The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-01-04

, We grant all that. Yet in fact what we have also to observe is this that the railroads Of the United States re- present a capital which is not in- vested in the construction or In the
 maintenace of the traffic, but which is used as a legal fiction to extract from the people more and more pro- fits.
 The consideration which must be given this question is one that i'm mediately demands an investigation
 of the right of this private owner
 ship over such public utility. IL begets at once an inquiry into the propriety of watered stock. It chal- lenges the standing of company and
 property rights as against the rights
 of the workers who perform the social function for which coupon cliping stock or bondholders draw remuneration.
 What is being suggested now by some Congressional action is that
 the watered stock should be given prior consideration over the labor
 rights of those who operate the rail-
 roads. And it is insisted that the
 nation has a right to prevent by law
 railroad men quitting their work en masse to secure redress of what now
 or hereafter they may consider their grievances. In effect the compul- sorry arbitration act says that there is no freedom collectively where
 may be freedom individually, and
 that the collectivity may not do what the individual can do It is most
 dustrial legislation and is worth
 while considering.
 Bereft of all mystifying phraseo- logy what the railroad industry
 does is this: The workers in that industry socially function in distri- outing the goods and wares needed,
 from one community to another. The surplus in one section is moved to relieve a shortage in another and
 people are enabled to travel from
 one place to another in performance
 of their work or for pleasure as the case may be. The railroads func-
 tion in a public manner. They are
 an essential part of the life of every | individual in the community, and
 like the Kings Highway of another
 day, can only be regarded as such a public utility.
 The theory however that the rail road is a public utility is not realiz- ed in practice. Modern capitalism
 insists upon regarding the railroad as means of making money. The supreme duty of railroad manager is to secure dividends. The supreme function of railroad is to make profits. or failing that to admit the stocks and bonds and capitalization so that they make huge money over the process of watering stock or the like.
 We all recognize that And we do not need such recent sensational exposures as have been made in the case of the New Haven, the Rock Island, the Frisco system and dozen others to make us certain of it.
 What the workers who operate the roads and whose labor of brain or hand performs the social function of distributing and carrying are up against is the right of ownership to consider itself the supreme right. The public who pay the freight have been able to compel some sort of an tional jurisdiction over the rates charged but the workers. bereft of any other than the power of organi- Zation, can only secure their de- mands through such organization. They are not running counter to the demands of the railroads as a public utility. . fact is always ignored. They are running counter to the railroads functioning as dividend and profit making institutions. or institutions affording financial wiz ards an opportunity of extracting "painlessly" more profits from labor which has remained unpaid. And it is because Congress and those ad- visers of compulsory arbitration in- sist that this public utility shall be regarded as a profit making machine