The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1916-08-25

| truth OF incidents in controversy a!
between Capital and Labor can onl,
be arrived at by impartially consider
ing the presentations of special advo
Gates, who, on the side of Labor, may
be influenced by zeal, and on the side
of Capital too frequently by gold.
The daily press, the most powerful
medium of appeal to the public, has
its principal pecuniary resource il
the field of advertisers, but its
columns are also at the disposal OF
industrial barons and politicians de
voted to the interests of industria
barons.
1t perhaps will not be questioned
that the function of the daily press is
to present among other things, views
favorable to Capital and that facts
just to Labor, must necessarily be
sought in the Labor journals.
On the waterfront, where shingle
weavers have been engaged in picket
ing struck mills, violence has made
its appearance. The strike is months
lence occurred Saturday morning. A
picket line of seventeen men, no one
of whom had conducted himself in a
manner to have undergone arrest dur.
ing all the period of the strike, were
beaten up by aSsailants numbering at
least seventy men, directed by Mr.
Jamison, inspired by Mr.. Downs, and
led by thugs especially imported for
the occasion. The daily press has re-
ported the affair in an aspect dis
creditable to Labor, withal expressing
its total inability to surmise who was
the agrressor in a melee in which
seventeen men were on one side and
seventq on the other.
The pickets beaten up were sta
toned in a public thoroughfare, and,
according to Fourth Of July orations,
at least, were clothed in all the rights
of American citizens.
The owners of the strike-bound
mills of Everett exercise such rights
and would protect themselves. or be
protected in them, could any maniac
be found to question the matter in the
least
The fact is that the owners involved
do go about the public thoroughfares,
without the slightest danger to them
selves, in the pursuit of their ordinary
business. That business may be at
times to persuade non-union men to
accept positions vacated by union men
because of a strike; it may be, and
often is, to persuade efficient work
men to leave a competitor for their
own service.
The owners of whom we speak go
about singly, or in groups, and in
what hour of the day or night they
please. They may accost, interrogate
or bargain with men happening to be
strangers to them. No unionist could
be found to assert that their right to
do these things infringed upon any
right he claimed for himself and a
suggestion that they should be
dubbed, shot and jailed for so Ioing
could emanate nowhere in the uni
verse but from characters OF the
stamp of Francisco Villa.
Now, the question is fair: VIII! nave
not other citizens who happen be
union pickets the same Ri in pur-
suing their business, whit lay be
that of asking workers &c II less
than the union scale to demand the
union scale; of asking recaltitrant
union men to remain union n II; of
accosting, it may be, stranger con
cerning their intention or nol-inten-
tion of accepting employment I less
than prevails in so per cent nf the
shingle mills in the State of Wash
ington?
The reply to these questions would
almost certainly be that the workers
have such rights and that the very
fact that an anti-picketing law is be
fore the voters proves that now, at
least, the right is unquestioned.
What =. VI STONED is that the
picket should ever, eya, though stand
ing on public property, go near the
premises of struck plant instead OF
staying up town and on the street
The proposition can be retorted Why
should the millman come up on the
street instead of staying down at hi:
mill? The answer is simply that tn,