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SAN ANTONIO, TEX.

The union printers of Texas are keenly alive to the situation, and propose to occupy a front seat in the eight-hour band wagon, which will start on its triumphant journey toward Better Times on January 1, 1906.

Recent happenings appear to indicate that the southwest has been chosen by the typothetæ for the opening battle of the national contest, but when it comes, if it ever does, it will find the union printers ready. Mass meetings, smokers, receptions, eight-hour soirees, etc., are being held throughout the state, and are being attended by business men, public officials, ministers and leaders of other labor unions.

A state conference of the eight-hour committees of all Texas unions has been called to meet in Dallas on June 19, to lay uniform plans for all unions in the state. We expect to have President Lynch with us, and that much good will result.

The entire labor movement in Texas is aroused and is not only watching the outcome with interest, but stands ready to render all possible assistance. The State Federation of Labor, which met in Denison last week, unanimously adopted the following resolutions:

Whereas, The International Typographical Union of America has elected to enforce, from January 1, 1906, in all offices under its jurisdiction, the eighthour; and,

Whereas, We consider the outcome of this struggle for short hours on the part of the Typographical Union as of vital interest to all members of the various organizations of labor, throughout the country generally and Texas in particular; and,

Whereas, The International Typothetæ is organ. izing all over the country against the International Typographical Union, in this movement, thereby threatening a great contest; therefore, be it

Resolved, By the Texas Federation of Labor, now assembled, that we do pledge our moral support to the printers in this movement, and that we shall render them every assistance within our power, to the end that they shall be successful in their demand for the shorter workday.

In addition to the support pledged by this resolution we have assurances from the federation officers that the entire organizing force and all the machinery of the state organization will be at our disposal when we need them.

As going to show what we may expect from the farmers' union, which has 150,000 members in this state, I quote below a report made by the president of the Tarrant County Farmers' Union on the refusal of the editor of a Fort Worth paper to unionize his paper. The report is as follows: KENNEDALE, TEXAS, May 6, 1905. Union Banner, Official Organ Tarrant County F. E. and C. U. of A.:

Brethren-Your committee selected by the convention of Union Farmers of Tarrant County, in compliance with your instructions, met Wednesday, April 26, 1905, and visited the manager of the Tarrant County Citizen, of North Fort Worth. As per instructions, we asked him to employ union printers to unionize his office. He asked that the request be put in writing, which was done. He promised to call a meeting of the directors and mail us their decision. I have his reply, which states that he will not agree to employ strictly union labor-in other words, will not unionize his office.

Now, brother farmers, of the Tarrant County Farmers' Union, I consider that we asked nothing

unreasonable, nothing unjust; therefore, I have notified the management of the paper to discontinue sending me his paper, although I am paid ahead, and have instructed the mail carrier not to place the paper in my box until further notice. You, Farmer Union members, can do as you please. For justice, C. A. McMEANS, Chairman Committee, President Tarrant County Union.

As an indication of how the Texas boys feel, I need only tell you that the members of San Antonio Typographical Union No. 172 have for sev eral months been paying 5 per cent on earnings, of which 3 per cent goes into the eight-hour defense fund. We expect to have between $3,000 and $4,000 in this fund by January 1, 1906. Just keep your eyes on Texas.

WALTON PETEET.

CHATTANOOGA, TENN.

Only two entries were booked for the delegate race-W. L. Gardner and D. B. Barnes. The contest was close. Barnes, coming under the wire a neck ahead, received the decision. A. G. Linn is the alternate.

The two well-known Hills-Albert E., of Nashville, and Walter, of Birmingham-were in town last month. Albert was here in response to an invitation to make an address before Chattanooga Central Labor Union. Walter's mission was one of sadness, he being called to the bedside of a sick brother, James N. Hill, who died, and was buried on May 8.

Our label committee is doing good work-the only kind that brings results. Nearly every business firm in the city has signed an agreement requiring the label on its printing. Not so bad!

