äailgm Name Industrial Markt-n
Published Daily except Sunday
By Nome Mine Workers' Union, No. 240, International Union of Mine,
Mill and Stn elter Workers.
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Entered as second class matter March 1. 1111, at the post office at
home,»Alasaa, under the Act of March I, 117*.
All changes In standing advertisements must reach this office at six
•'clock each evening to Insure Insertion in the follo^ng Issue.
AdverUslng rates made kiota on application.
“To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as
nearly as possible, Is a worthy object of any good government.”—
Abraham Lincoln
Address all Communications to Dally Nome Industrial Worker,
I3oi 110 Nome, Alaska. Phone, Black 1*4.
Nome, Alaska, Aujru:
IS, 1!»17.
i>i m'iivk ti:kvtmknr.
A press dispatch says that the De
partment of Justice is about to insti
tute wholesale prosecutions of the
Industrial Workers of the World as
a criminal organization and the DIs
trct Attorneys have been instructed
to have the leaders arrested and pro
secuted under such conditions.
Quite obviously if this is correct
what the government wants to do is
to eliminate the organization known
as the Industrial Workers ot the
World, and so to eliminate also the
industrial disaffection which has
h 'Mi identified with it name, \part
altogether from the justice or the
moral considerations which may or
may no' he involved in this proce
dure. as w< all kne w the stage has
been prepared for this setting quite
a while b;*.< k.
There has be< n a systematic cam
paign c rried on against the orga
nization i sine, t every state where
it appeared And jafrcU>ut''nt public
men as well as pV’Olfnent men in
business gave inspiring interviews on
this head to the newspapers which
added to the agony hv long tirades
against the I. W. W. menace.
We rind in the action decided upon
irrespective of the patriotic motive
at the hack of it, bv the Department
«;f Justi e a conclusive demonstra
tion how little the principles at the
bade of the legal procedure have
altered as the times and the men
alter.
Over a hundred years ago bank
bank notes were wont to bear upon
Iheir face five significant warning
“To Counterfeit is Death’’. Over a
a hundred years ago capital Times
were quite numerous and from sheep
stealing to highway robbery the
Anglo-Saxon system meted out the
death penalty for all of these.
The idea was that guilt was per
sonal. There was no concession
made to the surrounding circum
stances. It mattered not at all that
only the poor and the starving stole
sheep and did so under the despera
tely driving pangs of hunger. The
man who had everything he needed
was considered in precisely the saint
position, before the la. as tin- man
who hadn't a meal for a week, and
that it was the starving condition of
the man and not his intention to tic
naturally lawless occasioned ills
theft, cut no manner of figure when
it came to sentencing him.
Furthemore what compelled men
to counterfeit bank no’is and Un
like was that they might in this way
make a living when other way there
was none, and the melancholy fact
was not noted in th< s ■ cases of capi
tal crimes, that even the death sen
tence did out diminish their number
or their frequency.
It was in fact not the punishment
which stopped the number and fre
quency of crimes: the deterrent ef
fect of such punishment was neglig
ible. but it was the improvement in
condtions in the country where they
had before been common that practi
cally removed them altogether from
the criminal records.
The view that severe punitive
treatment and rigorous prosecutions
have had a deterrent effect upon cer
tain activities regarded as anti-social
was the old view. Modern investiga
ion which has had little or no ef
fect upon modern procedure in ‘he
court; shows that thi crimes have
had a definite cause: that they are
due to their economic environment
or social environment often enough.
Hut that i*i any event, it is very lit
tle use prosecuting and punishing
the persons assumed to he guilty
if what drove them to guit in the
eyes of their prosecutors, is to still
remain grinding out further law
breakers.
We are not assuming that the In
dustrial Workers of the World are
guilty, although we might for the
purposes of this article admit that
they have been guilty of certain ac
tlvities which are considered by em
ployers as highly anti-social, for the
employer always regards himself and
his class as society.
Suppose that the desire of the De
partment of Justice is to end tiie
strikes and the labor agitation that*
have been proceeding, and that no
doubt is the intention of the orders
issued, is it not self evident that the
Department takes it for granted that
in this wav such strikes and eco
nomic agitation will end. And this,
we say, i - the same old conception
of the function of punitive treatment
that tin historical facts fairly well
co lit rover:
The !'■>:;!. lation of good citizenship
is social comfort, prosperity and
economii well being. (tood citizen
ship is i. a the cause of these things
—it is the effect of these tilings. The
man who has every need that natur
ally aris, gratified is hardy likely
to lie one to stimulate economii
discontent and industrial agitation.
In fact it may be stated as a fact,
the one irue way to remove economic
discontent is by directly considering
it as tin effect of an easily ascer
tainable cause, and removing the
sea use.
