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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 14, 1902)
mw-jwaifflwww EkSHS H yjjjiu"iiM-,iiilp.'ni,i ijopif 'mtiwTW "-u ijij DT!IP'-TOTT j i ..,' j' r The Commoner; . . r " - yoi.af no. 43. BoHOl 14 - IN THE FIELD OP LABOR. I WHAfTRJUSTS ARE DOING. j . X7H . tir r t r Laundry workers at Denver, Colo., have organized. . Mill workers aj; West Duluth, Minn., will form a union ' . : Employes of ladies' custom tailors of Boston liavo organized. t Hamilton (Canada) printers and - briclciayors are asking for an incrcaso of" pay. Prospect of higher wages is causing Belgium glassworkors to emigrate to this country. A movement for a nine-hour day will bo inaugurated by the machinists at Richmond, Va. Stavemakors at Memphis have de manded an increase from $3 to $3.50 a hundred. Tlr6 Russian finance minister, Witte, has recommended that strikes should ""legalized in Russia. Tinners in the Central railroad shops at Macon, Ga., are on strike to enforce a demand for an Increase of CD cents a day. Russian and Italian tailors at New Haven, Conn.', who have banded to gether for their common interests? have gone on a strike. In the silk factories of Italy the us ual working hours are from 4 jn the morning until 8 at rnight, and the wages are 10 cents a day.' ' : r Difficulty in securing the services of men to act as arbitrators, has long de layed the settlement of the plumbers' strike at Kansas City, Mo. Strained relations between about 4io female workers in the "various boolc binderies and ' their employers., at Toronto, Canada, may result in a strike. A new scale calling for $2 a day, in-. stead of $40 and $50 a month, will v be presented by, the hack, Cab and coupe drivers union at Chicago. 111. A settlement of the coremakers' strike at Buffalo, N. Y., has been reached by arbitration. The trouble arose ""over a demand for an increase In wages. Union rope makers at San Francisco have been granted a 20 per cent in crease of wages. The advance was given voluntarily by the employers. The local carpenters' union, of Colo rado Springs, Colo., has decided to have made a request for 40 cents an hour. At present the wages' are 35 cents an hour for the men on the wharf and 37 cents an hour for the men in the holds of the vessels. All the electrical workers In Okla homa City, O. T, are out on- strike. They have been working 10 hours a 'day and receiving $2 to $2.25 a day. They aro demanding a nine-hour day and $2.50 a day for ovory linoman. Inmates of an instituto for the blind at Sunderland England, have struck, after having duly communicated with .the national league of the blind, bo cause the wages they received for mak ing ship cord fendors have been re duced. All railroad companies running trains west ofChlcago, 111., Will bo asked by the brotherhood of locomo tive ""'engineers to increase, the wages of the engineers, to $5 .for each 100 miles on freight trains. They now re ceive from $4 to $4.60. Seven hundred men have stopped work at the coal mines located at Mineral, near Parsons, Kas., because the company refused to pay the engi neers according to the union scale. The mines! are controlled by the Mis souri, -Kansas & Texas railway. Members of the bowling alley em ployes' union at San Francisco, Caj., are out, the demand of the union for an inoroa.se; of wages from $1.50 to $2 for a day of 12 hours, with extra pay at the. rate of 25 cents an hour for overtime, having been refused. At Cincinnati 500 coremakers struck on account of a misunderstanding about apprentices. There is no de mar . for more wages or less hours, but less apprentices and it is thought the difference will be adjusted. The strike affects over 5,Q00 Iron molders. At Topeka, Kas., the organization of car painters has made a demand on the Santa Fe for an increase in wages. They-claim that ' the increased price for all living necessities makes an In crease in wages hecessary in order to enable them to provide for their fam ilies. The .new wage scale adopted by the Chicago elevator starters and conduc tors' union provides 25 cents an hour for starters, 22 cents for conductors, pay and one-half for overtime 4 and holidays, nine and one-half hours to be a day's work. The, Chicago feder- build a $200,000 memorial hall in honor ation of labor will be asked to indorse .'-'. . - 1 . - or the late multi-millionaire. W. S. the scale. Stratton. Expert coal miners In the Macon county (Missouri) shafts make from $2.50 to $4 'a day, working eight hours, and still from 800 to '500 more men are needed. . By a readjustment of wages miners Papermakers at Ottawa, Canada, are dissatisfied with their present hours of labor, and want a 65-hour week while working at night, Instead of 78 hours of labor, as now. The men aro said to be well organized as members of the international brotherhood of pa- The state of Illinois has brought suit against 110 fire insurance compa nies, charging them with organizing and maintaining a trust, contrary to the laws of the state. An effort is making in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas to organize every sawmill firm of any importance "into the hardwood manu facturers' association of the United States. The indications aro that this hew association will organize""so thor oughly as to be able to overcome the Wholesale' dealers. . The International Harvester com pany, with a capital of $120,000,000, and which is intended to control the world's output of harvesting machines, is being put into shape rapidly. All of the details have been arranged and all of the various plants are now the property of the International Harves ter company. In its "general agents" department -the force will be reduced from 300 to 75, effecting a saving of $5o0,000 annually. A gigantic coal trust Is to be launched in Indiana. It will include the leading mines In the state, the big operators being allowed to take stock In the new trust and be re tained as officers of the corporation. John W. Gates and a man prominent in th tlnplate trust have cash options on practically all the mines in the state. It is not the purpose of the new trust to include the Illinois mines in this new organization, but that will doubtless follow. About a year ago United States Cir cuit judge Morrow of San Francisco broke up the tile, mantel and grate trust and the local coaltrost as being organized in violation of the provi sions of the Sherman anti-trust act A few days ago United States Circuit Judge William B. Gilbert, acting for the