The Press, a weekly sheet, is coming to the front. At present a Saturday paper is distributed gratuitously; later a full-fledged daily will be started.

The News will soon begin the erection of a handsome four-story building.

Chattanooga Central Labor Union is recognized as one of the leading organizations of the city, and is doing much for the upbuilding of all crafts. A majority of the offices of this body are held by printers.

Good things to boom-the label and eight hours. We are looking after both. "JACK" O'BRIEN.

ERIE, PA.

Joseph Casey, foreman of the Herald job room, will be delegate to Toronto, as he is the only candidate.

Work is only fair at this time.

There does not seem to be anything to indicate that the eight-hour movement will fail here. No. 77 has every one that can be had at this time, and nearly all feel confident.

The Vincent Printing Company is the latest job office here. John Vincent and John Sullivan, formerly of the Herald job department, are the active members of the firm, and doing well. The Central Labor Journal is printed by them.

GEORGE E. NOBLE.

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ONE OF THE TORONTO UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS, SITUATED IN QUEEN'S PARK.

MAILERS' TRADE DISTRICT UNION. William Birkedahl, former president of the Denver Mailers' Union, will represent his local at the Toronto convention.

There are many locals that are in arrears to the trade district union, and it is the sincere wish of the officers that all outstanding indebtedness be received at the secretary-treasurer's office on or be fore the last of June, as that time is the end of the fiscal year, and a financial statement will be compiled and ready for the convention. As this is a very important matter, secretaries please attend to this duty at once.

Two new locals are about to be chartered, one of which will be at Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Many of our craft are working an eight-hour day, and there are numerous others who work more than eight hours. Now, it would be advisable that representatives from each local should form themselves into an eight-hour committee and offer some aid to the members who are laboring nine hours or more. To be consistent and that each and every mailer should do his share in bringing about the eight-hour day generally, have each local name its representatives, send the names to the secretary of the trade district union, and by correspondence we may be able to have a very progressive committee for this grand and good cause. Locals, at your next meeting make nominations of one or two members, to be part of a mailers' eighthour committee, and we will get in working order

at once.

Locals are instructed to send delegates to the third annual convention of the Mailers' Trade District Union, which will be held at Toronto the second week in August.

ROBERT T. ALLEN, Secretary-Treasurer. Boston, Mass.

THE NEW LINOTYPE TABULAR SYSTEM.

There is something new under the sun, the novelty being an improvement to the linotype that will prove of much interest to operators and their employers. I have recently had the opportunity of inspecting and admiring the output of the new Rogers tabular system on the linotype. This system is a great saver of time, labor and money and broadens wonderfully the scope of the linotype. The new device can be attached to any linotype, and by its aid the most intricate table work can be composed at a high rate of speed, say 3,000 an hour, and rules afterward inserted in grooves in the slugs. A short description may prove of interest to the thousands of operators who read THE JOURNAL.

The matrices used are made with the die set a certain number of thousandths of an inch farther back than on the ordinary matrices. The slugs have grooves for rules at any given point. The grooves are made by rule matrices cast to the exact thickness of the rule to be used and are of a certain depth. The figures are set across the slug, making as many columns as the work in hand may require, dropping the rule matrices on each slug in the same relative position. It will thus be seen that after the requisite number of slugs to

make the depth of the table have been cast, there are perfectly formed grooves in which rules may be inserted. All corrections have to be made and forms imposed before inserting the rules.

To use this system, termed the Rogers, after its inventor J. R. Rogers, the well-known specialist in mechanics, it is necessary to have a special attachment to the linotype, with a low mold that can be adjusted to any thickness from five point to fourteen point. A slug thirty picas long can be produced. The production on the machine is equal in speed to that of ordinary tabular work without rules, and of course any width may be attained by means of separate slugs. The rules are held in place very securely by locking up. Care must be taken not to have the rules bind top and bottom. Altogether the invention is a decided step in advance of anything heretofore accomplished. As used in a book printed by the Unity Press, of 218 William street, New York, which obtained the first set of matrices, the quality of the work indicates the success of the invention. The Press, through its vice-president and manager, Oswald Maune, a printer par excellence, pronounces the result a magnificent success. J. E. JENNINGS. New York, N. Y.

