Labor Bulletin from Pratt, Kansas • 1

ABO LLETII 4:. VOL. 1. THE AFFILIATED LABOR BULLETIN, JUNE 6, 1919, PRATT, KANSAS NUMBER 9 BU "FRAMING UP" SOLDIER VOTE A FLUCTUATING WAGE AND PRICE PAST AN INDEX OF THE FUTURE to include officers in its membership, and it makes three concrete, immedi? ate economic demands: "1. The United States Government shall promptly enact legislation to provide employment at once for all demobilized soldiers, sailors and marines.

"2. To tide over the change from military to civil life, Congress shall appropriate $500 to be paid each private upon his discharge from the service. "3. Congress shall take prompt action in opening up unused lands and tive of the labor unions. The idea seems at last to have dawned upon these people that that kind of a showdown would mean the destruction of American industry so completely that even if they won out and succeeded in smashing the unions and reducing the woikers to the condition of serfdom which they desired, they would have nothing left even when the battle was won except ruins as desolate as those which marked the battle grounds of Northern France.

One of the indications of thi3 change of attitude of the part of big business has recently occurred in the steel industry. A few weeks ago it appeared that a bitter strike in -the steel mills of Western Pennsylvania was imminent and that the trouble would start in Johnstown, where the local officials, under the direction of General Manager E. E. Slick, were acting in a highly provocative manner, discharging men for union activity and attempting to interfere with their attending orderly union meetings. When a general walkout seemed inevitable, however, the higher officials suddenly acted, replacing Mr.

Slick and another official and issuing a general order, which concedes the workers unrestricted rights of organization and, if carried out in good faith, will mean the establishment of genuine collective bargaining in Johnstown. Steel Magnates Calling a Halt. In ether steel towns there have recently been similar manifestations of a more conciliatory attitude on the part of the steel companies and the comnanv-controlled local officials. This 20 per cent is sufficient to cause a convulsion. Money has been steadily diminishing in value for 700 years, but the decrease during the last four years has been as great as it was from 1300 to 1700, and much greater thanit was from 1700 to 1900.

Before the war, there was only five billion dollars' worth of paper in" the world; now there is thirty billion dollars' worth. The supply of money has increased far more rapidly than the amount of commodities; hence the increase of prices. Lord d'Abernon attributes most of the unrest in the world to this cause. The sudden increase in the amount of money in circulation has undoubtedly placed a great strain upon the world. Human beings cannot, in a day or in a year, adjust their minds to the new conditions.

We are still thinking, in epita of ourselves, in the financial terms of yesterday. The man who, before the war, received $3 a day and is now paid $5 is told that he is receiving high wages. He is not. The buying power of his money is no more than it ever was, if as much. High prices have also cut in two the real value of life insurance policies.

Men whose lives, before the war, were for $5,000 are now in-cured for only $2,500. That is to say, their beneficiaries could now buy with $5,000 only what they could have bought for $2,500 before the war. There should be a rigid, definite relationship between wages and the value of money as represented by the cost of living. Employes should not be compelled to strike to make an adjustment that should be made by law. Moreover, the law should compej, the payment of wages that leave a margin between income and necessary expenditure.

The terms "high" and "low" wages mean nothing unless the cost of living be considered. The only thing that is of importance is whether there is a margin. Increased Volume of Money Has Operated to Decrease Purchasing Power, and Deteatea Benefits of the Higher Wage Schedules of World. The above suggestion has been made, by Lord d'Abernon of England, who made a world-wide reputation as a financier by the manner in which he managed the public debts of Turkey and Egypt. Lord d'Aberncr.

omitted only one thing, the suggestion that a margin be left between income and necessary expenditure. The New York Times, in a copyrighted London cablegram, puts the matter in these words: "What Lord d'Abernon advises is the adoption officially of one of the tables of prices of a large range of standard commodities as an index to the true value of money. Some prices on the list may rise and some may fall; but, provided the selection is sufficiently extensive and varied from the average, the exact value of currency can be scientifically and accurately determined. Lord d'Abernon would then refer all wages and minor salaries as they fell due to the index and would require the payment, not of the face value, but of the amount to which the table showed it was then equivalent. Naturally the smaller fluctuations would be ignored.

