Now, that, as I see it, is the real animus of this movement to obtain a limitation of the law of conspiracy and an exemption from the remedies against it. Should the leaders be freed from the restraint imposed by the law as it is?

Mr. Gompers stated in his argument the other day that he had known strikes to be destroyed or ended by these injunctions-known them to be lost, I think he said, by these injunctions.

Well, that, if it is true, proves two things: First, that those strikers must have relied on unlawful means to carry out their ends; but, second, it proves something which it seems to me to be very much more significant, and that is that after those strikers found out that they were violators of the law they stopped; they were unwilling to rest under the order of court and defy it.

I want to suggest this thought, which has been suggested before in another form. Congress can not, if it would, deprive any citizen of any personal right of life or liberty, or any right of property; you can not affect the rights of property or of liberty, which have been adjudged by every court in the land, State and Federal. What you are asked to do is to take away the remedy for the protection of those rights. You leave the man his rights; under the Constitution you can not touch them.

Now, what is he to do? This country has not reached the point where men are going to surrender their rights of liberty and of property to the tender mercies of hostile combinations without a struggle, and, if necessary, a fight. The acts that render combinations illegal will be none the less illegal if you pass this bill. You simply take away the injured man's remedy-his protection through the court. The people who violate these rights are, most of them, unlearned in the law. Many of them are foreign born; they have no opportunity to become versed in our jurisprudence; they have to rely on leaders, like Mr. Gompers, who admits that he is not versed in the law, and whose admission is fully borne out by his statements before this committee. Now, is it not better, is it not kinder, that these people should learn what the laws of this country are through the service of the process of the court of equity and by the posting of that process, than it would be to let them learn that lesson at the mouth of a rifle in the hands of the property owner or of the sheriff or of the militia? That is the alternative. You can not take away the rights of property or the rights of individual liberty. You can only deprive the citizens of their remedies to protect those rights. If you deprive a citizen of his remedy in the courts, he is not going to give up those rights; he is going to fight for them, and you are going simply to substitute a reign of anarchy for the orderly administration of justice in the courts.

If there are any questions, I shall be glad to answer them. Mr. ALEXANDER. I would like to ask Mr. Bond one question. Have you any objection to compulsory arbitration-the people you represent? Mr. BOND. I do not believe it is a feasible scheme, that is all, Mr. Alexander.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. Is there any practical method of enforcing a decree on the part of either party-that is, compelling a corporation to comply with the decree or compelling the labor organizations, on the other hand, to comply?

Mr. BOND. You might compel, I suppose, the corporation to submit disputes to arbitration preliminarily, but you can not compel anybody

to serve a corporation or serve anybody else, to give his personal services, except by his own free volition. As far as the railroads are concerned, our process of treating with these organizations is quite complete and conservative, and after we get really responsible people on both sides together we rarely fail to have an agreement. Of course, there are thousands and thousands of disputes, but they are threshed out and eleminated by passing through the hands of officers of both sides, until they get to some important questions which finally come to the heads of both sides.

But what is the embarrassment in every public-service corporation, and what has never been quite worked out, is that the corporation has duties to the public on one side which are absolutely mandatory and it has interposed between it and the agents whom it must employ to discharge those duties, not a subcontractor, not any responsible party, but an organization which is entirely independent, and except in so far as they may be subject to the interstate commerce act, absolutely free from any of the responsibilities which the corporation as an employer owes to the public. It is an anomalous condition, but it is being worked out in a practical way by the rule of thumb. There is no principle that you can apply to it.

Mr. THOMAS. Do you think that any system of compulsory arbitration could be made possible?

Mr. BOND. No, sir; when it gets to that point the men would rather make their own contract, and it is really a great deal better to let the parties fight it out, if they have to fight it out, in my opinion. I think that would cause less discontent after they did reach an agreement than if both sides were coerced, as it were, into leaving the matter to some third person whom neither side would believe knew his business.

STATEMENT OF HON. H. M. HOGG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO.

Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, I have been unable to attend these hearings as I desired. The subject-matter before you is of so much importance to us of Colorado, not directly but indirectly, that it certainly must arouse a great deal of interest on our part, and I felt as though I were not doing my duty to the people of my State, or of my district, if I did not appear before you and protest as strongly and as vigorously as I may against the passage of this bill, or against reporting it to Congress.

This bill, it seems to me, has been misnamed. They have applied a wrong title to the bill. It should have been entitled in my judgment, "A bill to encourage strikes and to make them successful;" because that can be the only effect of a measure of this kind, and I think our friends-representatives of the labor unions of the country-will agree with me that this must be the effective and ultimate object of this legislation.

I was very much interested the other day for a short time in listening to the very clean-cut argument of Mr. Beck, who it seems to me, presented the legal phase of this question in a light that was unanswerable. So far as the interstate-commerce provision of the bill is concerned, it probably would not affect our interests directly, except so far as the question of transportation might arise.

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The principle that lies back of it, and which these gentlemen seek to have established, is a matter of more than usual concern to us.

For more than ten years our State has been, it seems to me, the storm center in which has occurred the most outrageous of these labor disturbances. Up to the time of the establishment of unions, and more especially up to the time of the establishment of the Western Federation of Miners, the business of mining had been carried on in the State of Colorado with success and to the entire satisfaction of the employees. There was no question of hours, nor was there any question whatever of wages at that time. When these organizations came within the State and became established we found at once that these difficulties of ours, and the place where I reside is one place that we have suffered the most

Mr. LITTEFIELD. Where is that?

Mr. HOGG. Telluride, a mining camp, where the troops have been recently placed in order to protect property and in order to protect

life.

This condition that we find ourselves in there has been brought about not only by these organizations, these unions of different kinds covering different enterprises, but the great difficulty and the great danger has come to us by the federation of these different classes of unions, whereby, if a strike is to be ordered, say, on any given mine, they call a meeting of the confederation, and cooks and waiters and flunkys and barbers and carpenters and all these different unions vote on the question as to whether the miners should strike; and of my own knowledge I know that a very considerable strike was organized by the vote of just such gentlemen as I have mentioned-the barbers and flunkys and cooks and waiters. They vote in these federated meetings to call a strike, and I know it to be a fact that the last strike that was called on the Smuggler Union mine-which embraced all the other mines later on-if it had been left to the miners themselves, never would have been called.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. What was the controversy then?

Mr. HOGG. I was going to bring that out.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. I beg your pardon.

Mr. HOGG. I am not so familiar with the condition of things at Cripple Creek. I know something of the general situation.

Now, then, in 1901, the Smuggler Union mine, which is one of the large mines there, employing quite a number of hundred men, had been operating under what we call the contract system. That is, certain contracts would be let to men to drive so many feet or so many fathoms, and they were paid accordingly, the company furnishing them the power.

This was unsatisfactory to the manipulators, the leaders of the union, especially a gentleman by the name of St. John, who was at that time and was for some two or three years president of the miner's union, but who is now a fugitive from justice, his place having been filled by another person, who, you will pardon me for saying, I think also ought to be a fugitive from justice. They took it into their heads that the men were not making enough and in reply to their contention Mr. Collins, who was then superintendent of the Smuggler Union mine (he was afterwards assassinated) made a statement showing that the average wages paid to these men who were doing this work under contract was $4.06 per day.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD: For how many hours?

Mr. HOGG. They worked their own time. Being union men I suppose they worked eight hours. We have the eight-hour rule therethat is, they work eight hours there in that camp, as I think they do also in Cripple Creek, and I think in nearly all of the mining camps of the State. That was the average they made per day. Some men made as high as $8 or $10. There were very few who made a little less than the running wage, which was $3 a day for eight hours. These fellows complained that these men were not making wages and they required that the company should either do away with the contract system or guarantee to all persons who were working on their own time that they should make $3 a day. Of course that could not be complied with, and the strike was ordered.

