into double bondage: to contractors who employ them to manufacture shoes, clothing and other products. For this toil the prisoners receive the paltry wage of 60 and 70 cents for a tenhour day, while the contractor places these goods on the market in competition with the products of free industry. No trade unionist and no friend of the labor movement, no friend of humanity would purchase these prison made goods if he knew them when he saw them. For he would not wish to be a party to the crime of using those whom the state is punishing to punish workers who have committed no crime by forcing them into the misery of unemployment through the purchase of goods hatched behind the bars. Here the union label looms again as the only guide against the purchase of prison made products. For no product made in a prison ever bears the union label.

So that the unionist who has been careless in insisting upon union label goods has in many instances purchased products that have been made in the prisons for the brutal wage of six or seven cents an hour. Such carelessness has robbed many unionists of the right to work, while at the same time it has enriched the worst enemies of organized labor with profits that figure into thousands of per cent. You can't be sure that prison made products are not on your back or in your home unless you refuse to buy goods that do not bear the union label.

That priceless thing, life itself, is lengthened for the worker who makes the product and for those who purchase it through loyalty to the union label. The span of life of the printer is 11 years longer today than it was 25 years ago, thanks to the conditions and wages that organization has brought to the workers in that industry. Statistics show that the span of life for cigarmakers and workers in other trades has also been greatly increased through organization. And the union label is the only guarantee that products are made in a union shop. The purchaser of union label goods has the satisfaction of knowing that they were made in a clean, sanitary place by healthy workers. In the culinary trades members of the union must pass a medical test. Only through the purchase of union label food products are you assured that they were not handled by workers suffering from some dangerous, loathsome, contagious disease.

Disease germs are easily carried in clothing, furniture and other articles. Much clothing that does not bear the union label is made in tenement sweat shops where the sun never comes and disease stalks. If one member of the family is sick the work goes on just the same, for the others must work the harder to make up for the loss in wages of the afflicted one. Goods made in the sweat shop of a great city may spread disease in communities thousands of miles away where they are sold. Sickness is the bane of the worker. When he is sick his income stops. Yet

the worker who is not vigilant in demanding the union label goods when he is spending his money oftentimes buys not only the things that are wrapped up for him, but in addition a doctor's bill.

Perhaps you understand now why it is the organized workers are proud to have the goods that they make bear the union label and perhaps you realize why it is that non-union employers are ashamed to place upon their goods the stamp of non-unionism. I recall but one instance where an attempt has been made to place a non-union label on non-union goods, and that was the case of an unprosperous daily newspaper that did not continue the practice very long.

Organized labor would appreciate it if non-union concerns would be honest enough to place the brand of non-unionism upon their goods. If prison contractors would be honest with the buying public and stamp their goods prison made. But instead they attempt to foist their unlabeled non-union product on the public in the guise of being union made. Many of you have had the experience of requesting goods that bore the union label, and of having the salesman assure you that, although there was no union label on them, the goods were made in a union factory. Union made goods bear the union label. The organized workers are not ashamed of the product their hands, intelligence and ability have made. It is a fact that the wife and mother is the purchasing agent for the home. They also must be educated as to what the union label means. All that is necessary to complete this education is for you to acquaint them with the difference in the conditions under which union and non-union products are made. Worker mothers want the families and children of other workers to have the same opportunities that they have. They want the children of all workers to have the benefit of an education, of decent living conditions, of a right to enjoy life as it should be enjoyed.

And they want to protect their children against the diseases that are bred under non-union conditions in unsanitary factories and sweat shop tenements, the germs of which are carried in non-union goods into healthy homes. They do not want to slam the school doors in the faces of the children of any worker, nor to block for them the path of opportunity and progress. But these things are the very things that you and they do when you fail to insistently and consistently demand that the goods you buy bear labor's badge of honor and insignia of progress, the union label. Every day the struggle between organized exploitation and organized toil becomes more intense. In justice to ourselves and those we love and have sworn to protect we cannot neglect any legitimate weapon at our command. The union label is a weapon that should not be despised and that cannot be

neglected. Its legality has never been questioned by any court. The right of the purchaser to demand goods bearing the union label has not been questioned even here in America where the despotism of non-union industry is daily attempting to broaden its encroachments against industrial liberty and freedom.

Remember, the next time you are making a purchase, that you are choosing whether you are going to be faithful or unfaithful to the greatest movement progress has known, the organized labor movement. You are going to demand the union label or you are going to say nothing about it. Your silence is your approval of the non-union shop. It is an indorsement of every slugger and gunman who has attacked a worker on a picket line. It is encouragement to those greedy barons of industrial autocracy who would make slaves of everyone who toils. When you spend your money, is the cash register going to record a mere sale, or is it going to ring encouragement to your fellow workers in other industries?

By this token you are going to say whether you are for a product planned in greed and autocracy, and made in tears and suffering and distress, in the non-union shop slave pens, in the prisons from which hope is banished and death lurks, in the tenement house sweat shops where the sun never shines, where the hands of little children that should be in school are being dwarfed and marked with blighting, tiresome endless toil, where disease lurks and despair has made death a thing to be hoped for and where sorrow rules and reigns, and happiness is unknown. Or whether you are going to demand the union label and so secure products made by happy, healthy, smiling workers whose organization and advocacy of democracy in industry has helped to lay the cornerstone for a greater democracy and freedom that is to come.

When you buy, you are not only buying, you may also be selling. Your failure to be true to this great cause means that you are selling out your organization. Make your money speak for democracy in industry against autocracy; for organization instead of individualism; for happiness rather than despair. And you will stand a little straighter, you will feel a little better, you will smile a little more. For you will be satisfied that you have kept the faith; been true to yourself, and after all, what is better and higher, been true to a group of loyal, aspiring workers-to your fellows.

The Naval Race

By

William E. Borah

In the U. S. Senate in December, 1922.

It is perfectly clear to me that we are again threatened with a naval race. Different reasons for it have been assigned. I am not going to discuss it with reference to individual responsibility. But it is perfectly apparent that it is here, for the reasons which I shall undertake to disclose as the debate proceeds.

Building is going on abroad, we are told, along all lines not specifically covered by the disarmament conference treaty. The things which were covered by that treaty have been regarded to some extent as not essential to a modern navy, and therefore the course now being pursued is that of a naval race in these things which really count in modern warfare.

There is a very pronounced propaganda in the country in favor of an increased or enlarged navy. There is also a very remarkable propaganda in favor of an increased or enlarged army. The reasons which are assigned for this are because not only of the building abroad in naval affairs, but because of the economic conditions and the discontent and distress which prevail throughout the world. We are told almost daily by the admirals of the Navy or by those who are high in authority in the Army that we may expect almost any day a condition of affairs abroad which will necessitate our having a vast navy and a very much larger army.

It is not my intention, as I said a moment ago, to indulge in personal criticism. I only call attention to the condition of affairs, and that is that we are again entering upon a competitive race in armament, that we are practically abandoning any further effort along the line of disarmament or the limitation of armament. Before we accept such a course we ought to survey the situation with reference to our present condition and as to what will probably follow. It is my purpose briefly to call attention to some of the conditions in this country at this time.

Mr. President, our present national indebtedness is between twenty-one billion and twenty-two billion dollars-an almost inconceivable sum when one attempts to measure it with any degree of accuracy or intelligence. In these days we speak of