To w-hat contracts, outside of those for wages and minor salaries, it might be necessary to apply the sliding scale, would be a matter for ulterior consideration. There is similar urgency in other cases." Lord d'Abernon is of the opinion that the present era of high wages is largely due to the unusual amount of currency in circulation. This has resulted in a decrease of from 50 to GO per cent in the buying power of money. Ordinarily, he says, a decrease of America is Passing Through Danger Period Designing Politicians are Already Putting Forth Efforts to Organize Service Men in Ways to Permit of Selfish Manipulation. Stuart Chase in "Reconstruction." We had become so used in Chicago to the boiler-factory brass bands of Messrs.

Thompson and Sweitzer the Tweedledee and the Tweedledum of the late mayoralty campaign that when; one afternoon, a truck came swinging into "the loop" announcing its progress by only a single cornet, I stopped short in my walk, arrested by it3 very modesty of sound. And it was a most unusual truck. No beefy bandsmen were perched on its top, no candidate's name was wound about it in six-foot letters, no battered politician! was distributing the usual libelous campaign literature but rather it was filled with a group of standing soldiers and sailors, quiet enough save for the one lonely bugler, while from each- upright stanchion of the truck hung a small, neatly painted sign. And it was the character of these signs that gave me pause. They clove through the sordid, mud-slinging banalities of the reigning political campaign like a knife: "Cut out the memorial arches and give us job!" "We demand work never mind the welcome home dinners!" "Soldiers, sailors mass meeting tonight to organise unemployment council." Sponsored by the new Labor Party of Chicago, the unemployed soldiers and sailors recently, discharged from the service had formed a union, duly affiliated themselves with the A.

F. of had prepared a series of stiff and searching economic demands, and were vigorously preparing to find out what Chicago really proposed to do as to the line of the eternal verities of bread and with the thousands of returned heroes who were tramping the streets on those windy March days. The truck with its amazing inscriptions rattled on. "Bolshevism," said 'a. man beside me.

"Only if you ra-- flise to answer their legitimate I rep'ied. It ia'probitfle" that local groups of Returned soldiers akin in spirit at least to this Chicago labor-less union, have appeared in a number of American cities, but as yet the movement is isolated and sporadic, and the future of soldier organizations is largely a matter of speculation. That they are coming is undeniable; the form which they will problematical. We are bound to see of course a great variety of attempts to gather the men together into "posts" and "clubs" and societies generally, reaching out towards a national organization, of a purely social and commemorative nature. The G.

A. R. will be the dominating ideal of such societies, and, beyond an eye to the possibilities of pensions, it, is doubtful if they will have any economic program at all. They will be supported generously by all the sound and substantial citizens who, for va-. rious reasons, have a more than sentimental affection for the status quo.

The idea will be to "keep the Loys contented" and to "show them a good time." One pictures the ladies' night at the local post with ice cream, the rudiments of a jazz band, and perhaps a moving picture. Here an officer, democratically ladling lemonade. There may be something of an undignified scramble on the part of the old parties to capture these posts, and oratory as issueless as it is insulting may quite displace "ladies' night" in campaign time, but anything in the nature of an open forum or economic discussion will be frowned upon by the staid and substantial citizens who will have these groups of boys under their protecting wing. No little money and no little advertising will go into this type of soldier organization in the months to come. And always we shall find that they are formed from the top down, and never from the bottom up.

Already the "American Legion" i3 beginning to make itself known, and among its organizers we find Captain Marshall Field, and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and other sound and respectable young gentlemen. The dem-: ocratic myth is retained by a sprinkling of privates. With such a backing it may be well that the American Legion will take the lead in the social-commemorative field, and succeed in fusing all groups of returned soldiers who admire this sterling leadership. On the other hand we have the possibility of the private soldier with an economic grievance such men as 'filled that lumbering Chicago truck soldiers and sailors organizing to present economic demands, to force from a pitiless Congress and a stubborn employer, attention to certain democratic necessities hitherto overlooked in these United States. Such an organization with national aspirations has already been established in, Washington, and is known as the Private Soldiers' and Sailors' Legion.

It declines Mr. Taft and Mr. Root, Having Lost The Confidence of the Public Through Past Acts, Should be Watched in Present Efforts. An exhorbitantly high tariff had become "indefensible," to use the term of Mr. Taft, in protecting such "infant industries" as the Steel Trust, the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, the textile manufacturers, and a host of others; and, on the promise of a revision of the tariff to correct these outrages, he ran for the presidency in 1908, being elected by the largest plurality ever given a presidential candidate.

