Omaha daily bee., 1919-06-25
Unionism and American5sne
From the Chicago Tribune.

1t is one of the most reassuring signs of
| these troublous times that bolshevsm and anti
| American radicalism have been emphatically re-
| pudiated at the convention of the American
| Federation Of Labor This body, representing
the strongest element as we'll as the majority
| of organized labor, has dealt decisively with a
number of proposals of the radical minority and
has shown that it has as clear conception of
| the fundamentals of American representative
democracy and as firm loyalty to them as any
other assembly of American citizens. Organized
labor, more conscious of its strength than ever,
is also more confident than ever that the way
forward for American labor is the broad way
of American democracy. Organized labor, which
has placed the American wage Garner on the
highest level of well-beng of any labor in the
world, is not likely to go wool-gathering for
radical Utopias promising everything and yield
ing only confusion and disappointment. 1t goes
on, year by year, gaining ground steadily and
gaining it without destruction, building, not
tearing down.
The vote on the Mooney sympathetic strike
was typical of this spirit, as was the speech of
Secretary of Labor Wilson, in the course of
which he analyzed the meaning of the strike
proposal, saying: "For organized labor to par
ticipate in such a strike would simply mean
labor was trying Mooney without the benefit
of evidence. Very few of US are familiar with
all the evidence, yet every workingman is asked
(by the proponents of the strke) to make him.
self juror. Justice cannot be obtained in that
way"
That was straight talk appealing to the good
sense of every one who is not carried away by
emotional partisanism. Justice cannot be OBJ
tanned in the long run by any such method
What would be obtained in the long run would
be social disihtegration and industrial paralysis.
Suppose, for example every time any class
or group of men and women though the courts
had done injustice to one of its members it
called strike Suppose all surgeons struck be-
cause surgeon was convicted of malpractice or
of embezzlement or any other criminal offense
Suppose all grocers shut up shop when any
grocer was condemned, or all Catholics or all
Methodsts when one of their faith suffered at
the hands of the law.
Why should they not, if all wage earners
stop work because some one has told them and
they believe named Mooney, active in
labor circles, unjustly condemned in the
California courts?
Not justice but anarchy would result from
the overrulng of courts of law by factions of
men and women.
There is no class, if we must speak of classes,
that has a greater interest in upholding the
theory upon which all our liberty is based than
the wage-earning class. This is not to say that
courts are perfect. Being human, they have the
imperfections of humanity But SO are the men
who call and vote for sympathetic strikes.
Courts are blamed for many things that are our
own fault-defective laws which passed by
ourselves. but certainly ClVlnZed man mas not
devised any better system for reaching toward
justice than by law and courts to administer it.
Our effort should be to perfect laws and
their administration, but they cannot be per-
fected by appealing to the excited emotions of
masses of people. The only safeguard of the in
dvidual is the establishment of liberty founded
on laws and system of courts which shall
respect the laws and apply them without fear
or favor. Even then there will be injustice, but
not the injustice of mobs, the blind folly of
masses moved by factional emotions.
We are living at time when civilization has
been shaken to its foundation. All society is
being weakened by the disintegratng forces.
We all need to think coolly and farther than the
suspicious and passions of the moment and to
hold fast to that which we have reason to know
If we think sensibly-is good.
But the action of the convention in repudiat-
ing the strike was wise, the report on judicial
construction, aimed especially at the use of in
functions and contempt proceedings in indus
trial disputes, can hardly be thought we'll con-
sidered. Even if we concede that the powers
of courts have sometimes been unjustly used or
unduly extended, the remedy is not by disobedi-
ence but by legislation and if necessary by the
ballot.