A Foolish Stand

A FOOLISH STAND.

On Saturday the Chicago branch of the National Civic Federation made an effort, as the representatives of the public, to induce the joint committee of striking hotel and restaurant employees to accept arbitration and was prepared to offer John Mitchell as arbiter, but the committee contemptuously rejected the offer, declaring they would not arbitrate as long as there was any possible chance of winning without. The committee still demands that the employees must come to the committee severally and treat on an individual basis, that they, the committee, will have nothing to do with the employers' association.

Relative to this foolish stand the Chicago Record-Herald says:

"This display of contempt for the right and for public sentiment may gratify the vanity of men who are drest in a little brief authority, but it is doing their cause a grievous injury. For the issue raised has resulted in a general indifference to the complaints concerning hours and wages and left the strikers isolated and condemned by their own folly."

The chief justice and Justice Harlan of the supreme court, in their dissenting opinion in the case of the Japanese tried for murder under Hawaiian law inconsistent with the constitution of the United States, used language quite as radical, if not more radical, than any used by Col. Bryan in the campaign of 1896. The decision undoubtedly deserved the radical language used by these two jurists. Judge Harlan denounced the decision as an attempt to nullify the bill of rights and convert the republic into a despotism. The decision practically holds that the will of congress is absolute in the territories, as absolute at least as the will of the English parliament. But the annexation resolution by which Hawaii was constituted a part of the United States provided that only the laws of Hawaii which were not in conflict with the constitution should remain in force. Taking therefore the extreme view of the majority that the constitution only goes into new territory when expressly extended by congress, it follows that Hawaii was not an integral part of the United States and not entitled to the benefits and immunities of the constitution even after congress had passed the annexation resolution. Chief Justice Fuller characterizes the decision of the majority as an usurpation by the majority of legislative power. He declares it was almost criminal for the court to tamper with the plain words of the annexation resolution which expressly says that only such Hawaiian laws shall be continued as are not in conflict with the federal constitution. The court, he says, had no right to make exceptions in supposed obedience to expediency and strain the act of congress. For the chief justice to characterize a decision of this court as "almost criminal" is to use language that would be considered almost sacrilegious in the av- If there be not other way to stop these to the average citizen that the court makes decisions which warrant the use of such language by its own members who dissent.