Committee on Labor. They have already succeeded in having Congress pass a law compelling the Government to adopt an eight-hour law applicable to all employees of the Government who work by the day, and, not satisfied with this, they now seek to compel every contractor or subcontractor, or every manufacturer who offers to make anything for the Government, to adopt an eighthour law, or to pay for labor and work their labor only eight hours a day. This bill is demanded by labor leaders, not by the public, and is opposed by all manufacturers, practically, in the United States, and is not favored by anything like a majority of the employees of manufacturing establishments. Its passage will mean that any manufacturer who offers to do anything, direct or indirect, for the United States Government shall run their factory only eight hours every day. A very small part of our business has been to furnish the Government vehicles and repairs for vehicles, but we would be unable, as would also a great many other manufacturers, to bid on any Government work in case this bill passed, for we can not successfully run our factory eight hours a day, nor could we work men on Government work eight hours while the majority of the men were working ten. I think the passage of such a bill would be revolutionary and an outrage on a large part of the community engaged in manufacturing. I trust, therefore, that you will not, without first thoroughly investigating the matter, lend your vote toward the passage of such a law, and I believe that if you thoroughly investigate it in all of its effects you will agree with me that it is not wise to pass such a law. Yours, truly, THE MILBURN WAGON COMPANY, ROCHESTER, N. Y., May 15, 1906. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: Our attention has been drawn to the agitation of the McComas eight-hour bill, and we respectfully beg to request you to give the few ideas outlined in this letter your consideration and indorsement. It is not always essential for the consummation of the work in hand that a long day's labor be exacted from our employees, but they prefer it; first, because this method enables them to finish up "lots" of work in hand; second, because the payment being equally divided between weekly paid employees and piecework paid ones, the desirability of working as much time as they consistently can results in greater remuneration to them. They are kept employed very often when the volume of business does not warrant such action; this offsets any extra time. On Saturdays, during the entire year, we work but five hours, thus enabling them to have the benefit of the half holiday. Our relations with trades unions and labor union organizations have always been congenial, but we think that an act of Congress, passed along the lines of the present labor agitation, would result in throttling many of the industries which at present enjoy success, and we believe that such legislation will be pernicious and iniquitous in its effect on manufacturers as well as to the laborers. Such action would be inimical to the best interests of our business, and it would be utterly impossible for us, and we believe for the majority of the manufacturers in general, to continue the present scale of wages under compulsory adoption of such a measure. The interests and welfare of the manufacturers throughout the United States should command an equal amount of consideration to that of the laboring class, and we trust that you may be able to consistently prevent such a coercive measure from being forced by national legislation into the operation of the factories. We are, respectfully, yours, Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, M. B. SHANTZ COMPANY. House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. CAMDEN. N. J., May 15, 1906. DEAR SIR: In the matter of the McComas eight-hour bill, which we understand is now being pressed, will you please accept our expressions of opinion, and desire that you will not for anything press a favorable report, or to permit to be reported, as far as you can, any eight-hour bill whatever. If our freedom is to be anything more than a myth, any eight-hour bill is revolutionary and dangerous. It is a part of a plan of coercive unionism to force the eight-hour day in all the factories of the country, and the manufacturers are sick and tired of the restrictions and coercions of unionism as illustrated by their strikes, lawlessness, intimidations, and boycotts. In the present condition of public unrest it can not be other than a great wrong to enforce an issue of this nature, and you will kindly permit us to hope that these few words in the matter will find an appreciation of their importance in your mind and efforts with respect to doing what you may. Very truly, yours, WARREN, WEBSTER & CO., JONES & WOODLAND COMPANY, Newark, N. J. May 15, 1906. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: Referring to the McComas eight-hour bill, which is now being discussed with your committee, would say that it is impossible for us to find words strong enough to express our disapproval of this bill. We hope that in giving this bill your consideration you will consider the manufacturing interests of this country and do all in your power to prevent a favorable report on this bill or any eight-hour bill, as we consider it dangerous legislation. Yours, very truly, WM. H. JONES, President. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, Washington. NEWARK, N. J., May 15, 1906. DEAR SIR: We understand that the McComas eight-hour bill is now being pressed at Washington by the labor lobbyists, and we write to urge you not for anything to press a favorable report or permit to be reported any eighthour bill whatever. By so doing you will oblige, SHAFER & DOUGLAS. MOUNT VERNON, N. Y., May 15, 1906. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: We are opposed to the passage of the McComas eight-hour bill, which is now before your committee. We hope you will do all in your power to oppose the passage of this bill, as it is revolutionary and dangerous, and it would be a great wrong to force the eight-hour day into all the factories of this country. It would cut off nearly all, if not all, our export trade, as it would increase the price and put out of reach of the foreign consumer the goods that are manufactured in this country. We hope you will do your uttermost to prevent this bill from being passed. Yours, very truly, HARTMANN BROS. MFG. CO., Per C. M. H. CHICOPEE FALLS, MASS., May 15, 1906. