CURT COMMENT OF THE TIMES
Every honest trades unionists will de
mand that J. J. McNainara be given a
fair trial and the preliminaries indi
cate that he is to be "railroaded" if money
and intensified hate can accomplish that
purpose. So, also, every honest trades
unionist will insist that McNainara, if
guilty of the foul crime charged against
him, be given the full limit of the law.
Organized labor does not now, nor never
has, countenanced violence. Individual
unionists have been guilty of it, not be
cause they were unionists, but because
they wrere men. The general public is
often misled by reason of having to se
cure information from a prejudiced
source, and that not a union source. It
is hardly possible that McNamara, an in
ternational officer of a great labor union,
would conspire to destroy buildings with
dynainite,-and then keep the dynamite in
his office, or practically openly stored
in a barn which he was .known to be
using. A man with brains enough to be
come a general officer of a great inter
national union is not likely to be so fool
ish even if he were willing to destroy
lives, and property. McNainara is to be
tried, in a prejudiced community. The re
ward offered for the conviction of men
charged with complicity in the Los An
geles Times disaster is so great as to put
a practcial premium on perjury. Organ
ized labor will see to it that the accused
has a fair trial. Further than that or
ganized labor will not go at this time.
A Los Angeles business concern has
contracted to give its auditor, Miss Lelia
M: Devine, a big block of its stock if she
remains unmarried and in its emplpoy
until she is 31 years old which will be
in G years. Miss Devine says she will earn
it and then! We opine that it would be
mighty easy to have such a contract set
aside as contrary to public policy. Any
contract that will seek to prevent a good
looking, accomplished, womanly woman
from becoming a wife and mother is an
injury to the body politic. We hope Miss
Devine earns her bonus, not because she
agrees to remain unmarried, but because
a good job in the hand-is to be preferred
above a chance in the matrimonial lot
tery under present industrial conditions.
Mr. John Dam of Rotterdam, accom
panied by Mrs. Dam and eleven little
Di.ms, to say nothing of a Dam brother-in-law
and his wife, arrived at Perella,
Iowa, one day last week. The dispatches
fail to mention the Dam dog. But Papa
Dam and all his little Dams are now in
the land of the free. We venture the
assertion that not a member of the whole
Dam family is going to sit around and
whine about the world "owing him a
living," or complaint about "lack of op
portunity." You watch this whole Dam
outfit and you'll see every member hust
ling. A few years from-now. they . will
have too much money, to, haul in a;hay
wagon, and a lot of idle, indolent and in
capable native borns- will sit around on
drygoods boxes, spitting tobacco juice
on the walks, and cursing the Dam for
eigners for capturing the country."
The Commercial Club has issued a
novel advertising calendar showing Ne
braska to be the land of sunshine. Dur
ing the five "winter months 70 per cent of
the days were sunny. The average tem
perature for the five months was 32. G
above zero. Only twenty-nine days of 150
showed a trace of snow on the ground.
The total snow fall was 19.7 inches.
Only on five days did the mercury regis
ter below zero. And only three days were
lost to the building trades by reason of
the weather. The more you study Ne
braska from all angles the better she
seems.
"As far as I am concerned this law Is
going to have such enforcement and ap
plication as .will be calculated to make
a 15-year old girl the most dangerous
thing in this community for unprinci
pled men to tamper with," said Judge
Kenesaw Mountain Landis of Chicago in
sentencing an Italian to the federal
prison for trafficking , in girls. The
Italian who was a vaudeville performer,
took a 15-year old girl from Chicago to
Dubuque, la., and deserted her there. In
sentencing the scoundrel Judge Landis
took occasion to denounce the 5-cent pic
ture shows as for their demoralizing-influence,
especially upon young girls. Par
ents should sit up and take notice of
what Judge Landis says about these resorts.
Messrs. Broady, Post and King, the
lawyers appointed to revise the. statutes
of Nebraska, have a large and very im
portant task ahead of them. Their quali
fications are unquestioned, and tej are
men of integrity and patriotism. It will
be months before they finish the work
but when it is finished Nebraska will
have a well arranged code instead of
the miserable jumble it is now compelled
to endure.
Elsewhere in this issue is published a
report of the legislative committee of Ne
braska State Federation of Labor. It is
the first report of the kind made to any
state labor organization in Nebraska.
This commitee registered as "lobbyists"
under the law and devoted their time to
securing of laws in the interests of the
wage earners. Considering the fact that
, it was the first organized and continuous
effort ever made by organized labor men
in Nebraska to secure laws in their be
half, the success achieved is considered
remarkable.
the standpoint of selfish indulgence or
"personal liberty," the better it will be
for the labor movement. Labor bears the
brunt of the enormous wTaste entailed by
the liquor traffic, and for some reason or
other no man knows just what organ
ized labor has been fighting on the side of
an institution that levies immense toll
from it the toll of money, of health, loss
of efficiency and destruction of charac
ter. One need not be a proSrlbilionist in
order' to be strenuously opposed to the li
censed liquor traffic.
The letter carriers want to be pen
sioned by the government. So, too, do the
clerks in the various governmental de
partments at Washington. Will Mau
pin's Weekly has no objection whatever,
providing the pension list is made broad
enough to include all industrial workers.
The average wage of government, em
ployes is far better than the, average
of mechanics and artisans not . in govern
ment employ. If they are deserving of
pensions, so are all the members of the
great army of toil. And this newspaper
is a strong advocate of the industrial pen
sion system.
The mayor of a N Kansas town t an
nounces that hereafter all sessions of the
town council, will be opened with pray
er. If we were a taxpayer in thatj par
ticular Kansas. town we'll keep an; al
mighty watchful , eye , upon , . that mayor
and council.
A writer in the "American! Econom
ist," the subsidized organ of ; the protec
tive tariff barons, asserts that one mil
lion American families are directly in
terested in the growing of wool, not. as
mill workers, but as actual raisers ; and
Ijroducers of wTool. Of course he utters
an untruth when he says it. One million
American families means approximately
5,000,000 people, or 17 per cent ... of our
population. There are fewer , : than 15,
000,000 sheep in this country. According
to this economist it takes one person to
raise three sheep, which , would mean
an annual income per person of . about
$10. There is just about one-seventh of a
sheep per capita in this republic. The
wool tariff taxes the people about $7 per
capita. In other words, it costs; the aver
age American family $35 a year, to .pro
tect five-sevenths of a sheep. The mutton
and the wool are not worth the money.
The sooner organized labor begins
studying this liquor problem from the
standpoint of economics, instead of , from
"Iowa republicanism is in . bad shape
when Lafe Young is turned down for a
half-breed free trader like Kenyon,"
shouts the Bath, Me., Courier. That de
pends upon the point of view. If republi
canism means the best for the people the
esteemed Courier is , wrong. . . , If republi
canism means enlarged opportunities, for
grafting on the public through the opera--tions
of a robber tariff, the esteemed
Courier is quite correct. The republicans
of Iowa have given ; their decision, , and