davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
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THE HARTFORD WALKOUT.

Organized Labor has all along maintained that wage reductions can only prolong, rather than shorten, the depression, but it seems that indus trial short-sightedness is the order of the day and cannot be cured, even by the citation of facts. For instance, the immediate boom that was to come to the steel industry after bringing the wages of the unorganized steel workers down to ''levels that would invite new business" seems to be somewhat delayed. Plainly "new business" either did not get the invi- tation or it accepted the invitation for exactly what it was, a piece of stage business intended to intrigue the gen. eral public but not expected to be taken seriously behind the scenes. At any rate, the steel business is worse than ever and steel workers ill-af- forded contribution to the resuscita- tion of business has admittedly gone up the wrong alley somewhere.
 What has happened in the steel business will repeat itself in the city of Hartford, where the building trades mechanics are fighting an attempted 25% enforced contribution to the kitty that has no bottom. It would be miracle indeed, and one for which the unionists in this vicinity do not hope, if the protesting mechanics were to escape being affected by the epidemic of pay cuts. Indeed they have gone more than halfway to meet the Master Builders who have made such inordinate demands. As this is written the difficulties seem to be in fair way of ironing them selves out. What is practically cer- tain is that Hartford citizens and merchants will lose heavily, one or two local firms will pocket consider able profits by the slash that is in- evitable: a -swag will go to some gentlemen from Chicago that will have exactly the same effect upon Hartford as if the Community Chest safe were cracked and a considerable amount of it's funds stolen from the Committee.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
PROFIT MOTIVE'' DISEASE.

In world that only too often reminds us that the highest concep- tion of business ethics that many industrial leaders can grasp is based on the good old "profft motive', it is refreshing to find an outstanding in stance of pure humanitarianism, albeit we must read the London papers to do so. A scientist, Henry Spahlinger, has just published for all to read, and to profit by, certain formulae upon which he has spent a large portion of his life and every last cent of his personal fortune in developing. The formulae are for vaccines against tuberculosis and they represent the greatest step taken in many years toward the complete conquest of the white plague.
 Not only did MT. Spahlinger con- sume his own fortune in the work for humanity, but he was obliged, before success finally came, to borrow money to carry on, pledging the formulae as security for the payment of the debt. Fortunately for humanity, the Duke of Westminster and other public spirited Britishers have paid off the debts that might have caused the formulae to go to exploiters. The important thing, however, is that after perfecting these formulae that have commercial value of hundreds of millions of dollars, Henry Spah- finger has preferred to give the results of his labor as a free-will offering to suffering fellow-humans. Evidently MT. Spahlinger, working away in his laboratory in Geneva, never heard of the profit motive.
 Compare MT. Spahlinger with the President of a large industrial organ ization and President of an organiza- tion of Open Shop employers, who was quoted by the Hartford Courant as having said to a group of impress sionable young women at the Y. W. c. A. in Hartford that his first duty as a corporation executive was to make profits for his stockholders; and that considerations of humanity were secondary. The news dispatches do not tell us what MT. Spahlinger's religion is, nor would it matter if they did; but the "C" in Y. M. c. A. stands for Christian" and the Chris tians have to stand for the. profit motive.
 Thank God for Henry Spahlinger. May his tribe increase and multiply, and may a great many of his kind come to America and go into busi- ness-into the printing and book binding business, into the steel busi-
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
WISDOM

I believe that at whatever cost America should be just to other peo- pies and treat other peoples as she de- mands that they should treat her.
 Woodrow Wilson. The only way to keep men away from agitating grievances is to relieve the grievance. The seed of revolution is repression.-Abrah Lincoln.
 maintain that by far the most tragic thing about war is not its inn morality, nor it's cruelty, but it's man. ifest and colossal futility and imbecil- ity.-Arthur Ponsonby.
 Remember that to change thy mind and follow him that sets thee right, is to be none the less the free agent that thou vast before.
 Marcus Aurelius. No one can be perfectly free till all are free.-Herbert Spencer.
 If the Government becomes a law breaker it breeds contempt for law ; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
COMPETITIVE MADNESS.

