p. 6 | Note and Comment by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 6, 1906

Note and Comment

By Editor

What the world may expect when the labor unions have compassed their purpose is faintly foreshadowed in an article which appeared in the New York Sun of November 20. The article was written by a San Francisco correspondent, and deals with the difficulties confronting San Francisco contractors in the matter of erecting buildings. It is entitled “Blight of Predatory Labor; San Francisco Helpless in Union’s Strangling Grip.” Concerning the difficulty of obtaining laborers for construction work this correspondent writes:—

Only the other day a San Francisco contractor who has a number of large contracts on his hands became desperate. His desperation was so great that he mustered up enough courage to advertise for help—not non-union help—union help. Immediately the secretary of the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union wrote to him an insolent letter practically commanding him to withdraw his advertisement from the newspapers. The penalty for disobedience, he was informed, would be a boycott.

“I must complete my contracts on time or lose a great deal of money,” said this contractor. “I have repeatedly applied to the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union for men, but they can’t furnish them. And now they won’t even let me advertise, though only for union men at union wages. What am I to do?”

How many other contractors are also under the conscienceless domination of these organizations can only be surmised. That they are so dominated is evidenced by the slowness with which the work of reconstruction goes on; and their mute acquiescence of the contractor at so great expense to himself would indicate his fear of still greater loss if he should attempt to assert his rights in the matter. And these organizations, actuated by such principles, are the forces which the “civic righteousness” arm of the modern church is seeking to enlist in the cause of legal religion, enforced Sunday sacredness. There is no doubt that when the union of these two forces is accomplished, they will make it as uncomfortable for those who believe in religious liberty as the unions now do for those who seek to support their families without a union card in their pocket. The closing paragraph of the article above referred to reads as follows:—

Everybody gives up; everybody bows the knee; nobody dares say his soul is his own, when predatory labor speaks in San Francisco.

What the unions are accomplishing in the realm of labor the advocates of national Christianity hope to accomplish for all classes everywhere. Their willingness to unite with the unions to bring it about foreshadows distressful experiences for dissenters.