The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1917-02-23

that the people guard we'll their lib
critics or they will be lost.
If the toilers of the United States
do not wage a bloodless battle for
their rights they will later have to
fight for their liberties and lives.
The most powerful plutocracy ever
known in this world is fast forging
the chains of industrial slavery upon
Labor and the apathetic giant is
''asleep at the switch"
There never was time when La
Dor should be up and doing more ur-
gent than the present.
Corporate power is united, deter
mined and has unlimited capital with
which to crush labor organizations.
The task of the plutocracy is hard
one, but labor must be taught that
it is unscrupulous and will use any
means, fair or foul, to accomplish its
ends.
Labor must present a united front
or go down in defeat and sink to
condition of servitude.
Labor has friends-disintere
unselfsh friends, but they are not
properly supported and encouraged in
their efforts in Labor's behalf The
friends of Labor are ridiculed, mis-
represented, villifed, slandered and
prosecuted by the agents of greed and
avarice.
1t is the duty of every man and
woman, members of unions, oranges,
farmers unions or other organiza-
tions having for their common OBJ
iect the betterment of themselves and
their fellows, to attend their meetings
and TIN ough sane, carefully consider
ed and we'll directed efforts resist the
onslaughts of their enemies.
1t is the evident aim of the enemies
of the toilers to establish on this con-
tinent that murderous institution, mil
itarism, and it is the duty of all
workers to get together and combat
every effort of their foes.
Warnings without number have
been sounded and it is time they
should be heard!
The committee on Industrial Rela-
tions, the unofficial successor of the
Industrial Relations Commission, is
laundering warnings in your ears,
and you apathetic members of labor
organizations are neglecting your
duty if you do not attend your
union meetings and lend aid and en-
couragement to those of your broth
ers and sisters who see the danger
ahead and are bending their efforts
to evade and avoid it.
You will have plenty of time for
vain regrets if you DO not do your
+ duty now.
Read the following, one of the re-
cent warnings of the Committee on
Industrial Relations, written by Dante
Barton:
If ever eternal vigilance was the
price Of liberty" that warning is true
for the American workingmen now
With the attention Of all persons dis
tracted by the threat of war, the
american workers face a greater and
more imminent danger than that of
war with any foreign power. There
is not one chance in ten million that
any invading soldier will set foot on
American soil, but there is every
CHARGE that a system of domestic
TYRANNY viii be fastened upon Amori-
can industrialists while preparations
are making to resist a possible foe
three thousand or six thousand miles
away
Conscription, compulsion and con-
stabularies threaten to be the three
Fates hereafter for workers whose
destinies were promised to be liberty,
equality and fraternity.
Powerful interests that seek every
pretext for fastening their power
more firmly on workers have already
set in motion in Federal and State
y jurisdictions the instruments for MAX
ing the workingmen and women of
the United States a docile, servile and
helpless class.
They would stamp every worker as
"lawless" and criminal" if he unites
with other workers in the use of the
strike, the only weapon available to
the worker for industrial justice.
They are pushing in Albany, New
York, bill for a state constabulary,
an organization having no possible
relation to war, but designed to club
and shoot American workingmen, pre-
cisely as it has been used to club and
shoot American workingmen in Penn
sylvania.