ELMIRA, N. Y.

The annual election for delegate to the International convention resulted in the election of William P. Carpenter, there being no opposition. Benjamin F. Hall, foreman of the Evening Star, was the choice for alternate.

The label committee has made arrangements to advertise the label by means of a quarter sheet poster of tasty design.

Fred E. Kennedy, a member of the Binghamton Union, and representative of the Henry George Lecture Association, of Chicago, has made arrangements for a course of lectures on economic topics to be delivered during the month of June, under the auspices of the central trades and labor assembly. Mr. Kennedy is a forceful, convincing speaker, to whom the members of No. 19 have listened several times with much pleasure.

The fight for delegate to Toronto, strange to say, centered in the contest for alternate, the opposing candidates being Benjamin F. Hall and Daniel P. Holleran, both very popular with all members, the former winning out by a small margin.

The committee appointed last January to draw up a new scale of prices, to take effect June 1, 1906, after faithfully working on the same since that time, presented it at the May meeting, and it was accepted, with two or three slight changes. The committee may feel proud of their work, for it is the most complete scale No. 19 ever had presented for adoption.

No. 19's delegate and alternate are both foremen on afternoon papers. The foremen in Elmira are not getting the worst of it on the delegateship proposition.

Frank Bismarck Roemmelt, one of No. 19's hustling members, asked to be granted the label at the May meeting, intending to start an up-to-date job office. E. S. SPALDING.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

Ebenezer W. Patton, for the past eight years one of the proprietors of the Trades Unionist, of this city, died on May 4, in Sibley Hospital, of which he had been an inmate but a week. He had been suffering for more than a year with heart trouble, and after a severe attack early in January last was never able to resume work. He was a native of West Virginia, having spent his earlier years in Clarksburg, but came to Washington in the late eighties and obtained employment in the government printing office. He spent some years in New York and Boston, returning to this city about a dozen years ago. He served one term as trustee of the Union Printers' Home and was a delegate from Columbia Union to the Colorado Springs International Typographical Union convention. He was a member of the Masonic fraternity, having taken the degrees of lodge, chapter, commandery, and the Mystic Shrine, and was buried with Masonic ceremonies. He was in his forty-sixth year, unmarried, his nearest living relatives being two sisters, Mrs. F. R. Johnson, of this city, and Mrs. J. H. Dart, of Jacksonville, Fla., and a brother, L. Dow Patton, a court stenographer, of Tahlequah, I. T. Among his immediate friends Mr. Patton was known to be one of the most generous, charitably disposed of men, and few ever knew of his charities, which had no brass-band accompaniment, but which were done on the spur of the moment while others were discussing how sad the case was. Often roughly outspoken in language, his real kindliness was unbounded. "Eb" Patton's memory will long remain green in the minds of his friends.

The Union Outfitters to Men Company, of this city, the all-label establishment of which I have written before, the enterprise of workingmen to insure an opportunity to purchase union-label goods, has successfully weathered the storms and withstood the machinations of its enemies, and is now believed to be on a solid-rock foundation. It is astonishing the difficulties which old-established competitors are able to throw in the way of an institution of this sort, and I would recommend to any intending anything of this sort that they get their capital well in hand to begin with, so that they will not need to be placed in a position where they have a credit to ruin, for the other fellows will do it if they can.

Prof. George W. Harvell, of the government printing office, has organized a troupe of colored singers, about fifteen men and women, in this city, and "gone on the road," his first point of attack being one of the smaller Ohio cities. Professor Harvell, who is himself a noted ventriloquist, was originally a Kansan. He has had much experience in the "show business" and makes frequent incursions into the country, always returning to his work in the great government shop in winter.

