p. 8 (136) | To the Point

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1903

To the Point

The San Francisco Chronicle has for years sustained the labor unions by employing only union laborers. Therefore its remarks pertaining to the opposition of union men to a law making “threats of violence” unlawful are all the more forcible. Concerning a bill now before the legislature of California, that paper says:—

It is astonishing that union workmen, of whom nine-tenths are among the best of our citizens, should permit their so-called “leaders” to openly oppose in a legislative body a declaration in a law that “threats of violence” are unlawful when employed in the course of a labor dispute. We warn them that members of the legislature who oppose such a legal declaration are no friends of labor, but only men who are hunting labor votes by pretending to be such friends. That, however, we need hardly say. None know it better than the intelligent workingmen themselves, and none declare it more freely. The greatest foes of labor are among those who do not themselves work, but who make their living by “labor leadership.” . . . When labor unions take the position that “threats of violence” are legitimate methods of industrial warfare they will throw down a gauntlet which society will take up. Society will not permit mob rule, because mob rule speedily leads to the rule of the bayonet, and perhaps of cannon loaded with grapeshot. That has been history, and history repeats itself.