12 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SAMUEL GOMPERS 13 Another case that proved the failure of Gompers policies is that of the Hinchman Coal and Coke Company of West Virginia against the United Mine Workers of America. That decision is more dangerous to organized labor in its ultimate effect than the Danbury Hatters case.
In this case the United States Supreme Court outlaws the efforts of organized labor to increase its members. Here is the ruling, according to the press reports. The Court holds that what the defendants were endeavoring to do was not a bonafide effort to enlarge the membership of the Union, since the new members were not desired or sought except as a means to the end of compelling the owners of the mines to change their methods of operation.
In other words, according to this ruling, whenever a union seeks more members with the object of using its economic solidarity to correct an unjust working condition, such a union is violating the law.
It is almost certain that the ruling will not be enforced against the Miners Union because of its strategic position. But where does Gompers successful policy come in? He has styled himself the apostle of success, but under his leadership some branch of organized labor is always in the courts defending itself.
In the course of some correspondence had with a labor official, asked what the organized labor movement was doing about the ruling of the court in the case of the Hinchman Coal and Coke Company. His reply was that Gompers and almost everybody else had taken a shot at it. Gompers is long on taking shots. He is an excellent soldier at long range. No one has ever revealed the secret where he ventured, when it might mean personal discomfort to him.
That he is a soldier at long range is well known. Time and again he has attacked Eugene Debs and time and again he has been challenged to meet the latter. But there are not locomotives enough in this country to pull Sammy, as Mark Hanna used to call him, on to the platform with Debs.
It is far more comfortable for him to draw 7, 500. 00 and expenses per year and shoot his vitriol at a distance than to face the man about whom he has so often lied.
Nor is Gompers afflicted with a habit of telling the truth, so far as the Socialists are concerned. Not a convention passes but what he empties the vials of his wrath against the Socialist Party, that has always stood by labor. Anything the Socialists propose in the Convention, that will make the of more democratic and progressive is sure to be opposed by the grand old lady of labor. And as for scruples in his method there are none.
In the Frisco convention he made the statement that he never attacks the Socialists, unless they attack him. It happened that Comrades Debs, Berger and I, were sent, a committee to West Virginia, to gather what facts we could in connection with that strike, and then proceeded to Washington to see the President and members of Congress in behalf of the Senate resolution calling for the investigation. We went to Charleston and worked in harmony with the miners officials in charge. At an audience with the Governor, we secured his promise to release every striker in jail. This promise was carried out. We sent long telegrams to Washington officials, urging the passage of the Senate resolution. It passed while we were in Charleston. We were commended for our work by the officials of the Miners Union. We submitted our report. Not a single unfavorable reference was made to a labor official or trade union, but in a subsequent number of the Federationist, Gompers unloaded a tirade of abuse against the committee and the Socialists in general, saying we stabbed the miners in the back and a lot of other similar slush.
Gompers made the unfortunate mistake of coming to an international convention of the United Mine Wokers. There he did not wield the gavel and, of course, could not lash the delegates into line, as is his customary policy in the of shall never forget what a sickly looking spectacle he was after Dun