The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1919-10-03
SHALL MINORITY MANDATES
- SUPPLANT LAW?


Wellington, Oct. 1.-The Republi-
can Publicity Association, thru its
president, Hon. Jonathan Bourne, Jr..
today gave out the following state
ment from its Washington head
quarters:
"The critical situation which now
confronts not only the United States
but all the world, can be successfully
met only by adoption of a policy
which may be appropriately ex-
pressed by AN honest days wage for
an honest days work" After four
years of destruction in which nearly
all of the civilized nations engaged
destruction of life and property
abandonment of production for peace
full purposes-there must inevitable
be long period of concentrated effort
to make up the loss. To supply the
necessities of life, to pay our accum-
ulation of war debts, and to place the
world once more upon basis of peace
and prosperity, requires the willing
and unhampered efforts of all.
To those who have been in a posi-
ton to observe during the past twenty
years, and during the war period in
particular, there is no need to offer
proof of the assertion that the ten
dency of organized labor has been to
restrict or reduce individual produc
ton. This has been evident to every
employer of labor-to the householder
wESRs had an ordinary plumbing
reSs{a job performed, as well as to
the large employer in the ship-yard
and the munition factory, where shirk-
ing became so notorious as to be a
national scandal.
Organized labor has limited the
number of apprentices who might be
engaged in learning a trade, thereby
limiting the number of workers avail
able for. production in each particular
line. The tendency of organized labor
has been to set the standard of a DAYS
work to accommodate the capacity of
the slowest. Organized labor has
undertaken to show that not only will
it strike when it so desires, but will
deny to others the right to take up
the work it has laid down.
"It would be unfair to organized
labor to enumerate these acts limit
ing production without giving credit
for commendable accomplishments in
reducing unreasonably long hours of
toll, securing better working condi-
tons and exacting fairer proportion
of the results of production. But the
good organized labor may have done
cannot justify continuance of those
policies which restrict production at
time when increased production is the
only hope of the world.
"Organized labor is now on trial for
it's life. 1t has abandoned its former
demand for collective bargaining, and
hasxNs aertaken to substitute collective
die ion. Asking for itself the right
to life, liberty and pursuit of happi
ness, it denies the same right to men
who decline to become members Of. la
Dor unions.
"Organized labor asserts its right
to station its adherents at the gates
of workshops, and when honest toilers
appear for productive employment
proposes to apprehend and summarily
execute them without the constitu-
tional right of trial by jury. By its
attitude in this respect organized la
Dor sets itself above all law; in fact
it proposes to destroy all law and es-
tablish instead reign of terror. Thus
il presents an issue which no law
abiding citizen can evade. Whether
we are to have government by the
majority under law, or govenernment
by the minority under the mandates
of organized labor, is to be tested and
determined in the conflict now in
progress. Upon this issue every cit
izen, every voter, every candidate for
office, every elective public official
must choose the side with which ne
will be allied. The very life of the
nation is at stake"