The West Virginian

W.Va. F. of L. Head
Says Legislators
Voted While Drunk

Political Pretensions of Professional Men Are Ridiculed.

ROGERS
4
SOCIALIST

Committee Named to Draft City Platform for That Party.

Doctors, lawyers, preachers and professional politicians were ridiculed as representatives of working people in the legislature by W. M. Rogers, president of the West Virginia Federation of Labor, at a public meeting held at Willard hall Sunday morning to discuss the city platform of the Socialist party. The announcement was made that the Socialists stood ready to give union labor an equal say in the building of the platform and that that had been the purpose of summoning representatives of various unions to the conference. It was explained that the Socialists did not find out that they could be on the ticket until too late for several of the unions to have meetings and regularly elect representatives to this conference.

Mr. Rogers intimated that the professions composed a conspiracy which put the capitalistic interests in control. He ridiculed the "representation" that laboring people had had in the last legislature and charged that members of the legislature were drunk at the time that the constabulary bill came up and that the souses were watched in their hotels with men on guard both in front of their rooms and down stairs in the lobby so that no appeal could be made to them in their sober moments.

The charge of drunken stupidity was not particularly directed toward Marion county delegates; although Mr. Rogers referred to the "joke" of sending a lawyer from this county to the legislature to vote for the constabulary bill.

Mr. Rogers appealed to the working men not to be union 364 days in the year and then vote a scab ticket on election day. He said he was a Socialist and voted that ticket but would not vote for a Socialist who did not carry a union card. He called upon representatives of the painters' union to testify that Dawson, the Socialist candidate for city commissioner, was in good standing in that union, and upon representatives of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen to testify that Glasgow, the other candidate, was in good standing in that union.

H. L. Franklin and J. H. Snider were other speakers who made an appeal for a union of interests of the Socialists and organized labor. Mr. Franklin pointed out how unique it is for a political party to consult labor and declared that neither one of the other parties gave labor a thought in framing laboring men on the ticket. Mr. Snider, who is taken to speak emphatically for the Socialists, said that the plan was to give union labor an equal say with the Socialists in the matter of city affairs.

A committee consisting of B. F. Mills, who presided at the public meeting, H. L. Franklin, E. D. Fox, George Deaver and J. H. Snider will meet tonight and put the final touches on the platform. From the discussion at the public meeting Sunday it is predicted that the platform will contain these planks:

1. Honest, efficient government of the city.

2. Encouragement of all movements which are aimed to contribute to the growth and prosperity of Fairmont.

3. A public market house for buying and selling of foodstuffs.

4. Public ownership of public utilities.

5. A minimum wage scale of $5 a day for city employees and an eight hour day with recognition of the right of city employees to organize.

6. Signs at the entrance of buildings indicating the nature of every business conducted in the property and the owners named in order that illegitimate business cannot be transacted with men high in society securing rents.

7. A supreme council composed of one delegate from each labor organization one delegate from each fraternal organization, and one delegate from each church to advise city commissioners; delegates serving for a period of three months.