He redeemed this pledge by assisting in "revising the tariff upward," and then made a tour of the country in defense of this enormity. In 1912, Mr. Taft was defeated for the presidency as no candidate had ever before been defeated. This is how he kept his pledge, this the value of his solemn declarations, and this is what the people did, because of what they thought of the sincerity and honesty of Mr. Taft.

Mr. Root recently made a general revision of the constitution of the League of Nations to eliminate the objectionable features as to America. Mr. Root is an experienced constitution builder himself, and therefore, some might think he is well qualified to make the needed repairs on this one. A few years ago, New York had a constitutional convention, and submitted to the people the draft of a new constitution, the personal product of Mr.

Root rather than of the convention; but the people of New York turned it down by a plurality of nearly half a million votes. This is what the people have thought of the projects of Mr. Taft and Mr. Root, when they had a chance to express themselves; and now that they are exploiting a new field we should judge them by their past record for wisdom and probity. A.

A. GRAHAM. BACK FROM "OVER THERE" Ctokley T. Neagle Saw Much Active Service While in France. Mr.

Coakley T. Neagle, machinist helper, has just returned from "over there." From the appearance of his discharge papers, Mr. Neagle certainly did not rniss any of the excitement while it lasted, as he was in Lucey sector, on the St. Mihiel offensive, and on the Envezin sector on the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Mr.

Neagle carries a badge of honor in the form of a wound stripe, having been wounded during the Meuse-Ar-gonne drive. On his return from Germany, Mr. Neagle came back through the city of St. Mihiel which is in the territory covered by the St. Mihiel drive.

Ha says that the city was completely riddled. The forests have been killed, and the trees are now only mangled stumps, at various heights. Mr. Neagle says that the men in that country, both France and Germany, believe in the policy of "let the women do the work," and that the women do more work than the men, plowing, sowing and harvesting the crops, etc. The houses and stables are built all together, the family living in one end, and the horses, cattle and pigs in the other end, all under the same roof.

The people of both France and Germany seem to take very little pride in keeping their cities clean, and the cities do not in any way come up to our American cities. Mr. Neagle expects to visit home folks in Peoria, returnint? home bv way of St. Louis, before going to work. He expects to return about the first of July.

May Not Lose Extra Daylight. It does not. now fin- pear probable that the extra hour of daylight afforded by the davlie-ht saving scheme will be lost this sum mer. This was indicated when the rules committee, upon advice of the Republican steerinu committee, re fused yesterday to report out a spe cial rule makinjr the reneal of the daylight saving plan a rider on the Agricultural Bill now under consider ation in the House. Unless the friends of the repeal are able to force the is sue the House within a few davs.

the final action upon the issue by con gress will be delayed until the end of the summer. Opponents of the repeal are determined and they will use every parliamentary advantage to prevent a vote being taken. i Back the Bulletin. The writer is deeply interested in the Bulletin and believes that each member of each craft should take a keen and untiring interest in making it a success. Editor Hamilton and his staff are trying to give us a paper that will eventually efface the dividing line between some crafts and make those outside more fully understand the efforts of our organization.

Boys, let's get busy and help give Pratt the best labor paper known. A UNION MAN. natural resources upon which soldiers may be employed and in due time permanently located. Swamp lands, des-, ert lands, and cut-over lands, which, i with a gesture of infinite largesse, Secretary Lane proposes to shower upon the returned soldier, are specif- ically exempted in this connection. The Legion has no desire to take up its headquarters in either a desert ov a swamp.

"We seek no crumbs of private charity; we accept no dole of public alms; we know our rights and we demand them like men. "We do not propose to be used as crowbars to pry some other man or woman out of a job. Nor do we intend to be recruited into an army of unemployed to be used as a lever to force down the wages of other citizens. Nor do we intend to starve or beg. Nature's bounty has provided Uncle Sam with ample opportunity for all to work if the Government will only let down the bars of monopoly and privilege.

"We re-affirm the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and the re-establishment of the rights of free speech, free press, and peaceable assemblage, guaranteed by the Constitution. We recognize the duty of men and women of our times in this Republic to carry on to full completion the work begun by our forefathers, in establishing on a sure foundation the last and greatest of the rights of man economic liberty without which all other forms of freedom fail." The Private Soldiers' and Sailors' Legion claims to have been the first society to receive a charter for organ-iz'ng the soldiers of the Great War. It does not limit its membership to demobilized men, but invites, and act-wlljA has emits Tolls, men now In act-' ive service. Its leaders are soldiers under the rank of commissioned officers. Marvin G.

