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About Will Maupin's weekly. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1911-1912 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 11, 1911)
COMMENT ON TIMELY TOPICS 4 1 V n It would seem that Mr. L. C. Burr is not satisfied with the outcome of some cases he has tried in Judge Frost's court. Having read the epistolary dispute be tween Mike Harrington and Clarence Harman, we decide that to date Mr. liar-" man has rather the best of it. As in tlie case of a big strike, when the public, usually the innocent bystander, gets the worst of it, so in this matter between Har rington and Harman, the democracy of Nebraska accumulates all the bumps and bruises and darkened optics. The Emporia Gazette would have us be lieve that Mr. Bryan was very much peeved because the farmers in a Kansas town passed him by and took in a "seed wheat special" in preference. We don't believe it. On the contrary we believe that Mr. Bryan hurried through his Chautau qua talk in order to get down to that "wheat special'' himself. "From present indications," says the Louisiana, Mo., News, "the farmers will have very little with which to recipro cate." There speaks the man who is a high protectionist and does not know why. So far as the farmer is concerned, he secures more advantages from reci procity than any other man. He gives up a tariff on agricultural products that never benefitted him a dollar's worth, and in return gets a reduction in the tariff on practically everything he has to buy and in the purchase of which he has been sys tematically robbed and jobbed for years on end. "Reciprocity in competing products is free trade!" shouts the "American Eco nomist," subsidized organ of the tariff barons. And a tariff on non-competing products is highway robbery. "Why not throw down the tariff bars and let this country be flooded with for eign goods of all kinds?" petulantly in quires the Pueblo, Colo., Opinion. Tut,, tut, brother! Guess if we can undersell the foreigner in his own market, as we have been doing for several years, there's almighty little danger of the foreigner flooding our market. There's something queer about the logic of the average advo cate of a prohibitive tariff. First he tells us that we must have it to prevent the country from being flooded with the pau per made goods of Europe ; then he boasts that we have captured the markets of the "world. results. We are not wholly satisfied with the order of the court compelling the men to return to work and the street railway company to arbitrate. To get adequate knowledge of the situation over there it is necessary to grasp a few points. First, the street railway men of that city are well organized. Second, the street rail way men's union had a contract as to hours and wages, and for arbitration of differences, with the street railway com pany. The contract also called for a grievance committee. A conductor was discharged on the word of a "spotter" that he had knocked down a couple of fares. The discharged man demanded a hearing through the union's grievance committee. The superintendent of the company, in disregard of the contract re fused. The union appealed for arbitration under the contract, and this was refused. Then the men struck. .The effort to run cars with strikebreakers proved futile. The city was seriously handicapped, whereupon the public at large, through a chosen official, appealed for protection. The court order to that effect was a vic tory for the union. So far so good. But if a court may compel men to return to work does it not follow that a court may also compel men to remain at work? And if men may be compelled by court order to work, what becomes of the freedom of contract, and freedom of action? We cheerfully admit that we are not :skilled in the technicalities of the law, but we have no hesitancy in denouncing :such court holdings to be abhorrent, un just, and a virtual return to chattel slavery. But surely no judge, in a sober moment, will hold that he is empowered to compel men to work, or prevent them from quitting their jobs. The strike of street railway men in Des Moines has been productive of some queer- There is a fine point about this mat ter of job holding that few people fully grasp. Under certain conditions, fast coming into general practice, the employe; secures a certain interest in the job he holds an interest that he is entitled to retain. For instance, take the case of the Lincoln Traction Co. This company pays a graduated wage to its car men so much for the first year's service, more for the second, still more for the third,, and so on. Does not the man who works; .two or three years earn a certain equity in the way of a right to have the wage in crease promised for three, four or five years' service? At least, does he not earn the right to have that claim fully protect ed by some right of action before an im partial tribunal? A corporatoin prom ises a pension to employes who serve a certain specified number of years. An employe works, say, to within a couple of years of the date when he may go upon the penison list. Has he not through all those years acquired a certain equity m that pension enough, at any rate, to en title him to something more in the way of protection than the whim of an under superintendent or a choleric foreman? This is a point that a great many people overlook in their consideration Of the la bor problem. , Of course Mr. Roosevelt declares that his action in approving the absorption of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Co. was right and proper. There are only two in fallible ones Roosevelt and God. The sequence is not sacrilege. It would be the other way round. The fact that allowing the steel trust to gobble its only compe titor cinched the strangle-hold the steel trust has upon the people, and without costing the steel magnates a penny, al though profiting them millions, does not change the Roosevelt mind. And why should it change that mind? Being the infallible one he couldn't change it if he would. "This company is a lawabiding citi zen," declares the attorneys for the Des Moines Street Railway Co. Of course that is not true, for the simple reason that a corporation is not a citizen.. It may be that Mr. Bryan made a tacti cal blunder in attacking the Underwood It may be, too, that Mr. Bryan was un just to Mr. Underwood. With these two phases of the question we do not care to deal. But let it not be forgotten that to Mr. Bryan's leadership, to Mr. Bryan's wonderful personality, and to Mr. Bryan's unfailing energy in behalf of democratic principles is due the fact that democracy is today in a position of com manding importance in the affairs of this republic. If democracy had continued under the dominating influence of the Whitneys, the Belmonts and "democrats" of that ilk, does anyone suppose for a moment that Mr. Underwood would now be the floor leader of a democratic major ity in the house? True Mr. Bryan is a private citizen, and no better than nv other democrat in the ranks who is mak ing an honest fight for democratic prin ciples, but even at that Mr. Bryan has come nearer than all the Underwoods that ever claimed to be democrats to earning the right to speak with authority on all matter pertaining to democratic faith and action. We are not particularly con cerned with any little dispute between Mr. Bryan and Mr. Underwood. We are interested only in seeing the people of