If there is any single truth above another that the Craftsman has been diligent in hammering home to it's readers it is that wage cutting as an economic policy in times of business depression is fallacious in theory, self ish in application and vicious in ef- feet. It has been described in these columns time and again as an attempt to get somewhere on noisy merry go-round, with the noise being fur nished by those who stand to profit by giving others ride. It has also been called economic tail-chasing, a phrase which perhaps describes the folly of it even better.
 Meanwhile the daily papers, all with a canny eye to their own payrolls, have been pleased to foster the idea that slash in wages might some how help to restore prosperity. The hollowness of these pretensions has been more than demonstrated to think ing persons by the utter absence of any explanation of how an economic stalemate brought about by the fail ure of purchasing power to keep up with the production power could be cured by further curtai1ing the pur- chasing power. Translated to the race track, such policy would infer that if a horse has been losing races consistently, and by overwhelming margins, the way to get him back in- to winning form is to handicap him half a furlong. Such reasoning would ruin any race, horse or human The fallacy inherent in it has never been explained away by any glib Open Shopper and never will be.
 The Manchester Guardian, one of the really great newspapers of the world is considerably less timid about calling spade spade than are the news papers here at home. In it's issue of January 18th, it said, 'In a world of falling prices everyone is trying to cut costs in order to get for himself
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
MOONEY CASE BUNGLING.

The jackassery prize of the 1882 Winter season will have to be awarded to the committee in charge of the campaign for the release of Tom Mooney, the winning offering being the letter sent broadcast over the country purporting to be a copy of an appeal written by the prisoners eighty-year-old mother to the Cover nor of California. This document is such crude hoax that it's only effect must be to alienate from Mooney the sympathy of those whose help he needs so badly. Certainly it reaches a new high mark for misguided enthusiasm and constitutes an insult to the intelligence of those to whom copies have been addressed. That such letter actually went to Cover nor Rolfe over the signature of Mrs. Mooney may we'll be the fact, but that the aged woman actually wrote the imbecilic contents is far beyond the realm of credulity.
 The letter is long, too long even for adequate quotation from it here, but few excerpts will serve to illustrate it's workmanship. It opens with this:
 "Dear Governor:
 Sure and I'm sick and in the hos pital or I'd come to see you mesef to talk to you about my son, Tom Moon ey, so I'm writin' you this letter. :" Further along we find:
 My son was framed by corpora shuns. ."
 And then:
 "Faith, and it makes me old Irish heart sick to hear that old blar- ney. ."
 Also:
 "Sure and it's the sixteenth Christ mas he'll be spending in jail. !"
 To try to convince the general public, much less Governor Rolfe, that Mooney's aged mother wrote such a long letter in musical comedy dialect, complete with dialect punctuation and misspellings, is to throw all sanity to the winds. Everyone knows per fectly we'll that people who speak with a brogue don't go to the trouble to write with it, too. Presumably if Mooney were Swede the letter would have begun with, "Wal, Governor, ay bane in hospital or I bane come to see you" Such tripe!
 One may we'll imagine the effect upon Governor Rolfe of this clumsy attempt to create sympathy for the Mooney cause. This cause needs no false publicity, no appeal to mawkish sentiment, no play upon national feel irgs. The record is a clear case of deliberately false imprisonment, en- gineered by anti-labor interests and smeared throughout with willful per jury. The impartial Wickersham
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15

Q-What circumstances contrib uted most directly to the adoption of the Canadian act legalizing trade unions?
 A.-The arrest of "A committeeman of the Toronto Typographical Union, including John Armstrong, later to become international president, for participating in a nine-hour day dem onstration in the spring of 1872. The charge, at the instance of the Master Printers Association, was seditious conspiracy. It was not pressed in the courts, as Sir John A. MacDonald's government promptly brought on an act to legalize trade unions.
 Q.-WiIl the International M0lders Union hold convention in 1882?
 A.-The union, by referendum vote, recently decided against holding a convention this year.
 Q.-On what railroad. was the first Conductors Union?
 A.-Organization of conductors be- gan early in 1868, when a group of conductors on the Illinois Central formed the Conductors Union at Am boy, III.
 Q.-What is the territorial jurisdic- ton of the International Typographi- cal Union?
 A.-United States and possessions, Canada. Newfoundland and Panama.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15