Sperry, the National President, and Howard M. Crasson, the Vice-President, come from Engineers; Cleveland 'II. Ramage, the Treasurer, from the Machine Gunners; and John W. Sanders, the Secretary, who is in charge of the Washington headquarters at 802 Street, from the Aviation Corps. There are at present 2G organizers in the field in nearly as many states, including one in the Canal Zone.

As soon as possible a national convention is to be called, and a far-reaching economic program drawn up. The officers are at present giving their time without pay, and such funds as are being expended come from the initiation fee of two dollars, together with the monthly dues of 25 cents. Rumor has it that there are some 000 men in the Washington branch. The Legion hopes to estab lish a local in every town large enough to support a court house, throughout the country. Canada has appropriated for farm and forest colonization, and such colonies are now in actual operation.

On the basis of population the United States would have to appropriate some four billions to equal Canada's record. Out of the millions we loaned to Italy, the Italian Government has set aside three and one-half billion lire to carry out a reconstruction program. In other words, we supply the money for other countries to safeguard the economic 'nterests of their returned soldiers, but have not as yet supplied a cent for similar purposes among our own fighting men. A few days ago a discharged soldier who had lost an arm in the war was arrested in Los Angeles for the theft of a camera. He protested to the judge that he had stolen it to get something to eat he was literally starving.

He further testified that he had $38 back pay coming to him from the army, which officialdom had held up. In the very same paper that carried this story it was announced that we had loaned a total of nine billion dollars to the Allies, and had that day advanced one hundred millions to England. Meanwhile a starving, mutilated soldier went to jail because he could get neither a job nor the $38 that the American Government owed him. While we are financing the world in general, we might spare a little for our own boys right here in America. And that is what the Legion proposition boils down to organized pressure on the part of the men themselves for decent economic opportunity.

Whether the Private Soldiers' and Sailors' Legion is destined to grow into a powerful, nation-wide orgp zation that will force through no (Continued on Page Three) complete change of attitude could only have occurred as the result of a general policy adopted by the differ ent steel corporations. This would seem to indicate beyond all doubt that the capitalists viho control the steel industry have come to the conclusion that they cannot risk a showdown with the steel workers and that the old policy of repression must be abandoned for a more intelligent course of action. It is unfortunate, however, that the powers-that-be have not been fore-sighted enough to see that the adoption of a constructive policy, beginning with the establishment of the actual eight-hour day in the steed industry, would be wiser than the merely defensive strategy" which they are now employing. The eight-hour day in the steel industry is the inevitable end and, with the industrial stagnation which now exists, could be established without any difficulty and with the most salutary effect in reducing unemployment in the great steel centers. The concessions which have already been made, however, are a clear indication that the steel magnates are awake to the fact that they may lose all if they force a general strike in the steel industry.

The extremists on the labor side, of course, have no such definite property 1 interests to lose in the event of a rev olutionary upheaval i America, but there are signs that even amorg the. professional agitators there is a growing reluctance to force the fighting until they feel reasonably sure that they have a chance to win. I have recently talked with several men with international reputations as "Reds," who, a few months ago, were working: on the theory that the coun try was ripe for revolution and that strikes would spontaneously spread over the entire country until they assumed the proportions of a general strike. America Cold to Revolution. These same men now tell me that the workers of America are not sum- cientlv class conscious to bring the general strike within the realm of im mediate possibility and that they will have to wait until the process of rev olutionary education is more complete before attemntintr to accomplish more than local results through economic action.

While the extremists among the re actionaries and revolutionists are thus markina- time, we hear a Macedonian cry from the conservative labor leaders to what they consider the fair employers, "Come over and save us from the unfair employers and from the Bolsheviki within our own ranks." This call for help comes not only from the conservative unions in the print ing trades, but from others who rind themselves between the upper and nether mill stones and who are anx ious tn reach some sort of durable agreement upon which they can subsist during the stormy days ahead. This is. therefore, the time of all times for the leaders of industry in America to reach some sort of common understanding. If they delay the leaders on both sides may be lost. As it is now, both sides seem to be ready for some kind of compromise through which the general well being and fundamental riehts of the industrial masses would be advanced without detriment to the official prestige of the recognized labor leaders and with positive advantage to the capitalists who hold the industrial purse strings of America.

