Denver labor bulletin., 1916-07-08

/ stamped Howat as a dishonest man and
traitor to his fellows. The facts also
developed at the trial that Howat was
an absolutely square man to himself, to
the aged mother who trusted him, and
to the thousands of miners and their
| families who also trusted him. That
| these miners believed in him even before
the trial and the judge and the jury had
proved his innocence was shown by the
fact that they reelected him by an in
creasing majority to the presidency Of
his district after all the false charges of
| bribery had been made.
Before Jury of His Peers.
Howat went before a jury OF his peers
to satisfy President John P. White of
the national organization and all the
ization that he was worthy of their con-
fidence and worthy to continue in their
councils.
The cold recital of false charges made
against Howat and their complete dis
proval in the court room, where state
ments had to be made under oath and
could be cmtroverted by records, by
bank checks, and by vouchers, can give
only the faintest idea of the real life and
blood drama whose elimination was in
the four weeks of the court trial.
The person Hazen, used by the power
| full Mr. Keith and others to destroy the
union by secret corruption, never showed
his face in the court room. He was in
communication during the trial, however,
, with Keith and Keith's attorneys, and
it was proved that the money he said
he gave to Howat ne put in his own
bank, on his own bank account, subject
to his own checks. 1t was proved that
| ha IN
course of checking account and that
Howat never saw one cent of it.
Fought for Rights of Miners.
1t was proved further that instead of
working for the arbitration clause (for
which he was supposed to have sold him
self Alexander Howat continued his Wig
orous and successful opposition to the
arbitration clause. It was proved by all
the evidence that Howat fought with
the same vigor for the rights of the
miners against Hazen as he had in all
other instances, and that he won every
contest. He was a vigorous champion
of the miners in all their grievances
against the operators during all the
years covered by the charges and by the
subsequent events.
Such a labyrinth of false entries and
of secret corruption was rarely ii ever
before proved so thoroly in court trial
Such an endless chain of acts of at
tempted fraud against the unions by
the coal owners leading into other acts
of attempted fraud against the unions
by the coal owners was rarely If ever
before exposed to full view in a Grim
inal or civil court. The case was one
that tested the quality not only of the
jury but of the Judge who presided at
the trial and made it possible to bring
out the truth and to have the truth
triumph. Alexander Howat pnd the
cause of union labor for which he stood
in that trial were fortunate that an In
telligent and incorruptible judge, Judge
of broad human sympathies, Thomas ]
Seehorn of the jackson county circuit
court, presided and held the scales of
justice even.
Truth and Honesty Prevail.
Perjury in the trial was added to Sian.
der before the trial. Nothing which has
brought reproach to the greedy type of
big business and to the misuse OF power
both in the name of business and in the
name of law, was lacking from that gi-
gantic conspiracy to ruin Howat, and,
thru Howat, to crush out labor unionism
in that section. 1t was as if the great
interests antagonistic TO union labor had
+ set the stage for one sweeping, decisive
victory against labor. But if they chose
their battle ground they chose it mistak-
enly. They lost. The victory was won
for union labor.
In the results of that fight union
labor and the miners organizations
emerge, as Alexander Howat emerges,
stronger in public opinion, stronger in
law, and stronger in themselves than
they have ever been before