The Gem worker and the Idaho labor herald. (Boise, Idaho) 1914-1917, 1916-06-22

right OF the workers to address their
fellow workers would seem to be as
far as corporation employers could go
in the use of injunctions. But these
Chicago fighters against union labor
have tried to use the power of the
courts to starve the workers and their
families.
The injunction prohibits the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor and the Chi
cago Federation of Labor and all
union men and all other people from
helping the strikers with money, or
with groceries, or with credit, or with
new jobs, or with any other kind of
assistance or reward
If these underpaid foundry workers
and moulders and other striking work.
ers are hungry or are out of money,
after six weeks of heroic struggle and
sacrifice for their families, they are
to be branded as criminals and put in
jail for contempt of court if they ac-
cept loan or gift from their fell
low unionists to help them over into
the day of better industrial justice.
If union labor, national, or state, or
state, or city, or local, helps these
particular battle in the general fight of
the working people, then all union
labor is to be in contempt of court and
is to be punished.
Could anything be clearer than is
the attempt of these Chicago employ
ers to prevent all cooperation and
organization by the workers for the
workers mutual protection?
Their challenge in these Chicago
in functions is challenge to the
whole labor movement.
They make the attempt to destroy
union labor and this attempt to starve
their striking workmen into submis-
sion with the bold unIarnished de-
claration that they want the courts
to guard their profits! They boldly
declare, in asking for the injunction,
that the strike was keeping them from
making a lot of money. They said
they had material on hand which
would be valueless unless labor would
give it value. And yet, on that ad-
mission that their own profits de-
pended on the labor OF the workers.
they asked that the workers be starved
or put in jail for trying to get an
eight or nine hour day and an in
crease in wages less than the increase
in the cost of living
These same workers are told in the
same injunction that they must not
picket, that they must not congregate
IN thc streets near the companies
plants, that they must not try to in
duce other workers to leave the plants.
They are told not to do these and
many other things that are harmless
or that they have not attempted to do.
The injunction against the Chicago
foundry workers as well as the some
what earlier tannery workers slyly or
directly imputes to the workers acts
of violence such as have actually been
committed against the workers. For
instance, tannery workers who had
geen getting from ten to fourteen
dollars week and who had been on
strike for IS per cent increase i'll
pay and a nine instead of ten hour
day, have been tricked into going into
the companies Offices and there have
been beaten up. on their refusal to go
back to work at the companies die
tation There have been too many
af6davits of this almost unbelievable
brutality on behalf of profits to leave
any doubt that it is fact.
In Chicago at this period, in addi-
ton to minor industrial struggles
there are the strikes OF the Malleagle
Iron Company and two International
Harvester Company plants, the Nc
Cormick and the Deering, involving.
2500 to 5000 workers; the strike of.
the tanneries where 2300 men are still
out, six of the % employers having
already given in to the workers de-
mands; the strike of the two or three
thousand employees of plumbing man
ufacturers and the strike of from 1900
to 1900 drivers for the express COM
panies. In every case the workers
had the support Of organized labor
and have proved themselves masters
of the situation, able to win their
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