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR SIR: As the eight-hour bill now before your committee is, we believe, a menace to the best interests both of employer and employee, we beg of you to use your influence to have the same not reported therefrom. If it reaches the House it will mean a long bitter fight, and some of the Members, fearing the labor vote, will either "dodge" or vote for the measure, when they know if the bill becomes a law it will work untold injury to the continued prosperity of this country. The labor leaders, like the walking delegates, often advocate measures that they know will please their followers in order to popularize themselves, realizing full well that this will be a boomerang which they themselves will evade. We have given this subject much thought and study, and can see but one outcome should the eight-hour bill become a law, and that is eventually great injury to the welfare of the working classes. If they prosper we all share therein, and what is bad for them is bad for the business interests of the nation. Believing that you will give this your serious consideration, and for the good of the laborer, as well as the good of the nation, you will use your influence to have the bill not reported from your committee. Very truly, yours, J. STEVENS ARMS & TOOL Co., Second Vice-President. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, M. C., NEW MILFORD, CONN., May 15, 1906. Chairman, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: We notice that another eight-hour bill is before you, and while we have every confidence that ultimately no such bill, or anything like it, will be allowed to pass both House and Senate, we hope that the committee will not allow it to be even favorably reported, because by permitting anything of the kind it simply gives encouragement so that these bills are from time to time brought forward and the interests of manufacturers interfered with. The hours of labor, where it is at all practical, are regulated to the entire satisfaction of the men, and to force certain hours of labor per day is not practical in various kinds of business. Take it for example in our own business: It is necessary, in order to complete our products, that a twenty-four hour run be made, and it is very satisfactory to our men to divide it into two shifts. It would be utterly impossible to divide it into three shifts and continue business with any profit. In reducing our ores, which form the foundation for our business, there has to be a continuous run from Monday morning until Sunday morning, and there are other manufacturers in various lines situated in the same way. Hoping that you will give this request of ours, in common with numerous other requests which you must be receiving along this line, your careful attention, and check it on the start, we are, Yours, very truly, THE BRIDGEPORT WOOD FINISHING Co., By G. M. BREINIG, President. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, Washington, D. C. OSGOOD SCALE COMPANY, BINGHAMTON, N. Y., May 15, 1906. DEAR SIR: We desire to address you as one of the members of the House Labor Committee in regard to the eight-hour bill which is now being pressed forward, and we desire to enter our emphatic protest as one of thousands and thousands of manufacturers in this country. The reasons why this bill should not be passed or even reported favorably are so many that it is simply impossible for us to give you the entire list as we look at it. Every manufacturer in this country who has to compete not only with the manufacturers in the home market, but also manufacturers in the foreign markets, should not be placed in a position where they are held up by an eighthour bill. This means a 20 per cent additional expense on every dollar's worth of goods which has to come in competition with foreign manufacturers. The manufacturers in this country are beginning to feel very keenly the foreign manufacturers in many lines, especially when they are running up against the German, French, and the English manufacturers in the colonies. We do not feel it to-day as we are going to in five years from now, and if the American manufacturer is to hold his supremacy in the foreign field he has got to have every advantage possible. The labor-saving machinery in this country is not going to do it all. We are living to-day on the high tide of prosperity on the local markets, but the time will be shortly when we will be looking anxiously toward the foreign trade, and we do not consider that the committee, legal or otherwise, has a right to fasten a law on the manufacturers in this country or any single individual as to how long he should work or whom he should work for. We consider that this is a free country and every man can run his shop just as long as he pleases with men who want to work just as long as they please. If we can find men who can work fifteen hours a day that is our privilege, and if they want to work only six hours a day that is still our privilege, but it is for no body of legislators in this country to make a law as to how long people should work. There are hundreds of other reasons which we could give, but these are two out of many, and we desire that you use every effort possible to kill this law from its inception. Yours, sincerely, OSGOOD SCALE COMPANY, Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, THE UNITED STATES BUNG MANUFACTURING Co., House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: I notice that the McComas eight-hour bill is again before your committee, and I take the liberty of asking you to please do your very utmost to defeat that bill in the committee, if possible, nor have it favorably reported. My reasons for this are that in a free country like ours, where every man has the right to work as many hours as he pleases and for whom he pleases, no man should be coerced by a small minority of people who have banded together for such purpose to do their bidding. I am positive that if your honorable body will pass such a law that it will lead to lawlessness, boycotts, intimidations, coercion, and that such a bill would be revolutionary and a dangerous precedent. I am sure your patriotism will not allow you to stoop so low as to vote for class legislation and for the abridgment of the present right of contract, which the Supreme Court has decided such a law would be. Yours, very respectfully, FRED. PENTLARGE, President. PATERSON, N. J., May 15, 1906. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, House Committee on Labor, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: We note, with extreme apprehension that there is now pending before the House, and at present in the hands of the House Labor Committee, of which you are a member, an eight-hour bill. It would be superfluous for us to cite the provisions of this iniquitous bill, with which you are unquestionably fully acquainted, but we can not refrain from expressing to you our unalterable conviction that the passage of this measure by Congress could not fail to have the most deplorable results. It is not our purpose to enter into any lengthy discussion of the reasons for and against such a measure. It is sufficient to point out that an act which limits the usefulness and activities of considerable bodies of men is simply class legislation of the most pernicious description, and as such should have no place on our statute books. Besides, however speciously worded and however limited may seem to be the application of the bill, no sane man can doubt that were such a measure once embodied in our laws an instant effort would be made to extend its operations in all directions, and the first result would be a series of acrimonious disputes which could not fail to have the most unfortunate effects upon American commerce and manufactures. We are thoroughly familiar with the specious sophisms with which the advocates of the bill seek to disguise its probable ultimate effects, but, in spite of these, we regard it as folly to suppose that such a law as that proposed could fail in time to become practically universal in its application. The whole thing in a nutshell is this: For the past hundred years-our own experience covers nearly half this period-hours of labor have been steadily decreasing and will, we think—and hope-continue to decrease in response to purely natural laws. Now, the labor trust, representing a small fraction of the employed labor of the United States, dissatisfied with this normal and healthy progress, has long sought to accelerate it by artificial and dangerous means. Opposed in this by the ablest and broadest-minded manufacturers in the country, they now turn to Washington, and, having at heart the true interests of neither employer nor employed, seek to introduce into the body of our laws, under the mask of benevolence, an absurd and uneconomic piece of legislation. Under the circumstances, we feel that there is no impropriety in laying before you, as that member of the committee specially charged with the interests of the State of New Jersey, our views of the matter, and to urge you, if you can consistently do so, to oppose the passage of a measure so objectionable. Permit us to add a word defining our position more clearly, as we do not wish you to misunderstand our attitude or class us with those who, from narrow and interested motives, thoughtlessly oppose all measures of amelioration and wish the world to stand still. We are quite prepared to welcome orderly evolution, but history and reason teach us that the application of revolutionary doctrines and measures to everyday problems seldom has any but the most disastrous issue-and the eight-hour bill we can only regard as revolutionary. One word more, and we have done. For nearly fifty years we have been employers of labor, and during that period we have never had a strike or a threat of one. We are satisfied with our men, and have no reason to suppose that our men are anything but satisfied with us. If, however, the Government and the labor trust can find no better occupation than disturbing men's minds and fomenting unrest we can hardly anticipate a continuance of these fortunate conditions. Very respectfully, JOHN ROYLE & SONS. Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER, Washington, D. C. MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.. May 16, 1996. DEAR SIR: We write to urge upon you to use all your influence to defeat any and all anti-injunction bills that may be under consideration at present or that may in the future be advocated by organized labor. All attempts to change the present injunction law are pernicious, un-American, and unfair to the manufacturing and business interests of this the greatest industrial country of the world. The printing interests of Minneapolis and St. Paul have sustained a strike for the past seven and one-half months, and have been subjected to considerable annoyance and interference in the conduct of their business by the constant picketing of their establishments and employees by the members of the Typographical Union. The pickets have, by promises, threats, and the payment of money, seduced and driven away hundreds of nonunion men who were willing to work and whose services were satisfactory to their employers. Many of these men have quit through fear of bodily violence, some because they could not withstand the constant solicitation and insidious argument of the pickets; said pickets have hounded them at their homes and places of employment, and, through pressure brought to bear upon their wives by the wives of strikers and small shopkeepers, have been deprived of domestic comforts. We have tried to procure a restraining order through the courts without effect, because the judge before whom the case was tried was on the eve of election and feared the labor vote. While we have not had the restraining influence the present injunction law would afford us, we feel that it is a good law, and that it has had a restraining effect on the picketing, for without such a law we feel sure that resort would have been had to bodily violence by the pickets. Thirty-five printing offices in Minneapolis and twenty-two in St. Paul, representing 90 per cent of the total producing capacity of the two cities, are operating open shops, and our position is concisely as follows: Prior to October 1, 1905, the Typographical Union demanded an eight-hour day at the same wages then paid for nine, and, in addition thereto, demanded the signing of a contract containing many clauses that meant the absolute surrender of our rights to conduct our business as we saw fit-at least as far as the composing room was concerned. These demands we determined to resist and notified the unions that we would operate our shops on the open-shop basis beginning October 2, 1905. On the morning of that day many of our offices were without men, the union having declared a strike, 261 quitting in St. Paul |