J GOODWIN'S WEEKLY 3 H
Ml agitators carried their point. The men walked out and more than
50,000 members of tqther unions declared a "sympathy strike." Never
I had a strike been so misnamed. The strikers, because of their in
I justice, had earned no sympathy among the people generally. Public
i opinion1 was dead against them. Even the members of the union were
""troubled by bad consciences and began to fall away from the strikers
J almost at the ouset. They felt that they were in dishonorable com
r pany, that they wWe assisting anarchists and revolutionists.
It was all a wretched, deplorable piece of business. Men who
received $3 and $3.50 a day were striking to help men who received $6
and $7 and who demanded more in defiance of a sacred compact. At
a time when the labor market was overstocked, when returning sol-
diers were looking for jobs, the union members of Seattle, against
I their better judgment, inaugurated the strike in weak submission to a
I band of international anarchists.
1 Some of the week-kneed citizens of Seattle, forseeing a bitter
1 fjfight and paralysis of all kinds of business, appealed to the federal
J" government to surrender.
m Never could such an appeal have been more untimely. To sur-
rl'f render then would have been to invite a reign of Bolshevism every
f ii where. It would have been a concession to injustice and would have
jf j set a precedent for I. W. W. and Bolshevist aggression.
jy Fortunately Seattle had a mayor who knew the real temper of
the people and who was resolute in the enforcement of law and
I order. His intrepid, unyielding attitude deeply impressed workers
I who knew that they were supporting an unjust cause. While he re
I mained firm they wavered.
I Director General Piez of the Emergency Shipping Board, replying
, to the appeals of the timid, had said :
I "The government is not so badly in need of ships that it will com'
promise on a question of principle."
There was a profound significance in that sentence. It meant
that the government would not wreck the Ship of State even though
it could obtain a thousand ships by compromising with anarchy. The
moral loss could not be compensated for in steel ships. What doth it
profit a nation it it gain a merchant marine and lose its soul? Ger
many lost its soul and in the end it lost everything.
1 A similar injustice was attempted in Butte. Although the men
worked by agreement on a sliding scale some of them went on a strike
when their wages jwere lowered to conform to the price of copper.
It was another case of triumphant anarchy. Even such a radical as
Moyer gasped atsuch immorality. It was something new even to his
fighting nature, something so unreasonable and unfair that he
hastened to denounce the infamy.
The old spirit of Americanism is not dead. It does not even
sleep. The doctrine of the square deal is still valid among us.
I FALLEN HEROES.
THAT the returned soldier should be given the best the country af
fords is beyond even the wish of any of us to dispute. On the
I pother hand the public expects something of the soldier.
Many of us have been amazed to find among the soldiers l:hose
who say : "The government owes me a living at the work I want"
Most of the soldiers who talk like that don't want work. They
want to be supported without working. It is a painful truth that is
beginning to impress itself on all the communities in the land. We
had heard from some of the writers on the war that war either made
or unmade the moral character of the soldiers. Now we understand
what they meant.
We have in mind two young men who went from Utah after sev-
eral years of work at farming. When -they returned they easily ob
) tained their old jobs, but found the work so little to their liking that
,' they quit after half a day of nibbling at their tasks. We have been
J informed that their point of view is entertained by many of the men
back from the war.
If the soldiers of the Civil war had harbored such destructive
ideas the West would still be a desert. Because the veterans of the
Civil war were constructive and because they were jiot too lazy t,o
address themselves to any of the tasks that lay before them in the fl
wilderness the West is great, rich and progressive.
It is sad to see a soldier transformed into a tramp. It is a moral ll
breakdown which most of us did not expect from those who went out M
so gallantly and bravely to defend their country. M
We hasten to say that we are not attaching this odium to the M
vast majority of the demobilized soldiers. Many of them have not H
been unable to obtain work. Some of them those of the strongest M
moral fibre have taben whatever work offered even though it was M
not on a level with what they had before they went away. These 'M
men, everything else being equal, will make a success of life. But the ''
soldier who has placed himself morally on the level of the tramp will '
remain a tramp. The government owes nothing to such men. M
Of course there are men returning from the struggle of nations M
whose minds have been enlarged, who thrill with new ideas and big M
conceptions, men, let us say, whose vision will carry them far in new fl
vocations. Perhaps a lad from a Utah farm who has been on the firing M
line, in Paris or in Russja may become a great artist or writer, M
perhaps a ship owner or a manufacturer of airplanes. If such be his HI
destiny no one would wish that he should be doing the work of the 11
farm, but we may be sure that if such be his destiny he is willing to
spend laborious days and studious nights to attain his goal. M
i l p
BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE. H
WE are getting into a state of needless alarm over the industrial H
situation. It is well to be serious; foolish to be panic- jH
stricken. H
The United States will be rich beyond our dreams a decade or a H
generation hence. What does that signify for us? How can that help H
us now? The answers to these questions are not far to seek. H
When all the people invested in Liberty bonds they felt assured H
that the future would take care of their investments, that there was H
no chance of loss unless the United States was defeated. H
The United States has won. Its future is certain. The future of H
its farms, its factories, its mines is certain. Yet we see all around H
us timorous men capitalists and laborers who think that the future H
is insecure. H
When the individual capitalist is compelled to readjust his busi- H
ness and faces immediate losses he loses heart. His faith in the future H
weakens, although he knows, if he stops to reason, that the future H
must necessarily be more prosperous than the past. The individual
laborer, temporarily unemployed, imagines that the country is on the
verge of bankruptcy. H
If our optimism were founded merely in a desire to enthuse it
would be futile, but our hopes have sound reasons for being tri- M
umphant over our doubts and fears. H
We must not lose sight of the fact that the process of feeding aid M
clothing ourselves, one hundred million selves, will continue without M
cessation. Capital must be invested, and men must toil to keep this fl
process in operation. M
But it will be argued that there is such a thing as business stag- M
nation, that there have been hard times in the past. M
If we cast a retrospective eye over the hard times of the last M
hundred years we shall find that they began in lack of confidence, in M
a panic that frightened capital away from investment in enterprises. M
The average business man, seeing the whirlwind approach, rushed into M
his storm cellar, thinking that his whole state had been blown away H
and he did not come out for months. He did not regain his courage H
for years. The hard times were the result of this obsession, this lack H
of confidence in the future. H
Business men, we fancy, are accepting the period of readjustment H
with more courage than of old. They know from experience that the H
timt o work hardest is in the period of stagnation. 1 is a temporary H
state and by good doctoring can soon be removed. H
In the hard times of the nineties neither public officials nor busi- H
ness 'men did much to relieve stagnation. If someone proposed that a (H
few millions be expended n roads or other public works the egq- H