The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-12-19
g9,naULSOGT ARBITRATION.

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 ministration measure. President Wilson, however he may have been obscure in his views on other sub jects as far as he impartod them to the public, has never for one in- staut hesitated to affirm his belief in compulsory arbitration as d principle, and as principle which should be materialized in legisla- ton.
 Nor was this confined to post-elec- tion statements. for some time prior to election the President has fully demonstrated where he stood on this proposition.
 Not Gompers or any one of the officials of the American Federation of Labor could have been in any way uninformed on this point, unless they are uniformed on the most common and most generally circu lated items of news affecting labor.
 Moreover it has been fully under stood that compulsory arbitration would take up a part of the admi- nistration's legislative program and would be quite early introduced in Congress as such.
 Accordingly when Gompers sup ported Wilson as he did, strenuous ly and without equivocation, and supported generally the democratic party. he placed himself in no po- sition at all to oppose compulsory arbitration. He supported compul- sory arbitration when he supported Wilson for it was Wilson's avowed policy.
 There is, then, nothing reasonable and nothing logical and noting in telligent in the opposition announced by the officials who supported Will son to the principle of compulsory arbitration: that, or their action in supporting Wilson who advocates compulsory arbitration vas illogical in the extreme.
 There never was more hopeless case of the engineer being hoist with his own petard, and there could be no more striking example of the fatuous political policy which is pur- sued by the executive of the Fedora tion, playing high political stakes with a job at the end of the game.
 Now compulsory arbitration meas ures should alaria "o one. Com pulsory arbitration is clearly ufcon- stitutonal That will not prevent its passage. but to enforce that law it has to receive the consent of the workers who are to be subject thereto.
 All the laws that Congress might nass could not keep men al work if they insist upon quitting, and fl is this feature that should receive the attention of the workers and posi- lively no other.
 1T uuconstitutioual legislation is passed: if laws are passed which ! shear the constitutional rights off the workers which the work CTS as well as other citi- 1, zens are supposed to possess, there is 10 reason why the workers should even pretend to obey them.
 Attention may very well be direct | ed to the declarations made by number of railroad chiefs upon the . passage of the Adamson Bill to the . effect that they would not obey the | law until it's constitutionality had been passed upon by the courts.
 And it may very we'll be under stood, furthermore, that if they found it profitable to evade it, they would continue to do so even if the courts upheld the law.
 Attention might also profitably be directed to the operations of the Sherman Antitrust law. Whatever may be thought of that law, it's pur- pose and it's letter and its spirit were to destroy industrial combina- tions: the trusts
 And whatever may be thought cf the purpose or tho letter or the sri- rit of that law, tke Sherman Anti Trust law had within itsci' the means and the ways of doing exactly what it purported to do. And the aw was such one that left ample l means and ample ways at the com I