Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1919-10-04
UNION LEADER WON'T EXPLAIN VIEW ON REVOLT Foster Says He'll Talk if News paper Reporters Are Ex-
 cluded from Room. REPUDIATES WORDS ON
 SOCIAL REVOLUTION" Doesn't Want Views Banded by Lying, Prejudiced Newspapers"
 He Declares-Says Press
 Unfair To Him.

Washington, Oct. Exchanging that
 he had not been fairly treatd by the newspapers, William z. Foster, secrc-
 tary of the steel strikers committee,
 told the senate committee investigat-
 ing the strike today that he would
 answer question as to whether he
 was in favor of organized government If the correspondent were excluded from the room.
 The committee took no action on the request and Senator Mckellar, Tennessee, democrat, and Chairman Kenyon pressed for an answer to the question which had been put by the former. Foster said his views had changed, but that he was unwilling to say how far in the presence of the correspondents.
 When Senator McKellar first asked his question, Foster laughed. The senator then read from a book which Foster agreed he had written, declar- Ing social revolution necessary in the United States to secure workers rights.
 Eve repudiated that pamphlet sad Foster, but l don't want my views bandied about by lot of pre- Judiced, lying newspapers to the dam age of the strikers"
 Poster said his own views had not been used in the steel strike: that he had adhered to the principles of trade unlonism." He declared that he was raised in the slums and that when he wrote the book he was "a follow CT of the Spanish, French and Italian union system" Today, he added, he had "become a little less radical pos slbly," and was "a believer in Ameri- can and English trade unionism."
 Armed with books which Foster and written during his career in labor circles, which advocated revolution- ary socialism and sabotage and with copies of the I. w. w. organ "Solidar- lty' containing articles contributed by him from Europe, where he went in 1911 as a representative of that organization Foster was pressed into a lengthy explanation of the doc- trilles and views headvocated m 1914 and earlier years.
 Foster first attempted to parry the question at the outset refusing to answer until newspaper reporters were excluded from the room.
 These are not my views now" he said, after listening to his own words repeated. the state to be a meddling, capitalistic institution" and advocat- ing violence in strikes, and calm acceptance of bloodshed as necessary to the forwarding of the revolution ary cause.
 President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, broke into the examination in irritated fashion at one point, when Foster was standing on his objections to newspaper re- ports of his testimony
 Well, they can't say anything worse about you than they have" the leader of the federation adjured him.
 "I think not" Foster said.
 The witness endorsed his own ad vocacy of race suicide with the state ment that "it is foolishness for workmen to undertake to raise big families"
 President Gompers, with apparent amusement listened to senators read Fosters essays on the American Federation of Labor-written before he joined it as an organizer-where- ln he asserted that the American labor movement is infested with hordes of dishonest officials and labor fakers.
 Foreigners made up the largest membership in the unions at pres. ent, he explained, "because higher paid Americans, knowing of the fate of the past attempts to organize the steel industry, stand back to wait and see."
 "Of course we'd like to take the Americans first" he said, "they occupy the strategetic positions" President Gompers came back be- fore the committee when Foster con- cluded, "to straighten out few matters" he said and attacked | briefly some of the points E. H. Gary, chairman of the steel corporation em- phasized in his testimony before the 
 "The steel corporation in 1901 pass ed resolution declaring itself unal- terably opposed to union labor" MT. 1 Gompers said notifying all of it's officers that it stood against any extension"
 He defined an 'open shop" as "a place where the principle of civilized cannot exist"