The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-09-15
Liberal Viewpoint
by DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

A READER in Cincinnati takes me for a
IA rough ride with respect to some things
he alleges I have said about collective bar
aiming and labor unions.
Whatever his structures, I admire the man
because ne has had the nerve to sign his name
TO his letter, something which is altogether too
rare with correspondents who have something
unpleasant to say. He writes as follows:
DR.. Harry Elmer Barnes,
Dear Sir:
For some time I have been reading your
~'pink-dark pink-stuff syndicated in the
Scripps chain.
lone wonders about just how such a mind
as yours works-if at all.
ANY one who deigns to write for the public
should have as his first clear principle intel
lectual honesty. You show none of this.
"As an example you relate the killing or
wounding Of strikers by the police and ma
tional guard. Why do we have police and the
national guard if not to preserve the peace and
protect life and property? Such stuff as you
preach Is a direct incentive to anarchy.
you dote on the divine rights to strike. Why
not a divine right to work unmolested?
TO be fair, why didn't you tell about the
Toledo strikers not only going into property
not their own and destroying and bombing?
Why didn't you tell of the brutal beatings of
those who wanted to work, and the destroying
Of over three hundred cars belonging to their
fellow workmen?
Few men Of any character of intelligence
or honesty can write such stuff, unless you think
it is more salable because it stirs I'D class pref
udice.
why not visualize employers charging with
stones, and clubs and guns and bombs the head
quarters of an A. F. Of l.. local? Or destroying
the laborers individual property because the
laborer would not come to work on the employ
er's. terms.
You and the other reds and anarchists
would howl to the high heaven at this. My only
hope is that you may be the personal victim of
the IaWleSsness you condone and approve.
Damn you! I hope you need police or ma
uonal guard protection for your life or prop
erty and can't get it.
You and your ilk are too damned big
towards to go to Russia, but you ought to be
sent. Yours, G. w. DAVIS"
T MAY mistudge Mr.. Davis sentiments. but If
Il I read between the lines of his letter cor
rectIy 1t somehow seems to me that he doesn't
ike me and may possibly be opposed to labor
unions and collective bargaining.
II he believes that I ever have written any,
thing condoning the wanton violence of the
labor unionistS, his spectacles have done him a
signal diSservice.
Indeed, if he had fattered me enough to be
a constant reader" he could not very we'll have
missed a number of columns devoted to a scath-
ing denunciation of labor racketeers and gang
SterS.
1 never have gone further than to maintain
that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the
gander. So long as employers invite and prac-
tlce violence, they can not very we'll complain
if their employe begin to play at the same game,
especially when the police are far more s~olicitouS
in protecting employers from laboring violence
than they are in coming to the rescue of en-
ployes threatened by company gunner, deputy
sheriffS and police.
Suppose, however, that I were for a moment
to eSpouse fundamentally the cause of prop
erty. Unless we have ample mass purchasing
power, capitalism is bound to fold up, to be fol-
lowed by an economic system which will have
slight respect for property fights. We know we'll
enough, from more than a century of expert
ence, that without labor unionism employees VOL
UNFAIRLY will not pay wages sufficient to supply
this necessary purchasing power.
Alert and vigorous labor unioniSm is the
surest bulwark against the ultimate extinction
Of private property in the United States.
Mr.. Davis apparently does not like Russia,
but those who share his philosophy are doing
more than any one else to make Communism
inevitable in the United States.