Middletown transcript., 1916-09-09
MORE WHITE HOUSE FOLLY


WHEN Roosevelt was president the
w whole country was threatened
with the tragic peril of a big coal strike
which had already brought some suffer
ing and promised to freeze millions OF
people.
just as in this railroad strike, one of
the parties to that labor difficulty the
insolent coal barons-refused to arbi-
trate. Instead of siding with this faction
and strengthening them in their un-
reasonable position, he insisted upon
arbitration, and the perilous strike was
quickly and peacefully settled.
Contrast this statesmanlike course
which not only composed dangerous
labor quarrel but also upheld the great
principle of arbitration, with Mr.. Viii
sons petty "playing politics. in this
railroad trouble wherein he encouraged
the brotherhood in their unfair refusal
to arbitrate, thereby making the situa-
ton more difficult, and striking a blow
at arbitration, the best of all ways to
settle strikes.
Roosevelt's act, that Of statesman
and patriot seeking his country's good;
Wilson'S, that of a political demagog
seeking labor votes. If it were not plain
that he was trucking to the Labor
vote, his cheap claptrap of signing the
eight-hour bill with four pens one OF
which was presented to each of the four
Brotherhood leaders, shows that fact
with disgusting plainness.
Without trying for an instant to bring
the trainmen to reason, without urging
them to arbitrate as he should have done,
he at once sides with them in their
wrong refusal to arbitrate. Thus in
stead like Roosevelt of lessening the
peril to the country, with the chance
like him of averting it, and settling for
dyer the difficulty, he made that peril
grsater-poured coal oil on the fire, and
brought nearer the awful calamity of a
general railroad strike that would have
killed hundreds of babes, brought wide
suffering, and untold disaster to the
business of the entire nation.
This strike trouble was in truth largely
Mr.. Wilson's own making just as was
the Mexican muddle wherein he inter-
fered in their revolutionary squabbles
by opposing Huerta. And finding he
could not browbeat the railroad presi-
dents into surrendering their rights to a
fair hearing. he turned to Congress to
help him out Of the difficulty he had
himself helped to create
And how has Mr.. Wilson finally settled
this grave question? At his dictation a
Democratic Congress, sandbagged by
Labor, has passed in a rush without
consideration an unconstitutional law
giving these trainmen, already the
highest paid employees in the world, a
wage raise of 25 per cent.
Congress can no more compel the
railroads to pay their workmen 10
hours wage for hours work than they
can compel the farmers to pay their
workers a full weeks wage for five
days work, or to sell their wheat for 80
cents a bushel. The Supreme Court
will certainly annul the illegal law.
But this piece of demagogery is like
all the rest of Mr.. Wilson's makeshift
craftsmanship that allowed Mexican
bandits to murder hundreds of Ameri-
cans and destroy enormous amounts of
their property; that allowed German
submarines to assassinate lis Americans
on the Lusitana and many others in
later sea massacres-a policy that buys
"peace at any price" by weakly showing
the present difficulty out Of sight. So
here he has succeeded in buying peace
until after the election-in fightwhere
less than one-half of one per cent. of
the people has "held up" at the pistols
point all the rest of the nation