Friends: - The Bohemian Typographical Union, in this manner, seeks to obtain your aid in its efforts to help Bohemian-American typesetters gain a respectable and deserved wage.

Every branch of labor is organized so as to achieve honorable compensation for its labor and every branch of labor can boast of its gains, except the typesetters, who scattered throughout Bohemian-American communities, must often work for their board, and this none too good.

Perhaps the one exception to this haphazard compensation of Bohemian typesetters is in Chicago, as the result of organization. However, if this condition is to be retained, if it is to be improved the competition of cheap out-of-town papers, which flood Chicago with their cheaply produced product, must be removed.

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Bohemian organizations, which were of such great help to the efforts of Bohemian typesetters in the past, will surely take their stand on the side of the Bohemian Typesetters' Union and, in the future, withdraw their support from those publications which are not provided with the union label.

It depends only upon you, readers, that the typesetters of these out-of-town publications may be properly compensated for their labor. It depends upon you, in order for local typesetters to maintain and, as much as possible, improve their present standards. Work completed by capable union typesetters is pleasing to look at, and publications set up by them are pleasing to the eyes of the reader, because of their arrangement. In opposition to this, the out-of-town publications are often set up by children or by poorly paid people, and their products look accordingly.

In supporting union publications you are aiding union publications, in supporting non-union publications you injure the former, without materially aiding the latter, for they are doomed in any event to a miserable existence and final oblivion.

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Publications which are able to pay union wages are apparently more wide-spread, and, as a result of their greater circulation, more perfect.

No friend of union labor should subscribe to the following out-of-town publications:

Kvety Americke, (American Blossoms) Omaha, Neb.

Pokrok Zapadu, (Progress of the West) Omaha, Neb.

Domacnost, (Home,) Milwaukee, Wis.

Hlas, (Voice) St. Louis, Mo.

The above listed circulate in Chicago, mainly, and with their cheap labor injure union publications.

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Let them know, that only when they have provided themselves with the union labels will you subscribe to them, and in this manner you will help a good cause.

In so far as concerns Chicago, the chief enemy of union labor is the "Order of Bohemian Benedicts" (Rad Ceskych Benediktinv). Notwithstanding the fact that the director of its printing plant, the Rev. Valentine Kohlbeck, has told the typesetters, that the Order owns more property than any Bohemian printing business in Chicago, it still refuses to pay the typesetters wages, such as are customary in other printing plants. Many years of negotiating on the part of the union has not produced results, and it is hardly necessary to inform friends of organized labor, that the following named publications; Narod, (Nation), Katolik, (Catholic), Pritel Ditek, (Children's Friend), and Hospodarsky Listy, (Agricultural News), are issued by an association of priests, which since time immemorial has been known for its unfriendliness to all union activities.

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We call the attention of the business men who advertise in the daily Narod to the fact, that this paper, after many years of activity, has a smaller circulation than any other Bohemian paper published in Chicago, and that we consider this as sufficient reason for them to withhold their advertising business from it.

We hope, that friends of organized labor will take the above into consideration and act accordingly. The Bohemian typesetters will surely repay you in some other manner.

For the Bohemian Typographical Union, #330, I. T. W.

Agitation Committee.