cut, to the number of some 6O,0O0, have been asked by the States Un- employment Commission to answer a seven-point questionnaire, the main purpose of which is to establish whether the employers will adopt job insurance voluntarily or wait for it to be forced upon them by state or federal legislation. The Commissions queries can leave no doubt in the minds of the employers but that theirs is a Hobson's choice. The rugged individaalists' are being told that they must ride the horse nearest the livery stable door, which is one of the penalties for riding ones own horse to death in more prosperous times.
 As for the answers to the questions, the Commission is only wasting valu- able time waiting for them, inasmuch as we can assure it right now that of those who are courageous enough to reply, about ninety per cent. will choose voluntary insurance and will qualify their choice by some such phrase as Eff we must have any at all;" which will be the best proof in the world that the voluntary kind of
 job insurance is the kind that will be the worse for the workers. But if there are those who must have chapter and verse, let them read the fourth article of proposed voluntary scheme offered by the same Connecti- Icut Unemployment Commission, which reads:
 Exceptions (from insurance protec- tion) would be made in the case of voluntary absence, layoff for bad conduct, absence because of labor diff ficulties and similar causes.
 There are enough loopholes in that one paragraph to permit every em- ployer in the state to do as he pleased. The employer being both judge and jury under the voluntary system, it is to be feared that bad conduct might be construed as meaning being in the way in times of slack business; while labor troubles might mean such occurrences as the failure of group of employees to give three cheers for a pay cut. In other words, unemploy- nent insurance under the voluntary system would be another of those virile and thoroughly American insti- tutions such as the notorious "com- pany union.'' As the phoney union protects the workers right of free speech by taking it away from them, so the voluntary insurance racket would insure jobs by giving the em- ployers every incentive for making discharges for what they would be pleased to adjudge to be "bad con- duct"
 Only one kind of unemployment insurance should satisfy the workers, and that is the md provided for by law.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
Labor Questions and Answers

Q.-Are airplane pilots organized as trade unionists?
 A.-Yes. Many of them are mem bers of the Air Line Pilots Associa- tion, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Members of this association who are fighting wage cuts by the Century Air Lines have been given the full support of the A. F. of l..
 Q.-Is the United Mine Workers o1 America an industrial organization? A.-Yes. It includes in it's mem bership all workers employed Gin and around coal mines, coal washers and coke ovens on the American conti- nent."
 Q.-When were the first trade un. ions in Canada formed? A.-There are records of printers union in Quebec city in 1927; in To- ronto in 1882; in Montreal in 1883 and in Hamilton in 1888. The Toron- to union lapsed during the rebellion of 1887, but was revived in 1844 and has had a continuous existence ever since. The Toronto Typos Union (now International No. 91) has had the longest continuous life of any Canadian union.
 Q.-What proportion of the rail- roads have adopted union-manage' ment cooperative agreement with their shop workers?
 A.-A study made by Professor Oregon shows that four major rail. road systems in the United States ano Canada, having together about one. sixth of the total combined railroad mileage of the two countries, have adopted the cooperative plan. The railroads are the Baltimore 6 Ohio Canadian National, Chicago 6 North Western and Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul 6 Pacific.
 Q.-Who was called ''the father oi the Canadian labor movement"
 A.-D. J. O'Donoghue, Typograph. ical Union, Ottawa, first vice-presi. dent of the Canadian Labor Union organized in 1878. This was a fede- ration of Canadian unions which hao short life. The work it started was resumed by the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada.
 Q.-Are the workers on the govern ment-owned Alaskan Railroad organ. ized?
 A.-Yes. The train service work CTS are members of the railroad brotherhoods and the rest of the work, CTS are organized in Federal Elm ployes' Union No. 344.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
NEWS AND NOTIONS
LEISURELY JUSTICE.

Tardy justice, which is the next thing to no justice at all, seems to be the kind fostered by the Supreme Court of Indiana, and inasmuch as this kind of justice always favors the rich, who can afford to wait, and in- jures the poor, who cannot afford to wait, the example set by that august tribunal is rather disconcerting. In that state five Supreme Court jus tices have rendered only 78 decisions in full year. This averages slightly more than one decision per month per justice. The Supreme Court in the adjoining state of Kentucky rem dered 1915 decisions in the same ength of time, or about thirteen times as many as the Indiana jurists. Oh, we'll.
 BLUE-PRINTED PROGRESS
 In a new book planned and edited by Charles A. Beard and titled America Faces the Future" the need for definite planning for prosperity is emphasized. The author states that a blueprint plan is just as nec- essary to the nation in mapping it's future progress as it is to corpora ton planning new machine or new building. Governor LaFollette, Ger ard Swope and others are the authors of articles that go to make up the volume.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
HIRAM, THE MAGNIFICENT.