Now, then, we come to the point that seems to be of more than especial interest to every business concern in the United States, and that is this: Because the managers of that mine did not see fit to conduct their business according to the dictation of the union, and because they reserved to themselves the right to operate their property as they thought best, the union organized a strike and there were at least 200 armed men with rifles belonging to the strikers, and they commenced an assault upon the company and its employees who had remained faithful to their duty. In that battle there were two men on our side -I say our side; I mean the company side, because I had the privilege of representing the company

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. In what capacity? Mr. HOGG. As an attorney. As I say, two men were killed. Another man, who was the brother-in-law of the manager, had his arm shattered so that it has become useless. Men were taken from their bunks, their shoes taken from them, their money and their wages taken from them, and by these foreigners-because one good thing about it was that there were not many English-speaking men who were engaging in that sort of thing; the men who had made that camp, the men who had come in there and made the first discoveries, who were working on that mine, were taken over the mountain range barefooted, and one of them as they passed him over the range was shot at, and he had his arm shattered. That is the condition of things we have to meet there.

Before I pass from that, let me state another thing. A young fellow who was working in one of the boarding houses in order to escape the mob got down through a trapdoor underneath the floor and hid there. The crowd came along and they thought there was somebody in the house, and they finally discovered the boy down there. He begged for his life. Still they shot him; they shot that poor fellow down there in that hole where he could not get out.

These are some of the methods used. I do not say the rank and file of the unions do these things. But I say these things are done, and it is beyond question that they have been done in our community.

Another significant fact right in that connection, and that is this: I may be ignorant in the matter, but if the representatives of labor, I mean organized labor, can point out to me a single solitary case such as I have given where crime has been committed, where property has been destroyed, where life has been taken where they have ever undertaken to investigate matters themselves, then I will admit that I am mistaken. But I know of no case, not one. The ferreting out of

these criminals must be left to those interested or to the properly constituted authorities. And I say that I know of no case in the history of these crimes that have possessed our State where they have ever lifted up a hand in order to discover the perpetrators of the crimes. I know that in one or two cases where mines have been blown up that they have charged the owner with having blown it up, but they have never proved it, and it seems remarkable that such a position should

be taken.

Now, then, speaking of this strike, and going a little furtheralthough I will be brief, gentlemen-they called a halt on the difficulty and they entered into a truce. The president of the union called it off for three days until they could make some sort of a determination of the matter. They afterwards entered into a contract and they fixed the scale of wages and they fixed the hours, and that contract was to last for three years. During this last strike that contract was broken. I will not say it was broken by the miners' union, but it was broken in this way: The eight-hour discussion came up in the State, and I am frank to say that we voted in favor of the constitutional amendment to make eight hours a day's work in certain locations, and I am also frank to say that I voted for it. When the legislature met they refused to pass an act to carry out the provision that we had voted as an amendment to the constitution in order to overcome the difficulties that had been met with theretofore in the decisions of the courts.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. That is, they refused to pass any legislation to make a constitutional amendment?

Mr. HOGG. To make effective the constitutional provision; yes, sir; that is true. Then they undertook to force an eight-hour day in all occupations that were contemplated by strikes. The matter was brought on, I think-what mill was that, Mr. Brooks?

Mr. BROOKS. The Telluride mill.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. Briefly, what were the influences that operated to bring on that legislation?

Mr. HOGG. I do not know; I was not there. I have no desire to charge that anything improper was done. If it was, I know nothing about it; I was not there. But I presume that the members of the legislature acted in their legislative capacity with as much honesty as we are supposed to do here. I have not had very much acquaintance with you gentlemen yet, but I take it for granted that we are all honest men or try to be; so I say I hardly think that the legislature of Colorado, whatever sins it may answer for, will have to answer to the charge of having acted corruptly in the matter.

There was in the final wind up of that legislature a Democratic majority, and Socialists and the labor element had become closely allied to that party, and if they had the majority and these men's interests are placed in their hands they will have to go to them for an answer as to why their own men or some of them voted against it. I say this strike was organized for the purpose of forcing the eight-hour day in certain employments in the Cripple Creek district, because they had declared a strike on this Telluride mill near Colorado Springs (Mr. Brooks is a resident of the place), and in order to make that effective they notified the mines in Cripple Creek that if they shipped to this mill they would organize a strike on the mines. That is the way they tried to attempt to enforce the eight-hour law on the mills.

Now, the mines had an eight-hour law. They were only working