The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1916-08-19
ATTEMPT To BUY.
UP PUBLIC PRESS
New York Traction Head Spends
Vast Sums to Prejudice
~ Opinion.
DECLARES UNION AN
ALIEN ORGANIZATION
Dante Barton Says Fight In
wolves Right of Workers to
Organize.
(F'rom Committee on Industrial Rela.
tions. Southern Bldg, Washing
ton.-By Dante Barton)

tionS. Southern Bldg., Washing
ton.-By Dante Barton.)
WAS INGTON, Aug. 17.-With the
street railway workers Of New York
trying to exercise their legal right to
organize, Theodore p. Shonts, presi-
dent of the New York Railway COM
pany. is spending hundreds of thou
sands of dollars of the nickle-payers'
money in buying page advertisement
in the New York newspapers to mis-
inform and consequently to prejudice
the public against the men, and to at
tempt to bribe the newspapers against
fairness to the street railway workers.
Denounced by Unions.
Leaders of the street railway union
and executives of the railroad bro
therhoods who are now assembled in
New York, denounce as astounding
effontery the statement Of this cor
poration's president, Mr.. Shonts, that
the union is an "alien organization -
These leaders in the labor movement
say that it is sumpreme nerve coming
from a man and corporation who
have been notorious for importing to
New York and employing subway
workers and others who are new to
the New York situation, and who can
not even speak the languages that the
union organizers and workers speak.
The Amalgamated Association of
Street and Electric Railway Employees
is national institution affiliated with
the American Federation Of Labor
w. D. Mahon, it's president, points out
that wherever it has unionized any
American city's street railway system
it has vastly improved the service
raised the wages of the men EN-.
ployed, and made the American
standard of living more nearly what
it ought to be. This union, like other
unions of the organized labor move.
ment, has been a. great saving and
AmericaniZing force to the real aliens
whom corporations like that of which
Shonts is president, exploit and starve
and overwork
Involves Right to Organize.
In a report to the committee of in.
dustrial relations, Dante Barton, who
with George P. West of the staff OF
the committee, Investigated the causes
of the strike, says that it is a fight fol-
the right to organize and the right
to recognition Of organization. II
grows out of the usual background OF
low wages, long and broken hours OF
labor and the arbitrary discharge
which are the conditions always i'm
posed upon workers who are not or
ganized into effective unions. The
great effort of the union and the
strikers is to organize all the street
railway transportation employees into
an effective union. Instead of max
ing their appeal chiefly to the SYM
pathies and the humanity of the pub
lie, they are making a straight out
business appeal to the public to sup.
port them in their rights to self-re-
specting, self-controlling organization
In the light of this fact the statement
of Theodore B. Shonts, in his news
paper campaign, that I'VE are not
fighting labor unions or the principle
of organization" is characterized by
all the labor leaders as the old cheap
and flat falsehood.
Mr.. Shonts' corporation is doine
everything legal and illegal within its
power to prevent the organization OF
its employees into effective unions. II
is employing guards. 1T is making IL
necessary for union organizers to 60
together in squads Of eight or ten in
| order to protect one another from
being beaten up. It is using its politi-