The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-09-09
FREEDOM IN BUTTE.


 office of President of the United States had a fine experience in Butte, Montana. Butte, Montana. is now a barony of the Amalgamated Copper Company. The workers there are serfs of the industrial overlords of the Amalgamated Co. The elected officials are the servants of the industrial chiefs. And liber- ty as it exists in Montana is of that type which is graciously per mitted the people who reside there, and make their living directly or indirectly off the copper mining.
 As far as any such thing as real freedom is concerned, one might just as well be in Siberia. In Si- beria, human activities are permit ted without restraint within the circumscribed area of official sane tion. All that man wants to do he can do; provided those acts are not any way anta gonistic to the official. dom over which the people h've no say and about which they can utter no protest. But in Siberi2 thay have one very positive advantage They don't pretend to freedom. They don't pretend to have either politi- cal or industrial liberty, and to that extent at any rate they are bet ter off than in Butte. In Butte the Amalgamated Copper Go. is king.
 All officials, mayor, chief of po- lice, sheriffs and underlings of one petty breed or another, must in re- ality conform to the requirements of the Amalgamated Copper Co.,, be-, fore they can hold office. Yet the press of Butte would indignantly spurn the idea that it is not free; the politician in Butte and the min CTS in Butte, immersed in the most hopeless industrial slavery, would have any and all believe that they are free.
 All this by way of an introduc- tion. Arthur Reimer, the duly ac- credited S. L. P. candidate for pre- sident in the course of his campaign visited Butte. And in order to cam paign ventured to speak in the streets. He had not collected a larger audience than twenty five; did not block the side walk or the street; but he was promptly arrest ed; and after a chewing match in the jail as to what charge would be preferred against him, he was held for interfering with the traffic, and thrown into a vermin trap of cell and held there until court met next day.
 There was no law and no ordi- nance to convict Reimer; just the fiat of the police chief, and all though the police agreed that he ob- structed no traffic, did not interfere with the coming or the going of vehicles or pedestrians, on street or on side walk, he was adjudged guil-. ty and fined ten dollars, the sem tence being suspended.
 That was Reimer's case.
 Since then and before, republican and democratic politicians have blocked streets and side walks with demonstrations, parades and gather ings of all kinds. But there has not been and had not been any attempt to arrest them. for the very simple reason that Butte is as free as Siberia, no more and no less.
 The reason Reimer was an objec- tionable man, was the Amalgamated Copper Co. in its barony is threat ened by the propaganda that he might carry on among the poor serfs. He comes among them with a message, not founded upon some idle theory, but upon the solid foun- dation of the class struggle; and he ably enough assists in showing them how it is they are enslaved and why, and how they can be freed and why.
 The Chief of Police is merely a serving man who realizes his duty. is to his industrial over lord. the Amalgamated. He is merely po- litical funkey whose duty 1t is to see that no obnoxious agitation is permitted to be carried on would in terfere with the profit accumulation of his masters. He is the good