means an oath of allegiance to the union is paramount to that of country, family and church. It means denial of employment to and discrimination against 922 per cent of our wageearners. It denies the right of the American boy to learn a trade. It places the competent and the incompetent on an equal footing, discouraging individual ambition and initiative. It means restriction of output and production. It deprives the business man of full participation in the just management of his business. It discriminates in favor of a select minority, as against the great majority, arbitrarily establishing uneconomic, un-American conditions. It depends largely for its justification and success upon all forms of intimidation, coercion and lawlessness. It encourages discontent, strikes, boycotts and riot. It means the attempted ruination of the business of any employer who seeks relief from its dictation. In open shop communities, nonunion men are not subject to the payment of extraordinary strike assessments to foment and prolong labor disturbances, by the success of which is measured the ability, and the worth of the agitators to their respective unions. Industrial centers over-ridden, however, with labor union agitators rapidly retrograde; the immigration of independent workingmen is discouraged, and manufacturers and employers evade environment which encourages industrial unrest, by seeking immunity, from strikes and boycotts, in open shop communities. Strikes mean less production; reduced pay-rolls; limited circulation of currency; unemployed workmen; intimidation; lawlessness; obstruction of business, destruction of property and abridgement of accorded rights and privileges. Who suffers? Everybody! This truism employers' associations are able to effectively counteract through the creation and perpetuation of equitable open shop conditions. Through their instrumentality. the pernicious practices of strike agitators and union leaders have been brought to the notice of the courts. Decisions have been rendered which define and confine labor unions to their original and legal sphere. These decisions are not intended to disrupt labor organizations. The courts concede the right of laboring men to organize for lawful purposes. But the rights of labor unionists end where their activities transgress upon the equal rights of other citizens, and these decisions do not concede that the lawless element in the unions have a right to destroy business and property, nor, through means of intimidation and violence, injure the person, property or civil rights of others. In an effort to create wholesome respect for law and order and the rights of others, employers' associations direct their energies in opposition to the vicious practices of rabid union. agitators and troublemakers. In no way do they attempt to dictate to their own members the manner in which they shall conduct their business. They merely promote open shop conditions, although in many of these organizations will be found members who employ union men only, while others employ both union and non-union men; others employ none but independent workmen. Their chief aim is to require that labor unions through the attempted imposition of unsound and uneconomic conditions, shall not interfere with the management of the business of association members. In this employers' associations are merely standing for fair dealing, whilst demanding that the power derived from organization shall not be misused or abused by either labor unions or employers, to the injury of the other or of the general public. They require that the laws of the community shall be as impartially enforced against organized labor as they are against other classes of citizens. In this, to a large degree, they have been successful; to a creditable extent, violence has come to be eliminated from most labor disturbances. These associations have accomplished much good for the commonwealth, their presence making for industrial peace, because their influence and effect is protective and constructive. In thus discouraging the activities of those who would obstruct and destroy, the community prospers, and the larger the member ship of employers' associations, the more far-reaching and influential will be their work. However, to perpetuate the results accomplished and assure just as effective co-operation in the future, permanent organization of the business interests is necessary. The Employers' Association of Indianapolis has saved local employers and business men many thousands of dollars, in creating more favorable conditions for workingmen and employers driven from other localities. by labor troubles. Largely through its influence and effective work, Indianapolis has acquired a more or less enviable reputation for the harmony, peace and good will existing between employer and employe. Its commercial organizations emphasize this fact in their propaganda for new industries and manufactories. Our comparative freedom from industrial disturbances is due to the fact that in most lines of industry, Indianapolis is an open shop city. When a member of the association. becomes involved in labor difficulty, he is permitted to use his own pleasure. in the premises and if he so elects, the association assumes the burden of handling the strike. He may also avail himself of the counsel and advice of the board of managers, consisting of an executive committee of nine capable, conservative business men, with the co-operation of an advisory board of 37 members, representing practically all lines of business. Since it was organized, in January, 1904, the Employers' Association of Indianapolis has steadily grown in membership, and now embraces a very large percentage of local employers, practically covering all the activities of the city, including manufacturers, merchants, jobbers, wholesale and retail establishments, public utilities, building trades contractors, and a miscellaneous representation of other enterprises. It has successfully handled for members strikes of furniture workers, electricians, plumbers, painters, carpenters, machinists, plasterers, paperhangers, printers, polishers