reader; it is not for him to impute improper motives in any case. He may note only the facts which are familiar to all; others may make such inferences as they will. A bill, containing a clause exempting labor unions and agricultural combinations from prosecution under the Sherman law, as far as was possible under such legislation, was presented to the President, not against his will, and was signed by him; the Secretary of Labor is proud of his success in unionizing a Maryland coal area that a strike might be declared in sympathy with a strike in Pennsylvania, more than 200 miles away; the United States Printing Office is in the hands of a prominent labor leader. Wholly similar conditions prevail in several of our great states. Congress and legislatures, at the behest of labor unions, enact laws which are prejudicial to the public interests and to the great industrial systems of the land. The whole sympathy of authorities seems to be with the "under dog" of labor. Interference with strikers and their sympathizers rarely begins until destruction of life and property is well advanced. Even then the person of strikers and their sympathizers is strangely sacred; the first volleys of the soldiery must be directed upward, though the volleys from the mob are direct; the person of the guardian of the law is unimportant, but if a rioter be killed, the officer who ordered the volley is in very great danger of criminal process. Protection is given grudgingly to wage-payers, who attempt to conduct their business in opposition to the striking workmen who have abandoned their jobs; introduction of men willing to work seems to be regarded as a crime. The strike of express-wagon drivers in New York city, the recent trolley strike in Indianapolis and that on the Boston Elevated road illustrate the conditions which should bring a blush of shame to the cheek of every patriotic American.
Organized labor, as well said by Governor Brown, of Georgia, is "the most wide-spread and exacting trust in America—levying a toll on all the other elements of our citizenship." Alone of all the great combinations, it can not gain by lowering the price of its wares: it strives to secure a monopoly, that the rest of the community must purchase its wares at an exorbitant price.
These new tribunes of the people, fomenting discontent and class hatred, are sowing seeds which, if permitted to develop, will bring about the destruction of this republic. The time has passed for the comforting reflection that our institutions are secure and that education will prove the cure-all in this "melting-pot of the nations." There is no longer a melting-pot, the elements are incompatible, they can not fuse together. Thoughtful men must unite at once to secure equality of all men before the law, in which alone security for our institutions can be found.
