The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-07-30
THE STREET CAR STRIkE.

The Seattle car strike finds al. most everyone ill sympathy with the car men and against the street car company. Even large employers or labor havr given evidence of this peculiar frame of mind. What then. are the employers going to oppose their class ill this struggle agaius. the traction company by the sink ing employees?
 By no means; ths empowers wuo oppose the car company are nos verE eEtarsiYe in anv event nS em- ployers Moreover those who do. do not oppose the traction company as employers but as corrupters Of the lfgisIatures, franchise steaiers and unfair corporations who eXer- icse their influence against the pub lie and employing interest generally. When The traction companies fought the Jimeys in Seattle they simlpy made tools of the members of the le- gislature at Olympia, so that session 1 by-word in the minds ot the general public
 Some of the deals that were put through were so raw and so deli berate that their audac:ty made the people frantic, but without result and now in the day of trial they find l themselves resolu ely opposed by al the people of Seattle whose will and whose wishes have been trampled upon there as elseW here.
 There is no doubt that the trac- tion company is enormously wealthy and enormously powerful. It's rami- fcations reach into the richest and most powerful interests in America. Standard Oil, Morgan, Stone Web stCr, what are all these but merely interests affiliated to absorb
 The national activities of the traction trust, maintained under purely independent corporations with local shareholders in each. are now practically shown to be fairly we'll solidifed and the strength can not be gainsad at any stage of the game.
 1 The public sentiment which in- stinctively feels that public service activities should be held by them | operated by and for them, realize that the activities are operated by outside holders, for their profit and their benefit only. They feel that the public is a profit giving animal to be milked carefully and to be ca joled and chicaned and jollied suffi- icently so that it will come through 1 but that there may be no mistake about it, legislatures are corrupted and councils grafted to the extent i that the franchise may be a really 1 profitable franchise and the mono 1 poly a real monopoly.
 1 When the traction company saw the jitney rise into popular favor, 1 it immediately and in every popu- | lous center set about devising ways and means of killing the jitney traffic. In some places they quite frankly outlawed them. In others they effected legislation which did the same thing In an apparently noble minded way. The jitney men were showed to one side, not without protest, but the great traction inter- ests found that it was relatively easy
 Moreover in this work they were aided and abetted by the leading papers of those cities, Big Business, with it's unfailing patronage, al ways could rely upon the respect able" papers of large circulation and conservative policies, selling them i selves for song in the way of ad- vertising and they found the work of bribing them easy and as lucra- | tive fran,e-ups were planned | for raiding the state legisla- ture. the big papers cleared the way by casting around the. plundering, the cloak of decency and welfare work for the people. When the councils were beset by lobbying grafters, it was the big daily that made the poodle the more easy by misleading public opinion of the facts and suggesting the false by the