Muncie, IND.; News of Local 23, Hemingray has orders from France

MUNCIE, IND.

By Harvey Hickman.

Working conditions in this community in all crafts except at the Hemingray Glass Co. are on the up and down grade. Nearly all of the members of Local Union No. 23 are working at the Hemingray factory and things look very good now to finish up the fire as the firm has some new orders from France.

Brother Charley Casey, who has been in the army for the past year working with a spruce gang out west, is back on the job again, gathering insulators.

Brother Bert Wolf, who has not been able to follow the glass trade for the past seven months, is a come- back and is working at the Hemingray Company.

We have in our local some members who do not demand the union label. Of course that happens in nearly all locals, but if the members of Local Union No. 23 do not quit chewing scab tobacco, smoking scab cigars, getting haircuts and shaves at scab shops, and not demanding the union label on their clothes, I am going to have their names published in the magazine. Why, brothers, just think it over, taking union money and supporting scab manufactories or scab barbers. So let us demand the union label and get the non-unionist afraid of us like the Kentucky negro was afraid of the organized hornets.

A planter down in Kentucky needed a farm hand, so he employed a strange negro as a mule driver. He handed him a brand new blacksnake and he climbed up on the seat behind a pair of mules. Then he asked the darkey if he could use the whip. Without a word the mule driver drew the black lash between his fingers, then swung it over his head and flicked a butterfly from a clover blossom along-side of the road over which they were traveling.

"That isn't so bad," remarked the planter. "Can you hit that honey bee over there?"

Again the negro swung the whip and the honey bee fell to the ground. Noting a pair of bumble bees on still another blossom, the negro swished them out of existence with the cracker of his new blacksnake and drew further admiration from his new employer. A little further along the planter spied a hornet's nest in a bush beside the highway. Two or three hornets were assembled at the entrance to the nest.

"Can you hit them, Sam?" he inquired.

"Yes, sah, I can," replied the negro, "but I ain't goin' to, for dey's organized."

The Indiana state legislature is in session with some very important bills to come up, some of which the laboring class of people want passed and some defeated. Among the various bills is the pet of the Merchants' Association, the garnishee bill, which we want defeated. Other bills that we want passed are the workmen's compensation bill and the women's eight hour bill. Local Union No. 23 is doing its part in trying to get these bills passed or defeated by signing petitions and writing letters to the senators and representatives.

We have a local branch of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy here, which is composed mostly of union labor, and is doing some very beneficial work in behalf of the public in general.

Some time ago we started a series of lectures, of which we have had two, the first being on "Readjustment; the Two Great Extremes," expounded by James F. Barrett of the United States Department of Labor, who delivered the government message of gratitude to the laboring people of this vicinity for their loyalty and assistance during the war. The second was a moving picture and lecture on venereal diseases, and we are going to run a series of these pictures. The first one was for men only, the next one will be for women only and the third for both sexes. This is a campaign taken up by the government to stamp out venereal diseases and they have appropriated $1,000,000 for the cause and for the establishing of clinics throughout the country. A committee went before the city council from the Alliance at their last meeting with a resolution and had them appropriate $500 to meet the $1,000 given by the government to secure a clinic for Muncie.