United States circuit court of ap peals, dissolved a gigantic shingle trust that had been doing a big business in Washington. The United States Mill Flour Wnn company,' recently incorporated under a capitalization of $15,000,000, Is erect ing one of its plants in Washington, D. C, and several in New York and Pennsylvania. There will be 200 man ufacturing concerns established all over the country. The purpose of this new combination Is to manufacture "milk flour" from fresh milk. It is claimed it will entirely' supersede con densed milk. A vigorous crusade will bo waged against the condensed milk trust, which now controls all theJead ing condensed milk factories in the United States. The .proposition to form a combine of all the larger forge companies in, the -eastern part of the country has been revived. The plan is to unite about eight of the leading companies in one general corporation and carry on the business in a manner similar to that of the United States steel cor poration. The financial plan -carries a capital stock for the combination of $7,000,000 of common stock, with which it is proposed to pay for plants -to be merged. In addition it Is pro posed to issue $7,000,000 In "bonds to redeem all outstanding obligations of the subsidiary companies and to pro vide working capital. It is estimated that the capital stock .of pending consolidations will .aggre gate a billion dollars. The launching of these enterprise will naturally nec essitate the employment of a consider able amount' of- cash, but less than would have been the case two years ago, when the industrial consolidation craze was at its height The largest of the pending consolidations is the packers' combiner- While the amount of its capital stock has not been defi nitely fixed as yet, reports say it wjll be in the neighborhood of $400;000, 000 or $500,000,000. "The lead combin-; ation, which is backed by the Rynn-Whitney-Guggenhelm Interests, wjU have a capital stock of $60,000,000.' The , combination plans of the flint, glass-? bottle manufacturers will reguireJt is said, fully $30,000,000. The capital of the combined zinc interests has been placed at $30,000,Q0JL while $25,000,000 is named as the capital of the com pany which will combine the chain manufacturers. Other proposed con solidations, with their capital, are: Forge plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio; .15,000,000; crane manufacturing plants, $40,000,000; blast furnace inter ests in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, capital not given; malleable, iron combination, $25,000,000 to $30, 000,000. There is also talk of adeal involving a consolidation of the steel : plate concerns. . 'MssMvoSsissr wltt a totttl mom1)er8hlI, . v , Fuel & Iron company will procure in a numuer oE cases advances of from 10 to 25f per cent' At Everett, Wash.,, a strike of the International order of electrical work ers for more pay "has been averted by the granting of the, demands of the men. ' linemen wJJl receive $3 a day. ..King Edward 'of England once learned the printer's trade. Alfred Borckel, a librarian at Mayonce, has compiled a list of 30 members of Eu ropean royal families who have learned to print ' Union labor men at Chicago will en deavor to elect a mayor of their own and control" the city council. They have a platform which is built upon the foundation -principles of trades unionism. Shook handlers at Portland Me., Drivers and helpers in the employ of tho American, United States, Adams, Wells-Fargo, National, Pacific and Northern Pacific Express companies at New York city have made demands for an increase in wages, a ten-hour working day and pay for overtime, and aro preparing to organize to en force the granting of these demands. When they-complete organization the men will insist upon recognition of their union, in addition to their other demands. ' What nethuenynissed. Lord Methuen, who was licked twenty-seven times in as many consec utive, days by Cronje, has been made a G. C. B. If his lordship had only allowed himself to be taken prisoner he might reasonably have hoped for a dukedom. Chicago Chronicle. Caught In The Falsehood. The claim of the beef trust that the exorbitant prices were due to scarcity has been completely punctured by the report of the treasury bureau of sta-" tlstics for September. The report shows that in September, and for the nine months ending with September, the traffic In live stock had been much greater than for the past two years. The figures for September, 1902, show a gain of 12,38 per cent over Septem ber, 1900. The" figures for the nine months compared with the same per iod two years ago reveal an Increase of nearly 500,000 head of cattle. Tho trust has maintained that the high prices for dressed beef are due to a heavy decrease in the cattle supply, but the unimpeachable statistics of the department show that there has been, in reality, a heavy increase. The trust Is now figuring on reorganiza tion upon a half-billion basis, and when this is accomplished the prices for dressed meats, will bo screwed up another notch. Then the trust man agers will offer some excuse and if there is anything in. precedent the ma jority of the people will accept It as valid and submit without any consid erable show of opposition. Don't Get Rich Papa. The children of a certain - family, during its prosperity, were left ir the nursery in charge of servants. Wh,en adversity came, the servants were; dig charged, and the parents lived with; the little ones. One evening, when., the father had returned home after a day of anxiety and ""business worry, his little girl clambered upon his knee, and twining her arms around ; his, neck, said: "Papa, don't get rich again. You did not come into the nursery when you were rich, but now we can come around you, and.get on your knee and kiss you. Don't get rich again, papa." A man whose wealth keeps him from his family, sleep, healthy recreation, or the time to enjoy the legitimate pleasures of life, is managed by mon ey. Success. v A The Senator Sees Clearly. Senator Hoar seQS in trusts the de struction of competition, the manage ment of industries by absentee capi tal, fraudulent capitalization, secrecy, management for the private benefit of tho officers, the power to corrupt elec tions and the courts and indifference to public sentiment Certainly, thero is nothing; the matter with- the ven erable Massachusetts statesman's eyesight- St Louis Post-Djspatch. - ,- s ';& l-miitiMmiu:, falwiilfcBtTf 1 A&ito , f I'VC . -., - K