The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1919-12-25
from the People
Editor Courier-Reporter:

Editor Courier-Reporter:
l have been very much interested in
reading the articles in your paper
written by my friend Mr.. E. L. Keith.
l like the tone of Mr.. Keith's articles
very much and want to say that be-
lieve he has put into words what the
majority of the people of the United
States want, but do not see their way
clear to secure. It is plain to all that
his division of the people into three
classes is based on sound reasoning.
1t is only too evident that the un-
fair use of power, by those capitalists
who form his first class, is response
BILE for the existence and spread of the
second class. AS financial power be-
comes centered in group of COM
paratively few men, if these men use
such power to keep from the workers
in such industry the just return 60.
their labor, these workers will, in the
absence Of any other remedy, use their
only weapon, the strike; weapon
which hurts them as well as their en-
ployer, but what. is of far more i'm
port, also hurting the consuming pub
lie, which includes all classes. This is
a terrible condition, and one which
should not exist in an enlightened re-
public such as this.
What is the remedy? Will arbitra-
ton serve? We tried it in the coal
strike, had three committees repre-.
senting severally the miners, the op.
orators and the public. Did they set
tie the strike? They settled nothing
except that in the final vote at the
splitup, the public group voted with
the labor group against the capital
group.
What then, will do the work, keep
order between labor and capital and
make strikes impossible and unneces-
sary? Mr.. Keith puts his finger on +
in stating the qualifications necessary
1 in the man who would receive his vote
for the presidency. And right here
I want to propose for the considera-
ton Of Mr.. Keith, who with all the
rest of us, is looking for some one to
lead US out of the wilderness, that I,
for one, will stand up with him and
vote for such a man as he describes.
a man who can and does realize that
the only remedy for such conditions
as the coal strike, is control by all the
people of the things that concern all
the people; man who instead OF
merely saying that control by a mi
nority is intolerable will do his eternal
best to make life miserable for that
minority; man who realizes that the
most important duty of this govern
ment at present is to render service to
its own people.
l will go farther than this-I will
name him a man who comes from the
great middle class which has produced
most of our really great men; a man
who, tho comfortably well of, is not
and has never lived off the labor Of
others; a man who tho he has labored
all his life, has no grudge against
honest capital honestly used-in fact
man, who, when confronted by the
very circumstances outlined in Mr..
Keith's letter, the crushing terror of
the coal strike in the beginning Of win
tier, saw the only fair, sure, safe way,
who was not afraid to take over and
operate the coal mines under the pow
er of sovereign state, and enforced
where necessary by the strong right
arm of state militia; who in the bitter
cold of northern winter preserved
his, the only state in the Union where
fuel shortage was not felt; man Bit
'terly opposed and unfairly fought by
those minorities who fear an honest
government; a man who believes in
every word of the Constitution. and be-
lieves in putting its precepts into
practice in his work of helping to
make a government that is of the
people, for the. people and by the peo-
pie, Lynn j. Frazier, of North Dakota.
Read the decision of Federal Judge
Amidon, in refusing to grant the in