The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1914-05-22
WILL NOT BE
STAMPEDED
FARMERS AND UNIONS ARE
STILL IN ACCORD WITH IN
ITIATIVE PROGRAM - TRI-
COUNTY CONVENTION CON
SISTS OF WEALTHY FARM
ERS.
(By E. p. Marsh.)

pflSlHS Ine COunJleS OF Nalld Wdlld
Columbia and Garfield appointed 8
special committee to examine the in
itiative measures known as the "Sever
Sisters" and report back to the tri
i county organization it's findings. That
committee rendered it's report at the
convention held in Waitsburg last
week and it recommended that all of
the measures be repudiated by the
farmers. This report was adopted by
five of the seven are farmers meas
ures, proposed and drawn by them
that they were suggested as long ago
as last September, that one of them
is the identical bill they themselves
! fought for and lost in the last legis-
lature, one wonders just what these
particular farmers use to think with.
The argument used by the commit
tee against each bill is in substance
so like the argument sent out by our
friend Frank Dallam of the ,Stop-Look-
and-Listen league, even to phraseol-
ogy, that one has his suspicious that
the committee report is only a his
masters voice" affair, as it were.
The committee report supposes to
have been the result of careful study
and analysis of the proposed meas
ures If Ed Sims and Frank Dallam
didn't write the text of the report
they certainly practised auto-sugges-
ton on the members of the committee
The committee first opposes bill No
6-the blue Sky law. The farmers
were for that identical measure in the
last legislature and made it one of
their campaign pledges during the pre-
ceding campaign.
Measure No. Z they oppose because
it offers mo relief worth mentioning,
from the cost of maintaining the little
army of examining boards and inspect |
ors of various kinds now running up
and down the state" The cutting off |
at one swoop, as this bill proposes, |
of twenty-one men at eight dollars per |
diem and travelling expenses, had i'm
agined would thin the army of state |
employees to an appreciatble degree.
The oppose the Employment Office !
bill, the one bill of the seven which
up to date not one daily paper in the
state has dared attack. Indeed, the
Seattle P-I. openly praised this meas
ure editorially, because of the state
wide chain of evils that have grown
out of the employment agency system.
First Aid comes in for attack and
the argument used shows conclusively
that the committee never got beyond
the "c-a-t spells cat" class in the study
Of workmans compensation.
They oppose the Road Bill because
the jute mill will be closed and the
state will lose it's 100000 investment,
that with the opening of
The Panama canal the shipment of
sacked grain will cease practically in
his state and the jute mill become
worthless. I suppose the committee
would have the prisoners make over
alls in competition with the girls in
he Black Manufacturing Co.'S factory
1t Seattle That would be fine.
The Fish Code is no good either,
md Frank Dallams figures prove that
the fishing industry is going to be {
hrottled." Somehow they make no
mention of the fact that in ten years
t has cost the state $353,395 more to
propagate the fish and oysters and
collect the revenue due the state than I
he state has received in revenue from /;
he industry.
The committee thinks that the lin
tiative" is wrong. That we should
,nly use the initiative when the legis- s
ature refuses to pass needed meas {
Tres. That is just what we are doing, ;
,rothers. First Aid, Blue Sky Law, I
Abolition of Paid Employment Off i
,es, Revision of the Fish Code, all {
hese measures were before the legis- I
ature and it is for the very reason l
hat a stand-pat Legislature refused to
,ass them, that we are invoking the |
initiative. &
The representatives of the farmers t
tationed at Olympia had to go up S
gainst brace game just the same as
ur representatives did and ! imagine |
t was because a lot of farmers, just. f
he same as a lot of trade unionists, n
howed a peculiar denseness in the h
egion of their thinking apparatus S
lhen they chose legislators, 1t is a
ather amusing and rather disgusting o