The foregoing from the Cincinnati Post is an index to the conditions to which employes of trusts and monopolies and large corporations generally would be subjected were it not for the determination with which organized labor has defended the rights and protected the interests of the toilers. This fact is also evidenced by the conditions surrounding the slaves of the Steel Trust and of other trusts whose employes are not organized. In the hope of securing relief from these brutalities a temporary restraining order was asked to prevent the corporation guards from assaulting miners and their wives, evicting them from their miserable homes and asking that they (the miners) and their families be protected in going to church and the post office, but it appears that the judge to whom this petition was presented found that he had to leave for his vacation and no action was taken in the matter. Later when he returned he heard the petition and refused the restraining order.

Back of all the outrages committed by these "guards" looms up the power of the "invisible government" of special privilege.

Regarding the return of the militia it should be stated that when the militia were first called they put a stop to the reign of the corporation guard and restored the supremacy of the law. After they were withdrawn, however, the mining corporations employed a number of these State troops as guards who, wearing their uniforms as State soldiers' enforced the mandates of the mining corporations under the pretense it is said that they were acting as State troops. Governor Glasscock, however, declared that they had no authority to act in that capacity.

In contemplation of this situation our mind reverts to the originating cause of it all-subsidized judges and bribed legislators who stand ever willing to obey the nod and beck of the wealthy plutocrat and obstruct every movement for the enactment of legislation and the enforcement of laws that would insure a square deal between labor and capital.

Miners wives have told the commission astounding stories of horror. From the evidence unrolled before them the members of the commission learned of a baby having been born on the bare floor of a shack while bullets were flying and the guards' red law reigned supreme. They learned of another baby that was born

dead after bullets had been fired through the house by the mine guards and the mother had fled to the home of the mine foreman for sanctuary.

Later it developed that this foreman was discharged because his wife had had pity on the suffering woman. Other women told how they had hidden with their husbands and families for twentyfour hours in a damp cellar after they had been driven from their homes by the guards and how later they had fled over the hills, weary and sick from their exposure.

Even after they had left the village the hills in which they had taken refuge were swept by a hail of bullets from machine guns which the mine operators installed.

The militia was finally ordered to the scene of the trouble, and reports say that when the soldiers of the State first came they were welcomed with delight by the miners, that martial law was a boon to the strikers compared with the civil law of corporation guards and corporation judges. The soldiers made life safe, temporarily abolished the mine guards, made sanitary camps compulsory, supplied doctors and medicine and also insured trials for all accused. When the guards were driven from their prey, these human vultures rested just outside the district that was under martial law, ready to rush back to harass their victims should the vigilance of the soldiers be relaxed.

When the miners ventured to Charleston, the State capital, to tell of their woes, they were given a reception which recalls "Bloody Sunday" in the annals of Russian despotism. In view of all the other outrages committed on them, it is a wonder that they too like the Czar's defenseless petitioners were not fired

upon.

Five thousand of them went up to Charleston to protest against the guard system and the other horrors of oppression of which they had been victims. Driven from their homes and from the hills owned by the coal barons, they came to the State House for justice. But these coatless, despairing toilers found that a hearing was not for such as they; that the people's governor was not their governor nor the people's State House their State House.

When they reached the capitol they found that soldiers had established a cordon around the building. Instead of seeing the Governor, they looked at a forbidding array of loaded army rifles.

the Free and the Home of the Brave," must go; that the coal barons and other plutocrats shall no longer dominate both legislature and judiciary to deprive men of their rights as free American citizens. It is high time that government by the State be established to replace government by corporations and their paid hirelings; that special privilege be abolished and that the "system" with its

(Photo from J. R. Schmidt, Cincinnati, Ohio)

and ignorant of the existing trouble but the greater number of whom on arriving there yield to the arguments of the United Mine Workers' representatives and return to their respective homes. Some of these strike breakers whom the company succeed in getting into the mines are, it is said, being held by force and intimidated into remaining there and working against their will.

The position of the trade union movement in Great Britain is most encouraging. Labor appears to be organizing itself on most scientific and enthusiastic lines. Its outlook is clear and its standpoint sound. For one thing it is perceived that the days of small local and sectional independent unions have passed and that the time has come for strongly organized national unions for each craft. Overlapping of unions is condemned, and rightly so. Perhaps one of the finest examples of straightforward progress and farsighted leadership is found amongst our railway unions.

Of the four railway unions that exist, two have long been general unions and two only even moderately sectional. The two former are the great Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and the lesser the very vigorous General Railway Workers Union. The two latter are the Signalmen's and Pointsmen's Union and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. The last of these, the A. S. of L. E. and F., do not see their way clear to merge their independence into the proposed great national society. The other three, however, are in favor of fusion, and the result when this is carried out looks like being the formation of a society well on the way towards a membership of 200,000.

The annual convention of the British trade unions, which opened at Swansea, Wales, on September 2, resulted in a number of most interesting sessions. Will Thorne, who was president of the convention, opened his address by alluding to the London dock strike. He declared that the Government was to blame for using the forces of the Crown "to defeat the workers." He stated that the share of the total wealth produced which is now received by the workers is less than they ever received, his statements being supported by figures. He did not believe in compulsory arbitration in labor disputes, and urged that a strenuous effort should be made by trade unions in order to prevent big collecting societies from getting as members tradeunionists who are compelled under the insurance act, to be insured. He was

Exclusive correspondence to the Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine.

After the address the subject of "sympathetic strikes" was discussed, and a motion in favor of instructing the Parliamentary Committee to call conferences for the furtherance of the amalgamation of trade unions by industries was agreed to.

The subject of the Osborne judgment created interest and was the cause of three separate debates. This judicial decision is now some years old and it prevents trade unions from using any of their funds for political action. A bill has now been brought before the House of Commons to have this judgment reversed to the end that all trade unions may use their funds for any purpose they desire.

The next proceedings of the Trade Union convention or congress dealt chiefly with educational matters, and appear to have caused surprise among many people, for a resolution was passed in which secular education was not advocated-a thing not before experienced in the history of the congress. It was, moreover, decided after a lengthy discussion, to exclude all references to secular education from future trade-union congresses. The Miners' Federation took the leading part It should be underin this decision. stood by our readers that secular education in this country means the entire abolition of all religious teaching in the ordinary day or common schools.

Compulsory arbitration also came up for discussion, the motion being brought forward by Ben Tillett. He was in favor of arbitration. The motion was opposed by the miners, and it was pointed out by W. Brace, the miners' leader and labor member of Parliament, that if they wished the Government to force capitalists to do certain things they must be prepared to allow the Government to force workmen to work. Strikes were to be avoided as much as possible, but he did not believe in the power to strike being taken away.

John Ward, the navvies' leader and labor member of Parliament, also gave some good advice on the subject of Government interference in industrial disputes. The feelings of the miners and the weavers were definitely against compulsory arbitration, and it was clearly shown by vote that the congress was not ready to accept it.