To Make All Trains Mail Trains
The statement comes from Washington that a plan is under way and that orders will soon be issued making every railway train in the country a mail train, which plan will have the effect of placing all trains on railroads under the control or rather the protection of the federal government. With this contemplated order organized labor is said to be greatly exercised as the movement is looked upon as an insidious attempt to prevent strikes on railroads by employers.
Under this proposed order, it is said that conductors, baggagemen and others are to be commissioned as postal employees and empowered to handle newspapers and all second class matter. It is well understood, especially by publishers of newspapers, that the government is running short-handed in the matter of help to handle the largely increased circulation of the newspapers resulting from free rural delivery. If the delivery of daily newspapers to country subscribers is to be prompt some additional means must be taken to secure efficiency. It is thought the above mentioned plan will aid in giving better service for prompt delivery of newspapers.
But with every train a mail train it will become the duty of the federal government to extend the same protection to all trains that is now thrown around the mail trains, it will make the government as directly responsible for the delivery of newspapers as trains which run on regular mail schedule time. Such an order will remove from the province of the states and place under federal direction many things now controlled by the individual states. Undoubtedly the federal government will be prompter and more efficient in the performance of these duties, especially in case of serious strike difficulties than the states. But just why labor should kick does not appear, so long as labor and its organizations are law-abiding at least, and if they go beyond their rights and violate law, why should immunity be expected or demanded? Railroads as all other forms of legitimate business are entitled to protection by government from unlawful assaults and violence. The government cannot prevent strikes if it would, but it is the duty of government to prevent lawlessness and violence and the destruction of property by strikers or anybody else. However, the striker who keeps within lawful bounds has nothing to fear from such an order as is said to be contemplated by the postal authorities. But the striker who is engaged in violence must expect to be restrained and if this restraint be a menace to unionism, so much the worse for unionism.
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Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat