126 FARMERS' UNION AND FEDERATION 



The only course to take is to unionize, rush agents and 

 literature to the soldiers to divert them into city industries. 

 See that those who cannot be so diverted are unionized to 

 the last man in all products they produce, and that they 

 adhere to the minimum prices fixed by their international 

 union. You must not only protect yourselves from panic 

 conditions but you must aid in saving them from it. Had 

 -the farmers of the old settled States taken this course when 

 these new States were settled they could have saved them- 

 selves and us, too, from years of privation. 



Political and Industrial Power of Union Labor. 



Some have the erroneous idea that union labor is a tem- 

 porary and unnecessary movement that should be and can 

 be eliminated. They are mistaken. It is an economic ne- 

 cessity to protect laborers from ruinous competition for jobs 

 among themselves. The man with no family or home to 

 provide for is not allowed to work cheaper than those who 

 have, else such men would make it impossible for those who 

 have to maintain them. This same principle must be ap- 

 plied to farm products when unionized. 



The magnitude of unionized labor shows that it would be 

 as impossible to dissolve it as to reverse gravitation. It is a 

 power to be reckoned with as being here to stay, to be lim- 

 ited in its demands only by opposing unionized interests 

 equally powerful. It has grappled with organized capital 

 on the industrial and political fields and forced it to come 

 down from its supposed impregnable position and make an 

 equitable division to labor of profits it had been monopoliz- 

 ing. 



The " World Almanac and Encyclopedia," 1914, says of 

 the American Federation of Labor : 



"The Federation is composed of 113 national and international 

 unions, representing approximately 27,000 local unions, 5 departments . 

 42 State branches, 615 city central unions, and 673 local imions. The 

 approximate paid membership is 2,000,000. The affiliated unions pub- 