Prof. Henry W. Weber, who is chief press reviser in the government printing office, for a number of years has been the conductor, as he was the organizer, of the Rebew orchestra, consisting of about fifty performers, a number of whom are members of Columbia Union. It is purely an am. ateur organization, playing gratis for all sorts of

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entertainments for purposes of charity, and on the occasion of its recent annual concert in its own behalf it won splendid encomiums from the city press for the excellence of its work.

H. P. McKevitt, a former Texan, for several years a compositor in the government printing office, has been compelled to give up work on account of the inroads made upon him by the "great white terror"-consumption. He is hopeful that under the skillful treatment of his physician, after a period of perfect rest, he will be able to resume his duties.

Clinton M. Stahl, who held a clerical position in the government printing office during the last administration of Mr. Benedict, died on April 30, of apoplexy, while alone in his room in this city. He was connected with the business office of one of the city papers. He was about forty-two years old and a Freemason.

Alonzo T. Foxwell, a proofreader in the govern. ment printing office, had a severe attack of heart failure while sitting in church recently, but has since recovered sufficiently to resume his duties. He was a reader on the New York Sun for a number of years.

Oscar D. Hyler, another proofreader of the same department, has recovered from a lengthy illness from pneumonia, during which it was feared that he would never get well.

The real estate investment association organized among workingmen in March made its first investment recently, a two-story brick house, from which it is receiving the rent. Owning your home is an enjoyable proposition, but those seem most prosperous who own other people's homes and draw down the rents. This organization is almost exclusively among printers.

As Howard O. Smith, of Helena, Mont., has done me the honor to ask my opinion of his scheme for the organization of the country printer, I will say that I am afraid that the country printer will never be much interested in a union in which he will figure only as a payer of dues. To him the union will offer only prospective benefits. About all I can see that we can do with the country printer is to enroll him and carry him on the roll free of expense to himself, educating him through THE JOURNAL, and possibly burying him when he dies-the consideration on his part being that he will come to the city, if at all, only as a union man. You must have something tangible to offer the country printer in exchange for his loyalty; and membership in a union which confers no benefits, so far as he can see, but takes part of his small earnings for dues, will hardly appeal to the man or boy whose hard school of experience has made immediate self-interest the guide of his life. The problem is a hard one, and I see no solution of it to our advantage except in spending money on the country printer instead of asking him to contribute to a cause as to which his education has not been such as to enable him to see the justice.

During the recent railway appliance exhibition in this city the Railway Age was issued here as a daily in the English and French languages, from the Globe printing office. Among those who came here to work on it were Messrs. C. W. Watson

(foreman), A. G. Stoetzel, Conrad Smith, jr., H. W. Riley, W. H. Dean, and others, of Chicago, and H. Desjardins, A. L. Chapdelaine, Elzear Poitras and A. Perreault, of Montreal, one of whom brought me a note from my old friend Silas Bill Read, sending me greetings and saying, "If you ever come to Montreal the city is yours." Outside of my appreciation of the good feeling which prompted the tender, I have always felt that I would like to own a city like Montreal.

There is a movement on foot among the trades unionists of Roanoke, Va., to establish a store for the sale of union-label goods for men, patterned after the one in this city.

Col. E. F. Ruffin, the original "ancient mariner," whose wanderings on sea have taken him to all parts of the civilized world and those on land have made him known in all sections of the United States, who has been vegetating for some time in the Maryland Confederate home, is making a visit to this city.

I recently had a letter from J. E. F. ("Texas") Smith, dated at Adrian, Mich., promising me a "reminiscence." There is not a city nor a village in the United States or Canada that has not known "Texas" at some time within the past forty years. Columbia Union at its April meeting set aside a sum for the furnishing of a room at the Union Printers' Home, to be added to from month to month a fact which has received the endorsement of the Home trustees.