and buffers, blacksmiths, stovemounters, and several others of minor importance. In each instance an open shop wedge has been driven. Mem bers whom the association has helped frankly state that without the assistance of the association, they would have been compelled to acquiesce in every caprice and demand of the unions, at the whim of agitators. Through the efforts of the employers' association, as a result of persistent police court prosecutions, lawlessness was eliminated from many of these disturbances. Some were for simple assault and battery cases; others resulted in grand jury indictments; quite a number of offenders were fined for applying to non-union men, the word "scab" and other vulgar epithets; in several cases jail sentences were imposed. In short, the award of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, that most representative tribunal appointed by the president of the United States in 1901, is based upon co-operation, which underlies permanent accomplishment. In its report the commission said: "Trades unionism is rapidly becoming a matter of business. That employer who fails to give the same careful attention to the question of his relation to his labor and employes, which he gives to the other factors entering into the conduct of his business, makes a mistake he will sooner or later be obliged to correct. In this, as in other things, it is much better to start right than to make mistakes in starting which necessitate returning to correct them." State Organization is Needful Employers at Disadvantage Compared With BY CHARLES EISELE, Member of Governing Board, Cleveland Employers' Association. In advocating employers' associations everywhere, and a national federation of employers association, THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER is certainly taking a step in the right direction. In addition to local and national organizations, the employers in Ohio, and for that matter in every state should have a federation. For this there are many reasons, but one will be sufficient for illustration. The Ohio legislature meets at Columbus every two years, and oftener if a special session is called, and before the legislature are presented many bills affecting labor. A dozen or more employers of labor go to a legislative labor committee, saying they represent this or that association of manufacturers or other business men. They receive courteous treatment perhaps, but no attention is given to their wishes. The representative of organized labor appears before the same committee and says: "I represent the Ohio Federation of Labor," in other words, that he is there in behalf of the entire federated labor interests of the state. He tells what he wants, and he gets it. Supposing that someone should go to Columbus and say that he represents the entire federated employers' interests of the state of Ohio, would such a man receive attention from the labor committees of the Ohio legislature? I think he would receive most respectful attention. If the employers of a state would. benefit their interests by presenting a solid front in the matter of legislation, the same would be equally true of the employers of the nation. When the eight-hour bill was up for consideration by a congressional committee, many business interests were heard, but they were separate business interests. Samuel Gompers appeared for the American Federation. of Labor in favor of the bill. The argument was all on the side of business, but the bill is now a law. Detroit is illustrative of what a local employers' organization can do. The Detroit Employers' Association, under the active management of Secretary A. J. Whirl, has made Detroit one of the pleasantest industrial cities in the United States, not only for the employer, but for the employe, because the work and wages are satisfactory. There is little idleness and the open shop prevails. The association is maintaining an employment bureau, which places men in the large factories of Detroit to the extent of a 100 men a day. Mr. Whirl employs eight clerks, who are kept busy all the time. The Employment Association of Detroit is an institution, of which the city of the Straits may well be proud. Labor Active in Ohio Union labor's fight for the adoption of the labor amendments to the proposed new constitution of Ohio to be voted upon this fall, was organized in Cleveland, July 17, 1912, by John Voll, Zanesville, O., president of the Ohio Federation of Labor. The labor element will work especially for the elimination of any limit on the amount of damages for deaths and for adoption of the mechanics' lien proposal, the workingman's compensation proposal, the eight-hour day amendment, the anti-injunction amendment, and women's suffrage. His Life in Danger, Boy Shoots Striking Shoe Workers Threaten and Then Assault His life threatened and himself hounded and then attacked by a mob of men who had quit work in a shoe factory where they were determined. that nobody other than themselves should work, a 20-year old boy, in Cincinnati, turned on his pursuers and shot two of them to death. The men this boy shot were strikers. The boy himself was a member of a union; a different union from that to which the men who were making his life a burden, belonged. This lad, not out of his teens, said, when arrested, he did not mean to kill. The questions of his intent, his right to defend himself, his entire guilt or innocence of an offense against the law, are for a judge and a jury to decide. The interest in the event from a broad standpoint centers in the existence of conditions that make it possible for a boy engaged in earning an honest living, to have to flee from a pursuing mob in the heart of a great American city and to defend himself from violence offered him solely because he elected to work in a factory where some other men had quit work. For some months there had been a strike in six or eight of the 23 boot and shoe manufactories in Cincinnati, among them that of the Helmers-Bett-, man factory, at Canal and Sycamore streets. The strike was started by a