The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1919-06-20
HOOKING" HOOKING NOW TELLS TROUBLE TO The JUDGE
THE WEEK

Reactionaries Show Speed
Henderson Coming to America
Government Manages Liability
N. D. Labor in the Fight
The more conservative labor pa
pers are stirred up over the fact that
Arthur Henderson, leader of the
British Labor party, is coming to
America at the invitation of the La
Dor party at Greater New York. The
press excitement probably registers a
still greater excitement or anxiety
among the conservative leaders.
But the difference between Hender-
SON and his American labor critics
are easily explained. England is
further along than we are in ex-
perience with economic effects of the
war. England had three years of it
before we started. The living con-
ditions of England's industrial popu-
lation were always inferior to those
in America. All of which means that
conditions have forced British labor
to act as a body in certain ways
ahead of ours. It has come out for
independent politics and for pro-
gram designed to give the workers
fair opportunities of livelihood.
Conditions which advance upon us
like the seasons are forcing US in the
direction England has gone. To the
hard conditions preceding the war is
added the burden of the war. There
must be a new deal. In the meantime
there mast be brisk and probably
embittel ed struggle between those
who would run and those who have to
be dragged along.
Evidently anxious not to let the
Republican congress get ahead of the
Democ1 attic administration in credit
for good works, Burleson has or
dered the wires back to their former
owners. With the action comes pro-
fuse explanations that complete pri-
vate control is not provided. The
owners are to operate and the gov
eminent is to keep the liability.
This same policy is also forecasted
for the railroads. The government is
not considered able to operate the
system efficiently by our Washington
representatives, but they are quite
sure that it will be efficient in man.
aging the liability end of it.
At its annual convention in Minot
recently the North Dakota Federation
of Labor went on record for indie
pendent political action in co-opera-
tion with the farmers. The opinion
of labor in the state where defeat of
the old party politicians has brought
the best labor laws in the Union,
ought to have great weight with la
Dor in other states. Illinois and
Pennsylvania labor has taken the
same step ahead of and not behind
the farmers. Over rs of our big
cities now have independent Labor
parties, and in at least a dozen of
them big political victories have al
ready been won. Before 1920 there
will be an immense organized vote
which the sons of Barnum and Bailey,
the special interest oil
garchy, can not call their own.
If Independent politics to secure
farmer and labor representation in
law-making bodies is treason and
as the sons of Barnum
and Bailey declare, then, in the word
of that famous leader of the Ameri-
can revolution, Patrick Henry, we
shall reply, "Make the most of it."
Parliaments and congresses may
be everlasting slow in dickering over
designed to improve the
conditions of the people. Sometimes
the fight drags out over whole gen
GRAFTON or more, but when it comes
to antilabor or anti-farmer legisla-
ton they can frequently show speed
to the latest thing in
aeroplanes.
The Canadian parliament, forsin-
stance, has had no time to attend to
the grievances of the workers which
led to the strikes in Winnipeg and
other cities but in less than an hour
on June 7 a radical anti-labor act was
passed and signed by the governor
general. The lawmakers there saw
only the strikes and not the vicious
profteering that has caused the
strikes; so they planned to end
strikes by providing for deportation
Of foreign-born leaders of the work
sa's. Then they discovered that many
Of the labor leaders were British
born, and they found time in the
hour mentioned to amend the law to
provide deportation for British-born
leaders too.
The next thing in this line of tyr
amy is for the different Canadian |
provinces to deport labor leaders not
born in the province, and for our
states to deport those born in other
states.