NEVADA AND CITIZENS' RIGHTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 98, 25 April 1908, Page 14

NEVADA AND CITIZENS' RIGHTS.

, The Western Federation of Miners, whose immediate centre of activity is in Southern Nevada, is finding, after a long peiiod of license, that no class and no interest may permanently sustain claims and demands for special preferment and privilege. As all the world • knows, the Western Federation by sheer force of numbers and by tho terror inspired by its crimes has long controlled tne mining camps of Idaho and Colarado and more recently of Nevada. Its latest demands were met not long ' ago by denial and resistance, and upon [ the. initiative of the mine owners cer- , tain matters of privilege involved in , bitter controversy were taken before the United States District Court at Reno. The plea of the mine owners was for protection of their propetty and of tho men in . their employ against interference on the part of the Western Federation. The case was bitterly fought by the unionists, who urged the right to maintain clpse surveillance over the properties which provide employment for miners, to maintain "pickets," and to do various t other things in Imp with the general practice of trade unionism in its more advanced forms, all to the end of supporting theVJemand of unionism for monopoly of .labour. Judge Farrington has, by a decision handed down last week, swept out of court this whole mass of sophistry, pretension, and arrogance. He sustains the time-honoured principles under which the right of every citizen to earn his living undisturbed by any other citizen is guaranteed. He declines to accord to union men any right or privilege which may not equally be enjoyed by independent workmen. Ho denies to tho unionist the right to maintain "pickets" at tho mines or by any other means to annoy or harass non-union men or to limit tho rights of the mine owners. Some day, let us hope, San Francisco will advance to tho stage cf respect for law and for citizens' rights that will lift it in a legal, moral, and social sense to terms of equality with southern Nevada. The day is not very far distant, let us hope, when that system of espionngo of wbirh "picketing" i& an incident may bo discredited and penalised here as it is in other communities. Let ijs further hopo that the time- may come when any worthy citizen independent of a social or fraternal affiliation may enjoy the right to earn his living in any worthy trade unassailed by uirionistic hootlluiiiisni, and wifliout discrimination on tho part of weakkneed employers. We can even find ; courage to hope that the day may not be very distant when tho San Francisco police will bo employed in tho enforcement of the law and in protection of the inalienable rights of citizenship, rather than in co-operation with an ar'rognnt and crimiuul unionism. — ArgoI iw.uL.