shoe workers' union, with headquarters in Lynn, Mass. This union had some 40 or 50 members in Cincinnati. to the time that it appeared in that city the workers, if union men at all, all belonged to the old boot and shoe workers' union. Up Walter Fitzwaters, who lived in Covington, Ky., just across the Ohio river from Cincinnati, belonged to the boot and shoe workers' union. That union approved of his working at the Helmers-Bettman factory. At noon on Saturday, July 14, 1912, the boy Fitzwaters, with two or three companions, who lived near him in Covington, left the factory for home, it being a half holiday. Hardly had they set foot on Sycamore street before a crowd of the strikers were upon them. The boys ran until, apparently, it was useless to run further. Then Fitzwaters fired into the crowd and killed Joseph Wochsmeyer and Alfred Patnode, aged, respectively, 28 and 30 years. After the shooting Fitzwaters ran again and almost collided with a policeman, who arrested him. According to a newspaper account, the strikers wanted the policeman to surrender the boy to them that they might kill him. The policeman stood firm and took Fitzwaters to the police station. Here is the boy's own story, told in the Cincinnati Enquirer of Sunday morning, July 14, 1912: "Those strikers have been threatening to get me for many weeks. They threatened to blow my brains out, and on several occasions they attacked me. Yesterday morning, about 8:30, Joe Wallace and I left the factory and went across the street to Neff's saloon to get something to eat. Afterward we went to the poolroom and were playing a game of pool when a bunch of the strikers, who had been in the saloon, came into the room and threatened us. "We ran out the rear door into the alley and they followed us. I hadn't gone very far, when one of the men caught up with me and hit me in the neck with his fist. I kept on running and went into Alms & Doepke's dry goods store to get away from them. We stayed in the store for a time, thinking the men would go away, but they didn't. They waited on the outside, and when we left to go to the factory, they followed us again and threatened to get us. "Along about quitting time we have a half holiday on Saturday Jimmy Doherty, one of the fellows who worked in the same department with me, came to me and said I had better get a gun, for he had heard that one of the men doing picket duty had said he would get me when I left the shop. I went into the dressing room when no one was around and searched the coats there. I found a revolver in one of them and stuck it in my pocket. "I left the shop with Benny Calvert, who lives at Second and Garrard streets, Covington, and Joe Hill and Parker Hill, who live at 117 West Fifth street, Covington. We started to walk south on Sycamore. There was a crowd of about 25 strikers on the other side of the street and they started to follow us. When we reached Seventh avenue, they crossed the street and then we commenced to run. They kept yelling at us and saying, 'Get the redhead! (Meaning Fitzwater). New street they caught up to us and one of the men-I didn't know any of them-attacked me. He hit me a number of times and knocked me down. I attempted to rise and he came. at me again. "I didn't know what to do. They had said that they would kill me, and I believed it. I got up on my knees and drew my revolver and shot the fellow that had been hitting me when I was down. Then the other fellow rushed at me and I shot him. "I don't know what became of the fellows who were with me. Some one yelled to me to run. I didn't know what to do, but thought that was the best thing, and did it. "I think the first fellow that at tacked me at Sycamore and New streets was the same person who, with several others, accosted me at Court and Walnut streets, Monday night, and threatened to blow my brains out. "About two weeks ago, a half dozen of the strikers stopped me when I was entering the shop and told me if I didn't quit working, they would break my neck. I kept on working because I had to have employment and because the union to which I belong-the Boot and Shoe Workers-approved of the job." A jury must decide whether self defense justifies shooting when the one who does the shooting has been threatened with death and then viciously attacked by a mob. The significant thing about the whole transaction is that this boy was doing nothing except earning his living and that in a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants he was set upon, chased and beaten by a mob of thugs who, taking the position of the dog in the manger, were unwilling to work or let anybody else work. The same things might easily have happened in any other large city, as similar conditions. exist in all large cities. The boy Fitzwaters may be convicted or he may be acquitted, but certain it is that if he had been let alone to peacefully do the work he had every right to perform, he would not have thought of shooting or even of obtaining a weapon. Another illustration of conditions leading to violence, like that involving Fitzwater, occurred at Hastings, N. Y., June 29 last, in connection with a strike at the plant of the National Conduit & Cable Co. Several hundred strikers attacked those at work in the factory while they were on the street, going to work. The situation became so acute that the local sheriff was obliged to swear in twenty-five additional deputies and the owners of the factory were compelled to shut down. A score of men were cut and bruised by missiles, thrown by the strikers. Women seized the men who were going to work and tore their clothing and pummeled them, while the men showered rocks on them from behind. Finally one woman tried to wrest a gun from a deputy sheriff, and in the fight, which followed, a woman was killed and several persons were injured. Eighteen of the twenty-three boot and shoe manufacturers in Cincinnati are united in an employers' organization, known as the Cincinnati Boot and Shoe Manufacturers' Association. They all run open shops. Such of the employes as were union men, up to a year or so ago belonged to the Boot |