The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1916-01-28
Continued from last week.
VALE AND FAREWELL

of several unions heretofore active il
Federation work, due to the enact
ment of statewide prohibition. Tht
voters have spoken and we bow tt
the will of the majority, but not with
out a distinct sense of loss of many
sterling union people. Some of oul
union brothers will leave for Other
states where they may continue tc
follow their occupation. Others viii
engage in other avocations. To all
the organized labor movement ex
tends best wishes and trusts that they
man continue to be identified, in some
tcapacity or other with the organized
labor movement.
In the last half century Of American
history, or since the adoption of the
fourteenth amendment to the federal
constitution, it is doubtful if federal
legislation, social and industrial in
character, of more lasting import to
the masses of the people has been
passed by congress than that enacted
in recent sessions. For the first time
in history Federal Industrial Com
mission has ignored platitudes and
conventional channels of investiga-
ton, probed to the marrow of Ameri-
can institutions, social, industrial and
political, in real effort to find the
cause of industrial unrest and pre-
scribe remedies. After twenty years
of continuous effort, Andrew Furu-
SETH international president of the
seamen, has secured federal enact
ment that places the sailor on an
equality with other workmen, makes
of him a free moral agent and not
mere chattel before the mast. The
sections of the Clayton Antitrust Bill
defining the legal rights of labor or
ganiZations, gives the sanction of law
to a principle as vital and far-reach-
ing as was the right of petition grant
ed by King John centuries ago under
meath the Charter Oak. The creation
of the Federal Relations Commission
by act of congress and the investiga-
tions of that commission, the enact
ment of the clayton Bill' and the
"LaFollette Seamen's Act mark
milestone in the progress of American
workmen, Revolutionary legislation
is rarely appreciated by those living
in the immediate period, a decade
must pass before the proper perspec-
tive can be gained.
Each great crisis in our national
history has developed one man, or
group of men, who with unerring
vision, sensed the national peril and
reused the public conscience. What
amounts to virtual feudalism exists
in many of the industrial sections of
the country. Mems civil, political,
even religious rights subject to the
will of an industrial autocracy, which,
through the unlicensed power of dis,
charge, governed at will The oppor-
tunity to own land and cultivate ii
profitably has largely been taken
away from the man of small-even
moderate-means. Large fortunes are
virtually held in perpetuity by the
lineal descendants of the founders of
such fortunes, the legatees having no
sense of stewardship nor duty to So
ciety in handling of large incomes.
The opportunity to labor, which is in
itself the right to life, has been denied
to many thousands despite all our
twentieth century progress A univer-
sal unrest exists, smoldering awhile,
then breaking into flame, checked by
this or that remedial reform but never
extinguished There has been in the
past no lack of investigations" Off,
cial and unofficial. The findings of
some have been wholly or in part sup
pressed by powerful. unseen influ-
ences. Others merely dealt with sur
face conditions Labor and other re-
form elements have sounded a warn
ing time and time again but the pub
lie conscience slept on, deeming the
outcry but the warped vision of dream.
ers or the tocsin of professional "agi
/ tators."
If we expected that the Federal In
] i nI al
ed by act of congress, would follow
the conventional part of investigation
there was reason for such suspicion
To our surprise, perhaps, to the con
sternation and confusion of corporate
interests, the commission went to the
very marrow of the industrial and so
cial life of the nation. Led by Frank
p. Walsh, a man of intrepid moral