Is It Converted?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 25, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 21.

—The San Francisco Examiner, in speaking of prohibition, says:—

The teetotaler may advise the man who drinks, and the moderate drinker may advise the teetotaler, but the teetotaler has no more right to say to another man, “You shall not drink whisky,” than the whisky drinker has to say to the teetotaler, “You shall not drink water.”

We wish to make especially clear the fact that this newspaper has not the slightest desire to coerce any man, and that it has no sympathy whatever with the interests of those that seek to influence others by force. We try to appeal to the common sense of our readers, and especially to young men.

Now will the Examiner hold to its principles in labor-union matters? It is a well-known fact that labor-unionists restrict the number of men in the union by debarring those who wish to join, and by limiting apprenticeships. They seek not only to persuade men not to work unless members of the union, in harmony with the union, but they seek to prevent them from working, and prohibit their employment by others. They seek to coerce employers into employing only union men. They seek to limit the length of a day's work on government matters, pertaining purely to the public, and to prevent, by law, the employment of those who are not authorized by the union. And with the unions has the Examiner stood early and late, through thick and thin. Now are we to understand that the Examiner has been converted to the principle of American freedom, or is it talking for political effect among the whisky men?