The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1922-08-17
MINERS LEADER
DEFENDS UNION
PRESIDENT LEWIS OF MINERS
UNION QUOTES FROM AU-
THORITIES ON LABOR
USE STRIKES ONLY AS LAST RESORT
Asserts Mine Owners Have Resorted
to Brutality in Attempts to Break
Union.

Union
I.y John l.. Lewis. President of 4. United
Mine Workers of America.
Editors Note Coming at this time
anything from John Lewis, president
of the United Mine Workers of Amer
lea, is of interest. In the following
Mr.. Lewis has gone to some pains to
locate and quote ruling on the rights
of the workers to organize from men
known throughout the world. To
their opinions he has added some ideas
of his own. The total gives cause for
thought-and that, evidently, was Mr..
Lewis idea in presenting the manu-
script.
Opposition tO strikes, except as a
last resort and after every other hon
orable means of reaching a settlement
of differences has failed, is a cardinal
principal of the United Mine Workers
of America. But they hold firmly and
determinedly to the well-eStabliShed
principle of the right of workers to
organize and to deal collectively with
their employers. When this right is
denied or attacked the miners stand
ready to engage in industrial battle
for the maintenance of that right. The
right Of workers to organize is funda-
mental. 1t has been pronounced and
affirmed by the Government, by the
last four Presidents, the Congress, the
courts, by state legislatures, by the
press, the pulpit, by civic bodies every
where and by the public.
Theodore Roosevelt, while Presi-
dent of the United States in 1907,
said: 81 believe emphatically in or
ganized labor. | believe in organiza-
tions of wage workers. Organization
is one of the Laws of our social and
economic development at this lime
Chief Justic Taft, before his cleo.
ton to the Presidency, said: What
the capitalist, who is the employer of
labor, must face is that the Crganiza-
ton of labor-the labor uniun-is a
permanent condition in the industrial
world. 1t has come to stay. If the
employer would consult his own in
terest he must admit this and act on
it. Under existing conditions the
blindest curse that an employer OF
labor can pursue is to decline to re.
cognize labor Sunions as the CONTROL
ing force in the labor market and to
insist upon dealing only with his
particular employees. Time and again
one has heard the indignant express
sion of a manager of some great in
dustrial enterprise, that he cid not
propose to have the labor union to
run his business; that he would deal
with his own men and not with out
siders. The time has passed in which
that attitude can be assumed with
any hope of successfully maintaining
it." During the wal emergency Mr.,
Taft served as joint chairman. of the
War Labor Board, and it is interest
ing to note that after his experience
in that work he said, on August 9,
1919: Labor unions have been
necessary to secure to the individual
workman an opportunity to deal with
his employer on an equality and free
from the duress of the immediate
want of a daily wage, to demand what
he regards as an adequate and just
return for his labor, or to withdraw
from employment"
And this from Charles Evans
Hughes, now Secretary Of State. in
an address at Columbia University
on November 80, 1918: L trust there
will be no more struggle III futile OPP
position to the right Of collective
bargaining on the part Of the EN-,
ployes. The recognition of the RICH!
of representation and the promp,
hearing of grievances provides the
open door to reasonable ard just
settlements. And in returning &c
peace conditions there should be the
utmost are to preserve every pos
sible means wh.ch has been found
helpful during the way for the in
vestigation Of complaints of labor and
for the adjustment of demands"
Employers of Importance and vision
SouSCuc IL ii6Ht VI Tic WI ~
organize. Thus John d. Rockefeller
Jr., said in the Annals Of the Ameri
can Academy Of Political and Social
Science, January, 1919: "As regards
the organization of labor, it is just as
proper and advantageous for labor to
associate itself into organized groups
for the advancement of its legitimate
interests as for capital to combine fol
the same objects"
j. N. Tittenmore, a member of the
Employers Group in the Presidents
first Industrial Conference, October
1919, said: $50 far as l am concern
ed. l am committed in my mind and
in my soul to unionism as 1t is ex
pressed by the administrative faculty
Of the American Federation of Labor;
and in saying that, my friends I dc
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