William J. Dow, assistant foreman of the sixth division of the government printing office, who was called home to Pierce City, Mo., the latter part of April, to attend the funeral of his father, the publisher of a paper there, has returned to his duties.

James A. Hogsette, a clerk in the bureau of public printing at Manila, P. I., recently returned to this city on a visit, looking as though a tropical climate agrees with him. He will return to the Philippines in August.

Miss Carrie L. Whitehead, formerly a composi tor in the government printing office and secretary of the woman's auxiliary, and Mr. Lee P. Calfèe, of this city, were married at Baltimore on April 29. The two specifications chapels gave the bride some handsome presents.

President A. D. Calvert, of Philadelphia, was a Washington visitor on May 9.

Robert R. West, formerly auditor of the gov ernment printing office, died of yellow fever at Panama, where he was an official of the canal commission, on May 7.

Tom Lawler, of Sunbury, Pa., formerly hereof, the first president of Sunbury Union, now a popu lar hotel keeper, whom I have had occasion to mention in this correspondence heretofore, is a candidate for prothonotary of his county.

The Woman's Auxiliary to Columbia Typographical Union No. 101 on May 12 elected Mrs. L. Bowen, wife of A. W. Bowen, foreman of the first division of the government printing office, who was a delegate to the Milwaukee (1900) convention of the International Typographical Union, and Mrs. Bert Wolfe, wife of a compositor and Merg operator in the same office, respectively, delegate and alternate to the Toronto convention.

After the election there was a musical entertain ment, furnished principally by talented children of printers, among them two little sons of our James Monroe Kreiter. On May 15 the auxiliary gave its regular annual entertainment at Masonic Temple, there being a crowded house.

Walter W. Ludlow, for a number of years a compositor and proofreader in the government printing office, originally from Minnesota, for the past three or four years private secretary to the assistant secretary of the treasury, has been detailed as acting chief clerk of the treasury, with every probability of receiving the permanent appointment. His promotion to so responsible a position is gratifying to all his late associates. He is a prominent and well-known Freemason, being secretary of his lodge and a past high priest of his chapter.

Otto F. Thum, of Denver, recently sent me "The Diary of a Copyholder," by William S. Holmes, of the Denver Western Newspaper Union, published in the Western Publisher, which is clev erly done, my only criticism being of the tameness of the boy's experiences as compared with those of real copyholders. In that day in the far-distant future when publishers shall cease to charge up proofreading as a dead loss in figuring on a job, the now generally accepted belief that anything that can hold a piece of paper is competent to serve as a copyholder will give way to a realization that for good work equal ability is required at each end of a proofreader's desk, and two proofreaders will work together, as is now done in all first-class offices. My friend Thum is chairman of the trades committee of ten, William E. Shields, formerly of this city, being president of the trades assembly.

At the election of Columbia Union on May 17 John R. Berg was re-elected president without opposition; William R. Love was re-elected vicepresident over Dexter S. Hussey by fifty-three majority; George G. Seibold was re-elected secretary without opposition; James E. Bright, re-elected treasurer without opposition. The great contest was over the International Typographical Union delegateships, the vote being as follows: Government printing office-Mark H. Barnum, 944 (elected); Philip S. Steele, 888 (elected); Joe M. Johnson, 764 (elected); Frank D. Smith, 751; Charles B. Buchanan, 633; Walter V. Smith, 396; Joseph E. Goodkey, 159. Down-town-Harry C. Knapp, 761 (elected); Miss Teresa McDonald, 643; Orton T. Pierce, 188. The Washington Post published full tabulated returns from every chapel the next morning, with portraits of three of the delegates-elect. There are few papers anywhere which give so much space to printer news as these our Washington papers. A. F. BLOOMER.

Charles Bastian, who left Washington about five years ago and who two years later represented Baltimore Union in the Washington convention, is back again at the capital. He is assisting in getting out the Washington Post. His many friends gave him the glad hand.

John F. Luitich, working in the government printing office, is the editor of the Washington

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