The law takes little or no cogni
zance m the economc circumstances
surrounding any delinquency. And
the lew makers very seldom consider
the conditions which are likely to oc
casion lavvleasn; ss.
It is this fact that accounts for
quite a number of crimes and
which will , eonitnue to ac
count for them, quite regardless ol
any such thing as prosecutions.
We take it that special laws are to
be made use of to prosecute tiie In
dustrial Workers of the World, as an
organization. They have been In ex
istence since lSCfi, and now eleven
years later it is considered necessary
to destroy them.
What we say should commend it
self to the Department of Justice and
to any thinking person and it is
this: The Industrial Workers of tiie
World are born by reason of the so
cial conditions which exist. They
do not exist by reason of some espe
cially malevolent inspiration for evil
which arises spontaneously in the
human heart. That belief is a de
scendant of tin current belief in the
Dark Ages when a Temper stalked
behind Man and urged him to com
mit crime. But as the descendant
of that view of human frailty, be
yond any manner of doubt, it colors
all criminal jurisprudence to this
day.
If we consider the question more
extensively we may cite the coloniza
tion of certain sections of this earth.
They were peopled by convicts from
the older countries. They were po
pulated by men who were stigmatiz
ed as wholly evil and vicious and de
praved. They were thieves ard rob
bers and desperadoes: Ishr.aciitcs
with every man’s hand against them
and theirs against every man. They
were transported from the oid coun
tries beyond the seas and today
their children’s children are
the finest stoc in the world,
bar none. The reason for
that is not that the Evil One did not
follow- them to tiie New Lands and
urge the n to obey to the fullest ex
tent th) depravity of their basest
impulses. it was something far
“Impler. The men were transput led
from evil and foul slums, from sor
did poverty and foul smelling misery
of life to the free and untainted air
where productivity waited upon labor
and opportunity was given both
The cause of their former careers of
crime was removed and’ then they
resumed their normal instinct to de
velop themselves naturally as fear
less, abie bodied, determined men,
feeding, clothing and sheltering
themselves because of ample, oppor
tunity to do so. They were given
access to free land to he p them
selves. and just as naturally they
lid so.
Furthermore the same conditions
which prevailed in the old country
have been grinding out just the
same type ot criminals as these
transported men had bees, despite
I gallows and penitentiaries these
I years past. And it is strange to sa>
that the contrasted results of puni
tive treatment in both cases have
not been with any result upon the
judges or the law makers.
Bringing home these facts to die
Industrail Workers of the
World and resuming the analogy,
quite regardless of the egei guilt
with which they may be charged, :t
is a self evident proposition that
their actH'ities, legal or illegal, as
they may be considereoi, have their
origin in the eeonomi’ conditions
with which they find themselves sur
rounded. That is to say, take any
average lot of men, from ‘he pre
sent positions in which they a-e
placed, and with hardly any doubt
driven by the compelling force ot
economic circumstances as are the
Industrial Workers of the World,
those men would do the same thing
with little variation indeed, to that
which these men are doing, criminal
or not.
Here is a man horn within certain
surroundings. He is fed upon a
pabulum of religious literature of a
quite definitely sectarian cast and
uniformly of that tinge, beyond any
question lie becomes an ardent fol
lower and a quite sincere one of
that particular cast to which he owes
his mental make up. But if that
men had been raised to a degree ot
skepticism, if his reading had led
him into the domain of agnosticism
and philosophic doubt, he will be an
entirely different man, mentally, in
what he would have otherwise
been.
Similarly and in an intensified form
our ideas come distinctly from our
economic surroundings. We view
the activities in society from
a different point of view
according as that point
of view is that of man of wealth
. :id possesed of every comfort, or of
one betrayed into ail kinds of mise
rises by reason of his poverty.
Of all the un killed workers, the
members of the I. W. W. are tin
most intellig nt and me best read
They an well posted in almost every
current subject for their lives have
afforded them that on.- solace and
that one alone. The poorest paid of
all workers, their reading is natur
ally tailed to the aid of their intrvro
gating why these things arc. And
they formulate a definite set of ideas
which the economic environment is
theirs unquestionably endorses and
inspires. The mere fact that the
propaganda is so extensive, is in it
self reason to believe that whether
wholly correct and true or not. it is
in any event founded upon some
d gree of truth. And unquestion
ably the circumstances that these
men face is such as to persist with
wonderful energy upon the correct
ncos of their view point which em
| phasizes the responsibility of pri
J vate ownership as against the public
| welfare.
