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Newspaper Page Text
vwvwTwrrpwpfwvwwwfffPPPPPPi THE PUBLIC FORUMT KEEPING THE PUBLIC UNIN FORMED. It seems to me that the important function of our so-called newspapers today is to keep the gen eral public in the dark by not pub lishing the real news. They print plenty of bunk, phony ads and news which is of no particular importance to the average working man, and columns of stuff about murders, so ciety divorce cases, sporting and financial news, but they fail to print real news that is of interest to work ing men. For instance: Very little labor union news is pub lished unless it is to discredit the unions. The larger part of the peo ple of Chicago do not seem to know that the mayor of Milwaukee is a Socialist This is probably caused by the papers not publishing the returns of the election in Milwaukee last spring. Comparatively few people know much about the Pittsburgh strike cases, where men and women were jailed on the charge of inciting to riot when as a matter of fact the strike-breaking guards were the guilty ones. Not much has been said about the strike-breaking mine guards at Rosi- clare, HI., who forced some of the elected public officials to resign and drove union miners out of the coun ty. Very little is said about the strike now in progress in the iron mines of the U. S. Steel Co. in Min nesota. The prospective strike of railroad workers to secure an eight-hour day is twisted to mean that more wages is the thing that they are after, and the poor, busted railroads, which dnly cleaned up about one thousand mil lion dollars last year, would have to pay about one hundred million dol lars more in wages and they should therefore be allowed to skinus a lit tle more. On the other hand, we have been handed all kinds of bunk relating to the marching of unorganized work ers in "preparedness parades" afl over thfi omintrv. all of which should have been rightly called the march of the wage slaves. J. M. reign. k SEEK A WIDER VISION. A strike of railroad workers is threat ened. If it should come extensively enough to effect all the repuDlic it will be worse than a war. The cause of it comes from the inability of most of us to see both sides of a contro versy. Deeper than that is the lack of perception of all of us when it f cqmes to considering questions that affect us closely and immediately. The workers know that conditions are hard, the hours long and the re turns for labor inadequate. The bosses who direct labor know the same thing, 4but away from the la borers and away from the bosses who are in immediate touch with labor there is the element of monop oly inherent in laws, constitutions, institutions, beliefs and customs that blinds labor bosses and monop olists alike to the real root of the trouble. Monopoly controls transportation. It controls finances, it controls legis lation, it controls finally the earth upon which we must live. Higher wages that come from combinations of laborers fighting for less than the whole force of la bor in existence only has the effect to benefit a few and that few at the expense of the mass of those who labor. Shorter hours for one occu pation that come from strikes and lockouts alone and do not attack the monopolies that make wages low and hours long will only benefit a few. It will only add to our difficul ties an aristocracy of labor that will fight for their special privilege as hard as the railroad magnates do for theirs. But a -wider vision will come to labor later. A wider vision will come to the big monopolists also. It will come to all of us, and then without any strike or any force- except that U6 m frfl.a nutto'fi ""ifW(AMfaUjLyiiJJtoaAa4y