The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-10-26
INSUPPRESSIBLE.

A dispatch from Anchorage re- ports that the Alaska Labor Union and the Socialists have begun the erection of a twenty thousand dol lar concrete Labor Temple, and that the radical organization was never in a more fourishing condition.
 It is fitting that this the young est town in all Alaska should also have the most radical and the most active labor organization in the Ter ritory. It reveals the fact that how ever elsewhere the workers may be misled, or have adopted reactionary tactics and policies, there will al ways be one stronghold somewhere which will keep the names of the movement burning brightly.
 The story of the organization of the railroad workers on the gov ernment road is one Of incalculable good fortune. That set of circum- stances should have arisen wherein the disconteut of the laborers was promoted by the conditions under which they toiled, has been the evil out Of which has come great good.
 Moreover, it shows that however elsewhere bourgeois ideals and re- actionary policies may have steered the workers astray, the elemental conditions which the workers faced upon the railroad containing fewer factors to mystify and deceive them have resulted in a clear cut labor organization heinz formed and one which will have powerful and far reaching ehect throughout the length and breadth of Alaska.
 When we consider the enormous number of employees in this Terri tory that have failed to identify themselves with the labor move ment; when we tally the enormous number Of such who are ready and willing to enjoy the improvements which have been gained by union la bor agitation, we may well wonder why the organizations of labor have made so little progress.
 Take a camp like Juneau for in- stance, where the pay roll is the largest of any mining camp in AL aska. There is no labor organiza. tion throughout the mining indus try. One writer explained this as arising from the fact that the min ing companies literally killed off the unions by kind treatment of the men.
 While there may be a grain of truth in this allegation, certain it is that the critic is but a superficial observer. What actually took place is this. The Western Federation of Miners in Juneau put up strenuous fight against the condi- tions imposed upon the workers by the Treadwell. The Treadwell final ly defeated the unionists, and made it hSlADcl OI tHS w. r. of M. to work in that camp But they also conceded to their em- ployees practically everything that the union men had demanded except | the right to organize. They reform ed the sleeping accomodation, the | mulligan house and made some pro- 1 visions against accidents which had | made their mine a death trap. Those concessions were all of them wrung from the company by the strike, and it is to the sacrifices made by the union men there as that the conditions which satisfy the non-unionists are such as they are.
 Moreover, although today there is no labor union in Juneau. unless its is secret, the day vii, eventually come when progress will again force even these satisfied employed by the mines to strike for better conditions. Today they may be soothed by uplifting by religious agitation