The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1914-10-30

at as good pay. The beer driver got
$21 a week for eight hours. About
$12 for twelve or more hours is paid
by the wholesale grocers in Wheeling
to their overworked teamsters. They
believe themselves sanctified, too, and
resting in the cushioned pew, their
drievers are working an extra day for
nothing, spending the Sabbath in the
manure of the stables.
A bartender is waiter. Two hun
dred of them were thrown out of work
| Wednesday. They averaged eight
hours and 500 for a six day week. The
saloons which were turned into restau-
rants turned off the bartenders and
substituted walters, because they could
be worked longer hours for less pay.
THE men who frequented the sa-
loon, for the most part, were not dis
eased drunkards; they went for the
social intercourse there provided.
meet and converse with their fellows
Nov, is the man who voted to bring
all this about going to be equal as a
constructionist to his capacity as a
destructionist? Is he ready to help
to build a new social arrangement
upon the smoking-or, let us say, soak
ed-ruins of the old? Will he help
make Mr.. Speidel and gentlemen like
him pay more wages to his drivers and
give them some evening and Sunday
hours to themselves, their human as
sociations and their families? Will
they help raise the pay and shorten
the hours of the walters in Wheeling
hotels and restaurants-particu
the girls? Will they help to provide
other social diversions for those who
have been so suddenly driven out of
their only club?
'1f they do these things they will be
working along the practical lines fol-
lowed by the Labor movement. Labor
proceeds upon the theory that is much
better to make a man not want liquor
than to compel him not to drink it,
or to compel him, through the misery
of his life, to indulge in it. The ex-
perience of the Labor movement has
shown that when men worked fewer
hours, under better conditions, they
drank less, and when their working
conditions were bad, their hours long
and their pay low, they drank most.
AS a thoroughly happy man will not
when mankind would be too happy to
get drunk. But since the prohibition
lists have forced the revolution instead
of depending upon slower evolution,
common human kindness demands
that they spur themselves to unusual
efforts to meet the conditions.
"Confiscation, after all, wasn't it,?
About a million dollars worth of priv
ate property and the livihood of about
them at midnight Tuesday.
well, if you don't mind confiscat-
ing the property of Lovey Mehen, why
do you balk at John Rockefeller? The
saloonkeeper never compelled anybody
to submit to robbery or injury, no.
body bought from them unless they
wanted to; but the Standard Oil Trust
robs you whether you like it or not.
You can't get away from it. You
might stop using oil, and turn to gas,
and there would be old John, holding
on this economic gun at you; you
might turn to electricity, and find that
John controlled it, too; that you are
paying eight cents for electricity in
Wheeling when you ought to get it
for two cents; you might, in despera-
ton, turn back to the old tallow can
dle-and buy them from Standard Oil!
You might prefer to have yourself
robbed in the future as in the past
by the Oil Trust, the Steel Trust, the
Wool Trust, the Beef Trust, and all
the other trusts, but for Heavens
sake, never again pretend that you
are too conscientious to confiscate
private property.
You've done it. You've confiscated
the liquor property, just as our fathers
confiscated the human slave property,
and just as our grandfathers confis-
Gated this continent from King George.
AS confiscator you have been such
bowling success that it still fills with
high hope the bosoms of those of us
who want to see the public confiscate
all private profit in public utilities
for we believe that you're on the high
road to it, and a-hoppin' by heck!