ARE Sc
CURED-LUCY CASE MAN
AGES HEADQUARTERS.
(By E. P. Marsh, President Washing

(By E. P. Marsh, President Washing
ton State Federation of Labor.)
Labor has won the first round in
the fight to place upon the ballot at
the November election the Eight
Hour" and Seven Sisters" initiative
measures. Last week Representative
Kingery filed with the secretary of
state the petition for the eight-hour
! bill bearing approximately $4,000
names. A few days later Miss Lucy
R. Case filed on behalf of the joint
| legislative committee the petitions for
the Seven Sisters. These measures
carried approximately $4,000 names
save Fish Bill No. IL, which bore
about 1000 names.
Early in the campaign for sigma
| measures combined their forces,
pooled their money and began a sys-
tematic fight against the bills. The
! Stop-Look-Listen league was organized
| by E, A Sims, representative of the
| fishing interests in the legislature, ex-
pensive headquarters were established
| in Seattle and campaign of publicity
started Just how much money was
expended in the attempt to keep these
measures off the ballot will probably
never be known as the law does not
require opponents of initiative bills to
render accounts of monies expended
as is the case with proponents of in
itiative measures. However, their
headquarters swarmed with clerks,
stenographers, press agents, etc,
while several men were constantly do
| ing field work for the organization.
Paid advertising was inserted by the
league in more than 200 daily and
weekly newspapers, which item in it
self must have mounted to a large
sum.
AS the work of securing signatures
advanced technicality after technical
! ity was discovered in the initiative law
which rendered the work of securing
bona fide signatures exertmely diff
cult Under the law registration Of
| ficers had almost plenary power to re-
! ject names and many voters were
stricken upon the purest technicali-
| ties. Nor was the task of circulating
seven distinct petitions in one batch at
Looking back over the past four
months and calling to mind the many
difficulties which attended the circu-
| lation of our petitions, we realize that
our people essayed an almost impos-
sible task when the machinery of op-
Grafton provided by a standpat legis-
lature is taken into consideration
| Under the provisions of the law all
the circulation work had to be purely
voluntary and it was asking a good
deal of men and women who had
worked hard all day to go out after
their days work was over and put in
another shift But they did it and all
praise to the men and women who
made success possible.
To the farmers belongs credit for
the final effort which got us under the
wire. Thoroughly aroused by the act
ivities of the Stop-Look-Listen people,
they laid aside their farm work and
worked like fury during the closing
weeks of the campaign, They literal
| ly hurled signed petitions at Miss
Case during the last month. If the
truth must be told they did much
more effective work than did the trade
unionists who lived in the centers of
population where logically the bulk of
the signatures should have come from.
! We got to Olympia with enough
valid names, and some to the good, to
place every measure on the ballot. In
dications point to a desire to go be-
! hind the returns. Attorney General
/ Tanner ruled some time ago that sign
ers might withdraw any time during
the thirty-day period in which they
were being check at Olympia. He
again ruled that every one of the thou
sands Of signers to each measure must
be rechecked by the secretary OF state.
Just what sense there is in this when
the names have been sworn to by GER
tifying officials as valid, does not APP
pear But that provision seems to be
in the law. It will take an army OF
clerks at Olympia to do work which is
nothing more nor less than a duplica-
Continued on Page Two.