HIRAM, THE MAGNIFICENT.
 Unless all signs fail, one year hence Hiram Bingham will once more be just a private citizen and Connecticut will have lost the services of it's most famous misrepresentative. Having distinguished himself in the Senate as a bat-boy for the Manufacturers As sociation and as the One-Eye Connolly of publicity gate-crashers, specializ ing in having his picture taken enter ing dirigibles on the Capitol plaza, he will be missed by the employer crats,. and by every citizen in Con- necticut who owns blimp.
 As a professor at Yale MT. Bing- ham had demonstrated to the world that he was an authority on prehis- toric civilizations in the Western Hemisphere. He could lecture learned ly on the racial differences between the Aztecs and the Incas; could de- scribe the kind of frying pans they used and the reason why they never hit it off with the natives of Yucatan. In short, Professor Bingham showed a great fondness for the people who lived in Mexico a thousand years ago, which seemed to fit him for the Gov ernorship of Connecticut, to which he was elected by fiat of the political powers that be, or at least were. Before he had taken the oath as Governor the sudden death of Senator Brandegee left an opening at Wash ington into which he wormed himself without too high a regard for ethics.
 As for his career in the Senate, little need be said. Surely no Con- necticut Senator has received so much publicity, practically all of the un- desirable variety. His escapade with MT. Eyanson, representative of the Connecticut Manufacturers Associa- tion, which brought him front page notoriety for weeks and public cen sure from the' Senate, is too well remembered to require repetition. It need only be mentioned that the in cident makes one of the darkest pages in Connecticut's political history. His extreme superciliousness soon at tracted the attention and invited the scorn of fellow-Senators and writers for national publications. One of the latter published scathing article, entitled, if memory serves, "Hiram The Magnificent" His whole public career reflects his utter disregard for the rights of ordinary people.
 Bingham has recently voted against the Norris anti-injunction bill, being one of only five Senators to oppose it and the only Senator from an indus trial state to cast a vote against the measure. He has told the destitute and unemployed soldiers that he will not vote for payment in full of the bonus; he is against Federal appro- priation for road building as an un- employment measure, repeating the exploded objection that the State will have to pay in taxes more than it would receive as it's share of the appropriation, and forgetting that those who pay will be for the most part the wealthy hoarders, while those who will benefit will be the starving unemployed. Such is the man whom Connecticut will have to grin at and bear for another year, one who understands the family life of prehistoric Mexicans, but who has never quite been able to understand the people of Connecticut of the twentieth century.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15
CALL OFF THE CORONER.

There must be something wrong about the reports of the impending anti-injunction law. The newspapers universally remark that the bill was the child of Organized Labor, and received no considerable support from other sources. Against it was all the alleged strength of the Open Shop labor exploiters. Frantic appeals have been going out from the head
 ,-rs of the flag wavers, warning their members that the bill was like ly to have strong support and that
 thing possible was to be done to prevent it's passage.
 Only few weeks ago unionists in Hartford and vicinity were regaled by an article written by the illustrious hockey player from Texas, Sidney E. Cornelius, Secretary of the Exalted Order of Grand and Glorious Open Shop Patriots, advising them of the precarious condition of the American Federation of Labor. They were told that the Federation was a sick and dying body, it's power gone, it's strength sapped by inter-union strife and all ready to shuffle off this mor- tai coil. MT. Cornelius denied indig- nantly the assertion of MT. Adamic, from whom he quoted at length, that the Federation had ever wielded any great power. And yet we are told by the reports from Washington with in the past few days that this sick and edly put through Congress, 75 to 5 in the Senate and 363 to 13 in the House, the anti-injunction bill.
 Certainly something is awry some where. MT. Cornelius would not de- ceive his public; nor do sick and dy- ing bodies suddenly come to the gi- gantic strength indicated by the Congress vote. Nor is the anti-in- junction bills success the only indi- cation that the politicians at Wash ington and elsewhere do not see eye to eye with MT. Cornelius. As if to make the Open Shop Secretary eat his words before they got beyond the doorstep of the workingman's friend, the Hartford Courant, President Hoover chose prominent member of that sick and dying body as Tariff Commissioner, which may indicate that Hoover does not keep in step with the information promulgated by the Open Shop page of the Courant.
 At any rate, the representative in Congress of all the states and cities in the land, none of which is less than 95%o Open Shop, cast only IS votes out of a possible 531 the way their alleged Open Shop constituents back home would have them vote. As we have indicated above, the whole thing is baffling. It would take a really gigantic brain, like MT. Cor straight of it. We suggest a com mittee of three hundred unionists to call upon MT. Cornelius and lay the matter in his lap for solution. In the meantime we suggest to the gentle man that he call off the coroner. The A. F. of l.. seems to be one of the few really energetic bodies in the United States today. We have, of course, no proof of this statement ex- cept the daily papers, so we trust MT. Cornelius will proceed to get ''prolific" in his reading as he so enigmatically put it some time ago.
The Connecticut craftsman., 1932-03-15

ness, into manufacturing and into other industries. We need them here as vaccine against the "profit motive" disease.