The Right to Strike

1916

Railroads are from their very nature public institutions. They have their being in law, and are governed throughout by legislative enactments. Their rates are limited, and within certain broad lines their duties are prescribed. The advocates of government ownership merely would extend the power of government that now lie latent. Private business may and should control its own affairs; but public business must be subject to such supervision and control as is necessary to protect the rights of the public. This raises the question of the responsibility of labor on railroads or in gas and electric light plants the same as that in a store or factory? A strike in a factory makes little difference to the public at large; and such inconvenience as does follow may better be borne than to interfere with individual initiative. But the strike that ties up a railroad or a gas plant immediately and directly affects the whole public. Clearly the cases are different, and call for different treatment. — The Public.

Clever Girls Spread Germs of Red Doctrine in Canada

1920

Bolshevist Missionaries Preach Sedition in Unions While Special Classes in the Construction of Bombs Are Being Held — Agitators Work to Overthrow Government of Dominion.

MONTREAL, Que., Canada, Jan. 1. — Bolshevists from the United States are crossing into Canada, but not, as they may imagine, without the knowledge of the authorities. The Red exodus is being closely watched by officials on both sides the line and new arrivals in Montreal have been carefully cataloged.

The Red army here is freely predicting the overthrow of what it calls the bourgeois regime, encouraged perhaps by the partial success in Winnipeg a few months ago, when for a time it seemed as tho Soviet rule had been introduced into Canada.

Red meetings are held nightly in Montreal in secret, and tons of Bolshevist literature have been imported.

Much money is coming into the Bolshevist coffers. Close cooperation between Canadian and American authorities in securing the evidence against the radicals makes the local leaders anxious to avoid the limelight.

Much of the information used in the United States against Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman and others was secured in Montreal and furnished to the United States authorities, it is declared. Lists of agitators are prepared on each side of the line and exchanged.

So confining themselves to talking, the Reds are trying to undermine the labor unions. Many unions, it is claimed, have Bolshevists in them endeavoring to spread their beliefs. In the biggest railway shops in Montreal a number of Red missionaries are at work, it is said.

The organization boasts of several extremely clever girls, and these are from time to time "planted" in certain factories. They go and secure work, and in time infect a number of their fellow workers with the Red microbe. Then they leave and go to another factory. In certain sections so-called "economic classes" have been opened. These are in reality schools for turning out Red agitators and speakers. There are tales told also of the Russian technical aid body, which specializes, it is said, on the construction of bombs.

The Government has kept a close watch on the activities of the local Reds, but has not adopted a rigorous policy to deal with them.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 5.

New York Children Are Taught to Play

1910

NEW YORK. — There are places where children have to be taught how to play. You might think that the youngsters wouldn't need instruction of this kind. You would be mistaken. Here in New York men and women spend the better part of their lives teaching thousands of children how to play, not only with their muscles, but also with their minds, writes a correspondent. A great many thousand dollars are spent annually by the city just for that purpose, and experience has proved that the time and money are well spent.

The tall tenements of the East side, as full of people as a warren is of rabbits, swarm with eager children. Their fathers and mothers were immigrants. Most of them had no boyhood or girlhood, as most people think of it. They worked for a living before they came to this country; they were hard at work in shops or factories after they came here. They had no traditions of play to hand down to their children. To them play was a foolishness.

Their children, unable to breathe in the tenements, take to the streets, which are dirty or infested with persons and things that are not good for little people to see and hear. Children who have no play places but the streets are apt to absorb unhealthful ideas as well as microbes. Pickpockets and loafers are developed that way. Besides, there is little of play that children can do in the streets. That ogre in cap and blue coat, the policeman, is always snooping about.

These are studies that folks with big minds made for themselves in past years. Little by little they got the city government interested and persuaded a very practical minded school board that it was worth while to provide play places for the children who had none, so the board of education has now in this city 245 playgrounds for children, day and night playgrounds, where the little people are carefully instructed how to frolic.

Chorus Girls Quit Stage for Factory

1920

Higher Pay in Shops Overcomes Lure of Footlights

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Theatrical managers and producers are becoming alarmed at the shortage of chorus girls — and to think that there used to be so many of them the producer had to hide himself to keep from being overwhelmed with applications! This is the word that New York is casting abroad.

In the good days gone, it said, the chorus girls received larger pay than they could get in the shops or factories or offices. Besides, there was the lure since the pay of women in business is so much more than it is upon the stage.

It is said that the shops of New York, and even the factories, pay much better wages than is possible with the theaters. As one observer puts it, "Better money can be obtained in the shops, in the canning factories, in the laundries, than upon the stage."


Shonts' Will Makes Wife Chief Heiress

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Mrs. Milla D. Shonts, widow of the former president of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, who was cut off in her husband's will with a picture and a small bequest, has filed for probate another will made in 1905.

This will gives $5,000 each to Drake University and Monmouth College, Iowa; $100,000 to Mrs. Shonts and minor gifts to the relatives.

The remainder is to be shared equally by Mrs. Shonts and the two daughters.