The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1917-08-03

before granting an injunction. How
ever, it's something else than proper
ty right (human rights p inlolved
and so the Judge issues an injunction.
Here are the words of the court:
"The evidence in this case is, in
some respects, quite meager, and if
the purpose of this proceeding were
to determine rights of property be-
tween the parties, the evidence might
not be considered sufficient. How
ever, there are no property rights in
volved and it is not sought by the
plaintiffs to enjoin the defendants
from doing anything that the de-
PENDANTS claim legal right to do"
Judge Leslie finished off this re-
markable opinion, setting property
rights above other rights, with
sermon ON patriotism and his earn
est wishes that labor would be pa
triotic.
With the AK of this injunction close
to it's neck, labor struck back
it's enemy. A covert internecine
warfare has gone on with results that
were stated by the Omaha Labor
Defense League as follows:
Omaha lost the location of a
federal cantonment camp that would
have brought the expenditure of
about $10,000,000 in cash throughout
Omaha and eastern Nebraska. Among
the cities competing for the loca
tion of this cantonment, Omaha was
the only city which came with hands
dirty from industrial war. When
the Omaha delegation presented its
claim to the war department in
Washington, Omaha was the only
city from which the department had
evidence that treacherous and nee
less strife against labor unions had
been instigated with the aim of de-
stroying the labor union movement
In this particular, all other cities
competing for the location of the
$10,000,000 cantonment came witt
clean hands.
"2. Omaha lost wages of more
than $4,000 a day for weeks. These
were the wages of locked-out work
men.
"3. Omaha has lost more than
1000 carpenters, building laborers
and skilled workmen within three
months. These men are scattered
I'over Iowa, Nebraska and the middle
west. They will not come back to
their homes and families in Omaha
till their home town stands before
the world with cleaner hands and a
winter record for the treatment of
labor. Incidentally, scores of these
exiled carpenters are earning wages
of S7,15 day at building federal
cantonment camps, this standardized
federal wage being from 81 to 50
day more than the wages paid by
members of the Business Mems As
sociation of Omaha.
81. Omaha has lost definite
measurable amount of its commun
ity safety through the importation of
unfortunate casual laborers directed
to Omaha through efforts of profit
greedy business interests, blind to
the permanent welfare of this COM
munity. Race riots are not wanted
in Omaha. On July IL, however,
81 negroes were counted as drivers
on wagons of the Omaha Merchants
Express & Transfer Co., wagons al
ways manned by white men until the
B. NJ. A. lockout. Two hundred
negroes were brought from East st.
Louis since the terrible holocaust in
that city, some going to work as
building laborers and at excavating
jobs 1t is a fair and open question
whether the Business Mems Associa-
ton of Omaha is doing the right
thing for Omaha by driving 1000
skilled workmen out of town in the
same period that it is bringing in
hundreds of black men. 1t is a
question whether this is justice either
to the white or the black races of
Omaha.
"5. Omaha has lost its reputation
as a city that is fair to labor, that
accords workingmen their constitu-
tional rights. In an era of history
when the American nation is fight
ing in world war for democracy as
against autocracy, the business men
of Omaha reach a judge with a pc
ton and the Judge waves the Amer
lean flag with his right and while
he serves an injunction on organized
labor with his left hand"