It is therefore to be believed that
the manifestations which are identi
fied with the Industrial Workers of
the World as they exist today will
! continue whether the leaders are
jailed or hanged, drawn and quarter
ed. They are not what they are be
cause of the existence of some Evil
One standing jogging their minds to
evil impulses. They are what they
are by reason ot the capitalist en
vironment, and even if these effects
such as they are of that environmnet
are removed, the same effects under
a different name will persist, and
appear again.
In Russia for example, the ex
istence of a Tzar and a bureaucracy,
predicated with inevitable certainty
at some distance near or far, the re
volution which finally did overthrow
them. In France the existence of
serfdom and feudalism predicated as
inevitable the revolution. It made
little difference that in Russia revo
lutionists were destroyed or exiled,
that the gibbets in France lined the
countryside with agitating serfs, the
end was coming as surely and as
certainly as to every man and the
things of men, comes the fullfilment
of the sentence “thou shr.lt surely
die”, and that, we venture to say
is the surest thing ever written.
For these reasons we believe that
in prosecuting the I. W. W. the De
partment of Justice is merely at
tacking an effect which will continue
to disturb it. and will do so until
the cause, the manirest cause, sev
erely exploiting capitalism, is re
moved. And we venture to predict
that in after years, when the stress
and storm of these historic periods,
have been followed by the calmer in
tervals of social justice, men will he
k mn to realize that this is so. and
that resistance lo what they' feel to
he a wrong (and resistance to what
is a great and crushing economic
wrong) is the fundamental reason
for the existence of the I. W. W.
and all its works. To remove that
economic wrong therefore is the only
sure prelude to industrial peace.
NOMETHIXG NEW.
Just arrived on the last boat over
500 of this season’s latests styles and
patterns, the most beautiful line of
woolens ever arrived in Nome. We
invite you to see these samples
whether you buy or not. If you
wish to take advantage of this offer
order before the 14th of August, in
order to have order arrive on last
boat.
We also make alterations, and
wo do cleaning, pressing and repair
ing. We appreciate your patronage
Yours to please.
NOME TAILORING CO.
Next door to Segerstrom & Hagen.
Anything In the line of Job worn
Why worry
About wash day
THAT’S OIK KUHINKKS.
Satisfaction Guaranteed.
BOSTON
STEAM LAUNDRY
444 Front St. 1‘lione Main 53
I
BOARD OF TRADE
Restaurant
and
LUNCH ROOM
George Modini,
Proprietor
TO THE PUBLIC
Commencing Today,
AUGUST 11,
The Price of Bread will
be 10c. a loaf straight.
Other Goods raise in
price in proportion.
Signed:
North Pole Bakery
Anvil Bakery
Nome Bakery
Arctic Bakery
ALASKA STEAMSHIP CO.
S. S. VICTORIA
LEAVE SEATTLE: LEAVE NOME:
Via Seward, Valdez and Cordova
Without Additional Charge.
AUG. 1. AUG. la.
SEPTEMBER 2 SEPTEMBER 14.
SAILING SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.
R. A. Carroll, Agent, Nome
From Nome
August31th.
SEPTEMBER 38.
OCTOBER 2G.
§^From Seattle
August 18th.
SEPTEMBER 13.
OCTOBER 13.
RIGHT RESERVED TO CHANGE THIS SCHEDULE.
PACIFIC STEAMSHIP GO.
ALASKA L. & C. CO.
AGENTS
At Dock.
F. J. O’CONNOR.
Commercial Agent.
Front St. and Steadman Ave. J
ttSKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKnS
Charles L. Ross
Milling, Lumber, Contractor
HAVING TAKEN OVER THE FREIGHTING & TRANSFER
BUSINESS OK \Y. STEIGERMAIER AND OF LEO KENT,
FREIGHT ORDERS AND TRANSFER CONTRACTS WILL RE
CEIVE PROMPT ATTENTION.
3RD AND R STREET. PHONE BLACK 162.
S. S. Standard
Sails every SIX DAYS to
DIME AND WAY POINTS
weather permitting
From Snake River.
CHAS WECKMAX.
INDEPENDENT
MEAT MARKET
W. H. Webb prop. Phone M.15
CHANGE IN COAL PRICKS.
On Vug. 10th, Wellington Co.il will be $2.'i.00 per ton in yard.
Oil ami after September 25th, Wellington Coal will be $25.00 pr
ton in yard. Briquets will continue at $18.00 per ton in yard.
We ate experiencing great, difficulty in securing anthracite
coal for winter use and cannot guarantee having any quantity
oil band.
Alaska Lighterage Comercial Co.
THE NOME lilISM WORKED
is prepared to handle
all kinds of
JOB PRINTING
| Let us figure on your
1 work. Call up Black I
I 134 or call at I
| THE INDUSTRIAL WORKER OFFICE j
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