The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-03-24
PUBLIC INTEREST"

President Compers and Secretary Morrison of the American Fedora ton of Labor nave protested to At torney-General Gregory that portion s1f the Supreme Courts decision on tue Adamson Bill wherein it is pro claimed that the public interest limits the employees rlSht to strike.
 Who gave the employees any right 10 strike any way? That is the qUes- lion which beins answered, also an .wers the limitation of the United States supreme Court, The eco nomi, might of employees manifest pd through their labor organization nas first. last and all the time been that through which they as stunned and through winch they eN- crr.sed inc right to strike.
 They asked no ty your leave from any legislature CT from legislative enactment. They received no con stitutiouaI privilege whereby they could walk of the job individually or collectively, except in SC far as Involuntary servitude is denounced a,v fhe constitution and it is certainly no. in evidence that public interest or private interest or any other ln- +erest whatsoever limits in that s.lanse of the constitution the right a remain in servitude of any nature voluntarily and voluntarily only.
 The public interest may not justl- fv slavery and it may not justify making men stay on the job against sheir will. Supreme Courts or no supreme Courts, if the workers are organized sufficiently strongly to as .sert through their economic might jha, right.
 What we have witnessed in the settlement of the railroad strike trouble by the passage of the Adam son law and by the decision uphold ing il Of the Supreme Court is that here was an economic question which was not settled by any data of ethics but by the simple recogni- lion of the fact that the railroad men were organized sufficiently strongly to enforce strike, and shere remained then only one way of avoiding it, by putting the de lnands of the employees in the form of a law whereby it would be bind ing upon both the railroad men and 1heir employers.
 Tbe economic power of the work CTS found for the first time political expression, and the significance oi that is not al all detracted from hy reason of the fact that the kept press throughout the United States howled against what it called the dictation of labor and the humilia' tion pf Congress.
 What we saw there enacted on the side of labor has been enacted daJ ln and day out by the so-called in terests. Their economic might is re- Elected in almost every law, because 1hey are organized 10 give special eX pression to it. The decision of the Supreme Court in lavoring the Adamson Bill is very interesting as an effort to neutralize the force: which compelled that decision.
 If it was believed for one minute that the railroad brotherhood' would not strike, we may eXpec that the decision would have beer far different. A number ot similar laws to that of the Adamson Bil haze been declared unconstitutiona already But, then, there were no the forces to realize the same condi tions as were created by law, as il inc Adamson case.
 We see two ways of accomplishing 1he ends of the workers. One is tho direct action of the strike and thu others the indirect means by way O political action.
 Political action, if it can be brough in, enforced and recognized. is b! far the most palatable to all con cerned. It avoids friction struggle strife and the many serious conse auences and serious expenditure! Involved in strike action. But il is confronted with the objection that such successful political actpr is as scarce as hens teeth. The kdamson Bill is solitary example