the first time, a virtually nationwide strike was attempted. Twenty-two railroads leading into Chicago that held control of the necessaries of life were sought to be paralyzed. It was felt that as food is indispensable to man, as women and children would starve if those railroads could be successfully tied up, nothing remained but for the American people to succumb in the presence of potential starvation. I think it is to the glory of that great President, Grover Cleveland, that he said. that the mails would be moved and the channels of interstate intercourse would be kept open if it took every Federal bayonet that was then within the control of the Federal government.

Organized Coercion

Well, that passed away, and a far greater organization arose, an organization numbering not 600,000, but 3,000,000, and they attempted to do the same thing, to enforce their will upon the people, not by means of the ballot, as I say, which is their right, but by economic pressure through the method of the boycott. I happened to be counsel in the Danbury hatters' case and so in the Buck Stove & Range Co. case, and I wish I had time to recount the cruel tyranny that was exerted upon the employers of labor in those cases. At all events, the pressure of 3,000,000 men was brought, by the most wonderful organization, to bear upon two men, or at least two groups of men, in order to crush them unless they would dictate to their employes, who desired not to be unionized, the necessity of taking out union cards and becoming members of the labor union.

But the boycott passed as too mild a method. But as long as this method was merely one of compelling the employer to do that which otherwise he might not do, while it nullified every provision of the Declaration of Independence, and the great principle of individualism which the constitution of the United States was intended to make firm and stable, yet nevertheless, in a day of great organization those who defend this form of duress can at least say it is an open fight between powerful groups of employers and powerful groups of employes.

Therefore, we pass to the last, the final and most terrible stage of this wretched business, namely that which in England they call "direct action;" namely, the power of labor organizations to say to the government, "We will not depend upon the ballot, we will not depend upon the methods of constitutional government, but we will starve the women and children unless you will agree to do that which we demand." This of course means the destruction of civil government and the substitution therefore of that most hateful of all rules, the rule of a class. I do not care what class it is, whether it is the class of the employer or the class of the employe, the rule of either as a substitute for civil government would be indefensible tyranny.

It is remarkable how far this pernicious doctrine has gone already. Only last June, in a vote taken in the great National Trades' Congress of England, the representatives of the working men of England in the mines and railroads and transport services determined they would have direct action to impose their will upon the Mother of Democracies. They would do so for what purpose? For a purpose which would commend itself to any fair-minded man? No; to nationalize coal mines. How? By paying to the operators or owners the fair return for their property? Not a bit of it; the demand upon the British government at this hour is that the government by force shall confiscate every privately owned mine in England and not give the owners one penny in lieu either of capital or royalties, except that which the labor leaders in England have called compassionate grants to a few of the operators who, by reason of poverty or other circumstances, would be given a dole.

New Demands

Moreover, last June, the labor congress of Great Britain in the same vote of two to one for direct action, said to their government, "we demand that you take every soldier out of Russia," thus attempting to substitute their will for the foreign policy of Great Britain as determined by its parliament according to the British constitution. Within a month they met again, and again they said to the British parliament by an overwhelming vote, approaching unanimity, "You will national

ize the coal mines by confiscating the owners' property, or we will reconvene," for the purpose, as was plainly intimated, of applying this direct action, which is nothing more than civil war. The threat today is to starve this victorious people into submission to the rule of a soviet class. And if this class were to triumph in its unholy purpose, in this bloodless but none the less cruel civil war, we would witness the most pathetic spectacle imaginable-the Mother of Democracies, a nation that has borne upon its broad shoulders the destinies of a liberal civilization for nearly a thousand years, led in the chains of a soviet government. Now this is not going to happen, please understand that, but this great people are so near the abyss that we, here in the United States, have very considerable ground for pause.

Are We Too Optimistic?

We are so optimistic and good natured a people that we think all is right. We seem to believe these violations of all the proprieties of civil life can happen and that nothing will follow. The result is that the situation, instead of growing better, grows worse from year to year, and today who can tell what is going to happen?

Is there any real controversy between the steel employes and the steel companies as to their conditions of employment? That practically does not figure in it, because only one-fifth of them are really organized. The steel strike is the result of outside pressure by a great body which feels that the Steel corporation is a stone wall of defense of the whole industrial liberties of America. This strike is the attempt to destroy that stone wall in order that labor organizations can be so widespread that in the twinkling of an eye they can choke America into submission, and destroy liberty, freedom and the inalienable right of the individual to sell his labor as he pleases, together with the inalienable right of any man to engage in business in any way he pleases or not to engage in it at all. Have you read what the gentleman who is running the steel strike for the labor organization said in 1915-I shall not go back to 1912, but in 1915 he declared he believed in the destruc

tion of all government, and in the accomplishment of that destruction in the only way it could be accomplished-by starvation; by pressure; by treating free industrial America as the Prussians treated Belgium; by making the little children in the streets feel the terrific character of the pressure upon them. Only a Skirmish

won.

We, of course, hope and believe that this particular fight for freedom from the oppression of labor domination will be But suppose it is won. It is but a skirmish in a vast struggle a struggle for your constitution; a struggle to preserve the form of government that was adopted by our fathers; a struggle to preserve the form of government under which this country has existed for a hundred and thirty-two years, and under which it has immeasurably prospered until today it is potentially the greatest nation in the world.

If the constitution of the United States were to perish tomorrow, our fathers could say with pride as a great English historian, Freeman, said in 1862, that even then it had diffused more happiness, contentment, peace and prosperity over a wider range of country than any similar form of government had ever done in the whole history of the world. It is that constitution, proclaimed by Gladstone the most perfect piece of work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man at a given time, that constitution which, when a greater than Gladstone, William Pitt, first read it, he said, "It will be the admiration of all ages and the pattern for all future governments" this constitution, the admiration of the world, under which we have grown great, is threatened by a spirit which says, "The legislative power is not in your congress, the executive power is not in your President, the judicial power is not in your courts, but on the contrary in a labor organization." If it can acquire sufficient strength, by the mere pressure of direct action, it can say to the President, it can say to congress, it can say even to the judges, "You will do what we say or we will inflict upon this country such widespread suffering that to men the loss of their constitution would be more tolerable than the starvation of their women and children."

Do you remember what took place only in 1916? How the same arrogant would-be tyrants, with stop watches in their hands, said to the American congress and to the American President, "You will pass a law within a given time and if you fail to do it, every railroad in the United States will stop." And we yielded. Congress passed the Adamson law, the courts sustained it, wages were raised by statute, and of course there was another triumph to be scored for this insidious conspiracy against free government.

I think in conclusion that the best thing that we can do is to reiterate those words of Washington and invoke them as the spirit with which we should meet this grave peril, "It is only too probable that no plan which we propose will be adopted; perhaps another dreadful contest is to be sustained; if we adopt that which we cannot approve, how can we afterwards approve our work to the people? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and just can repair; the event is in the hand of God."

It is time for Republicans and Democrats, it is time for all patriotic Americans, to unite and take this nettle of Bolshevism and crush it. It is time for all of us, for the time being, to forget our troubles in other parts of the world. The most immediate necessity that we have and the greatest service. that we can render, even to our faithful allies, is to solve this seemingly insoluble problem in our midst. The problem is to restore the reign of law; it is to enforce the laws we now have upon the statute books. But for my part, in addition to the laws we now have which forbid these indefensible restraints of trade, I would add another, namely-that if any combination, either of employers or employes, shall attempt to subvert government by saying to the President or the congress of the United States, "You will do so and so or we will starve the American people by refusing to mine coal or by paralyzing their railroad supplies," that that offense shall be the equivalent of sedition and punished accordingly.