Such an entente cordiale mitrht be achieved at the present time through (Continued on Page Two.) By BASIL M. MANLY Jbfnt Ch'm National War Labor Board From "Reconstruction." I am beginning to believe that in the United States we may muddle through the period of transition without any revolutionary upheaval and with no more bitter industrial strife, perhaps, than a few scale strikes. I do not mean to say that the danger of widespread and disastrous strikes, which a few weeks ago seemed inevitable, is past, nor do I mean to say that there is not still a possibility of something approaching a revolution in the United States. There is still scattered through the country material for a huge industrial conflagration, but there seems to be somewhat less danger that there will be spontaneous combustion of the whole inflammable mass or that the torch of incendiary agitation of extremists on either the capital or labor side will kindle it to flames. There has been, it seems to me, quite recently a decided change in the entire national psychology.

A few weeks ago the persecutory mania which had been developed partly as a result of the overstrain of war conditions and partly as a direct result of malicious propaganda, reached the climax. The witch-burning fever was at its height. All thatvas needed was to call some mild-manner agitator a Bolshevik in order to rally a mob of silk-hatted fanatics ready to consign the innocent victim to the flames or hang him to a lamp post. Leagues for the suppression of Bolshevism were being organized every morning by enthusiastic press agents who were out of jobs and saw a chance to shake down the terrified capitalists for a few thousand dollars for "organizing expenses." Almost every morning the newspapers carried unverified reports that secret service agents had unearthed insidious nation-wide plots to assassinate the President, to establish a Bolshevik government in America, or to do any one of a hundred other fantastic things that the fevered imagination of the particular press agent might conjure up. The crisis came.

I believe, when Eugene Debs was sent to serve his ten-year sentence in the Moundsville penitentiary. The intense wave of feeling which swept over the country when Debs was sent to prison seems to have brought a realization to many, if not all, the leaders of the forces of reaction that they had gone far enough, and perhays too far. There were hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of men and women who had loyally supported the Government ii a war which they believed to be righteous, who had condemned the majority report of the St. Louis convention, for which Debs stood sponsor, and who had acquiesced even in the arbitrary suppression of free speech during the actual period of hostilities, who nevertheless felt that the imprisonment of Debs for ten years was unjust and unwise. They knew that the sentence of ten years meant for the courageous and gcntle-hcartcd man a life and also that the revolutionary influence cf Eugene V.

Debs speaking from Moundsville penitentiary was a hundred times more potent than that of Eugene V. Debs speaking from his home in Terre Haute. These liberals and radicals who deplored the Debs sentence did not want a revolution, but, with equal ardor, they did not want the Espionage Act converted into what seemed to them an instrument for the punishment of men who were actively opposed to the existing economic and social order. They knew that active agents of the German government had been given sentences which were no heavier than that imposed upon Debs. They knew that there had not been a single effective prosecution of any one of the thousands of profiteers and sabotaging manufacturers who, by defrauding the Government, by selling shoddy and adulterated goods and defective munitions to the army and navy, had done more to interfere with the successful prosecution of the war than would a thousand speeches such as that for which Debs wa3 convicted.

Changes in National Psychology. There has been, it is true, no large organized protest against the Debs sentence or against any of the like sentences of men of less prominence, for the very simple reason that there is no organization of the liberal and radical forces of America, but the spontaneous expressions of sympathy for Debs and protest against the sentence at public meetings have not escaped the- attention of the more intelligent among the conservative leaders and it seems, temporarily at least, to have had the effect of causing them to halt and consider whether they had not already gone too far. The national psychology has also been changed- somewhat by the fact that the people are becoming. bored by the unending reactionary propaganda. "Bolshevik" has been reiterated so often that it has ceased to have any meaning and no longer terrifies even the most timid.

The people, -have heard the cry of "Wolf, wolf" so often that they are beginning to stop and think whether the predatory interests are not yelling "Wolf" in order to distract public attention while they steal the sheep. There seems also to be developing among the "bitter-enders," on both the capital and labor sides, some realization of the fact that they can have a dictatorship of the plutocracy or a dictatorship of the proletariat only upon the ruins of the industrial and social life of America. A while ago there were many indications that certain of the more arrogant among the so-called captains of industry had" decided to have a showdown for the purpose of forcing wages back to the pre-war levels and destroying even the more conserva Stannic.