Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1886 — Terrorization. [ARTICLE]

Terrorization.

Since public sentiment all over the country has become so thoroughly aroused to the abuses and tyranny of utrades-unions and labor organizations, it is likely to go to the root of the whole matter, and extirpate every form of intimidation and terrorism which of late years has been so successfully practiced by trades-unions in compelling all union men to strike when ordered out, and in denouncing or posting as “scabs” or “rats” those wiio accept employment in the places vacated, or who continue to work. Ordinarily when a man is denounced as a scoundrel, a rascal, or a thief, it is merely a mark of derision or contempt, but not a method of terrorism; iand the party offending is liable to simple action at law for libel or slander. But the unions have had a further purpose in their use of opprobious epithets. By denouncing their associates as “scabs” or “rats” who do not obey the orders of the union, they personify a social terrorism inflicted upon workingmen and their families, and thus they destroy freedom and independence of action. But the time has at last come for men to be free men, and to assert their independence of action which will be sustained, not only by public sentiment, but by the courts. Recently the justices in New York have inflicted the punishment of three or six months in the penitentiary upon union drivers who have hurled at non-union dri*£rS the appelation of “scabs.” This was justly deemed by the judges an act of intimidation to scare from duty the employes on the Third Avenue road and thus stop the running of the cars. Judge Mallory, of this city, who imposed upon a boy cotter a fine of $25 and $0 costs for distributing boycotting handbills evidently made a decision in the same direction.

It is the spirit of American law that every individual shall be permitted to exercise his rights untrammeled by violence, intimidation, or fear of any kind; and that whoever employs any method in that direction is liable to the severities of the law. We have not a doubt that if an individual should be arrested on a warrant for denouncing his fellow-laborer as a “scab, ” or a “rat,” when brought before Judge Mallory he would find that although there is no special statue applicable tb the case, under the general head of disorderly conduct, these opprobious epithets would receive the condemnation which they so justly merit. It has been known that for twenty years the Printers’ Union has exercised a tyranny of posting all over the United States individual printers who would not join a strike against their employers or who accepted employment at the full wages prescribed by the union, but had taken places which had been vacated by strikers. This is done to prevent such printers from obtaining employment elsewhere, and is unquestionably boycotting, against which the whole country is rising in a fierce and burning indignation. > . _ These practices haveoeen allowed to go on for a number of years because they were not deemed of much moment. But the practical and degrading tyranny to which they have been perverted has at last aroused the public mind as to what should be the scope of the unions; and the conviction is becoming relentless that every organization should be held to rigid responsibility for the misdeeds or bad practices of its members. To be an American freeman was once considered the mark of the highest nobifiity the world over. But men are certainly not free when they are not at all times permitted the right to work untrammeled by violence, intimidation, or disgraceful epithets.— Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin.