Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1916 — SAVE THE PRINCIPLE. [ARTICLE]

SAVE THE PRINCIPLE.

Having sweepingly condemned the best known method of settling' disputes that do not yield to mediation, the brotherhoods have, reverted to the old rule of force as f ilter for ( their purposes. Believing that they can thus secure immediately a large increase in wages, they decline to submit to a fair inquiry that: may or may not serve to justify the desired : increase. They explain their course ; merely by saying that disinterested arbitrators cannot be found to give them justice. * * * Thus is raised a issue vitally concerns the whole people, organized wage workers perhgps most of all. The trade unions through the years , have made their successful fights on the basis of reason and justice. Their right to organize, their right to receive redress of grievances, their right to dispose of their labor by collective bargaining—these rights j and others re!?t upon an underlying spirit of fairness. Now tne condem- | nation of the entire human race as containing no member fit to give a decision in a labor arbitration is a plain declaration by four trade unions occupying a specially strong strategic position that henceforth fairness must give way to force. Such a presages ruin. It is the duty of every intelligent person in this crisis to demand that the arbitration principle be upheld —Chicago News.