"They are going too far" is a catchword used every day with reference to organized labor. They go too far in demanding a normal working day; they go too far in demanding higher wages; they go too far when, tired of the employers' broken promises to negotiate, they lay down their tools and strike. They are going too far -- God knows when they are not going too far.

In our opinion, the organized workers only rarely go too far; the trouble is that the mass of people, who are net interested in the struggle between capital and labor, do not go far enough. The public in general usually follows organized labor part of the way, but on becoming aware that there is the wear and tear on their shoe soles to be considered, they turn back and start complaining that "They (organized 2labor) are going too far."

Only organized labor, of course, is going too far in its demands; organized labor, so the complaint runs, is trying "by force and blows to compel" unorganized workers to join the unions. Of course it is never said, and it probably will never be said, that e.g. a clergyman is going too far when in holy wrath he berates his flock because not enough money has been paid out of nearly empty pockets for the new church that is being erected, or for the new parsonage, or for foreign missions, or for some surprise party for one of another of the leading brethren of the flock. Or does anybody hear that a clergyman is going too far when for purely financial reasons he resigns his position in a small church, where the salary is insufficient, to accept God's call to another church where the salary is larger?

You never hear that a newspaper man is going too far when he blackens his colleagues in the profession, tells lies to his readers, and cheats 3his advertisers. It is not said that he has become overbearing and has been stirred to undue bitterness in the fight....He is considered an angel, and so is the clergyman. And yet, of all those who complain that organized labor is "going too far", the clergyman and the editor raise their voices the loudest in berating this impudent rabble for never being satisfied, for demanding an eight-hour working day....and wages high enough to secure a living for the worker and his family.

It happens, of course, when strikes occur, that the organized workers actually do go too far, and use violent means to punish strikebreakers. Occasions of that kind are grist to the mills of the baiters of organized labor...But although some individual among the workers may lose his self-control in the heat of the struggle and hurt his own cause and that of his fellow workers by some act of violence, that fact does not justify the representatives of the church and press in denouncing an entire labor organization. Yet this is precisely what is being done...The 4cry seems to be: nobody opposed to organized labor is ever "going too far"; only the unions are sinning in that respect.