The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1919-02-21
LABoR's GREAT OPPORTUNITY.


If you owned valuable property
upon which you and your children
were dependent, would you be willing
to relinquish that property to your
worst enemies?
Would you want that property man
aged by a few who were under the
belief that it would be better policy
for you to relinquish it;
Would you sit quietly and submit
to widespread, insistent and in some
ways insidious propaganda to get your
property away from you?
These are not foolish questions.
That is what you are doing at this
hour.
You and | and all of us own prop
erty upon which our welfare today
and happiness for the future depend,
yet we are allowing it to be handled
by men who are in sympathy with the
interests who are determined to> take
it from US.
We have in our hands the means of
communication and the system of dis
tribution of the necessities of life.
We own them by the law of justice
in that we have paid for them in ex-
cessive tolls; paid for them over and
over again but have never had the
good sense to compel delivery.
Now we have them in our hands.
True, we shall probably have to pay
for them once more but ONLY
ONCE MORE. Then we shall pos
ssess them.
That is what the workers of the
United States can do We can have
and hold, own and operate, for the
benefit of all the people, the rail
roads, the telegraph and telephones,
the steam ship lines and other util-
tiles that the exigencies of war have
given US.
We can operate these utilities at
cost less than the private exploit
ers formerly operated them. That is
proven despite the mass of misin-
formation that is printed daily about
it.
We can increase wages, shorter
hours, provide better facilities fol
safety and sanitation, improve ser
vice and LOWER RATES TO THE
| CONSUMER.
f We can guarantee to the worker.
their full freedom to organize anc
: thus enable them to help in man!
! ways their brothers who are not il
. the service of the people; enable then
. to protect themselves at all times
5 against the possibility of petty ty
| ranny or lesser bosses and strengthen
t the arm of the producer of the world
: necessities by making him fre
: man.
: 1t may be pointed out that gov
a ernment control has not done all O
! any appreciable part of these things
that there is one department wher,
7 the workers have been denied jus
: tice; where promises have been brok
: en-, where liberty has been denied
| where reinstatements were promised
: and the promises remain untitled ant
that the worst enemy the workers il
: that branch of the service have eve
entire industry and these facts can
} not be denied.
We can but counsel little NOR,
patience and urge the most impor
tunate of the complainers to sit tight
to do their part in the inevitable up
. heaval and that wrong quickly vii
: be righted.
The trouble lies in the fact tha
these utilities have not been admin
istered by friends of collective owner
] ship. They are, at least in part, il
! the hands of enemies who would 81
| mismanage them that ga popular
clamor can be raised for their re
turn to the hands of private exploiters
The American Federation of Labor
in its reconstruction program recent
ly adopted, has declared that:
Public and semi-public utilities
should be owned, operated and regu
lated by the government in the inter
] est of the public
Organized labor stands for that
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