The Combine and Schools - Butte, MT - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

THE COMBINE AND SCHOOLS

The lockout of the building trades has drawn public attention to the fact that there exists in this community a combination strong enough and ruthless enough to prevent any citizen of the community from buying a dollar's worth of lumber or a sack of cement or a can of paint without the consent of the mouthpiece of the Associated Industries. The public has also been treated to the exhibition of a school board so Nicely subservient to the same gang of pirates that it allows the school administration building to remain uncompleted—and not a hand turned to further its completion—in order that the Associated Industries may not be disturbed in its plan of preventing resident mechanics in Butte from getting employment. Of course the Associated Industries is willing that the building should be completed, provided it can be done by scab labor; but the Associated Industries has so far had very little luck in getting any work done by its scabs; hence the administration building must remain uncompleted, notwithstanding the fact of the pressing need for its immediate use and the further fact that the contract called for its completion before the 1st of January, 1920.

But there is another feature in the situation that should concern the people of the district. A combine that is strong enough to prevent any building in the community whatsoever, is certainly strong enough to fix the terms upon which building shall proceed when finally it allows the dear people to buy material from the profiteers. And a school hoard that is base enough to permit the interests of the school district to be sacrificed to the policy of the Associated Industries is likewise base enough to allow the profiteers who compose the Associated Industries to rob the treasury of the district in any manner that they may desire. Is it not quite evident that if the simple ukase of the Associated Industries is sufficient to tie up indefinitely the construction of a necessary building of the school district, its ukase will also be sufficient to compel the erection of buildings, however unnecessary they may be? The plain fact is that it is the interest of the Associated Industries and not the interest of the people of the district, or the children of the district that determines the policy of the school board. This is a shameful condition of the affairs, but it cannot be concealed or even seriously questioned.

In further illustration of the base subservience of the board to the Associated Industries, attention is called to the following proceedings of the board at the meeting of March 23, 1920. The Silver Bow Trades and Labor assembly had sent a communication to the board requesting information as to whether or not it intended to spend the proceeds of the bond issue on scab labor. The board as usual avoided a direct answer, but by their action plainly indicated that they could do only Ehat McIntosh authorized. Then appears this choice morsel. We quote from the minutes of the meeting.

"Trustee Nipper stated he considered it no more than fair and consistent that the matter of the way the board is being subjected to criticism from the public, at least as far as organized labor is concerned, should be taken up with the Associated Industries and make them see how the board is being unfairly treated by them. Motion carried."

What could he more shameless than this? The public servants of the largest school district in the stale are not only the base tools of a special interest, but they are so degraded that they do not even attempt to conceal their shameful abdication of duty, but cause their subserviency to be recorded in their own minutes. And this is the group that desires a million and a quarter dollars of public money to be entrusted to their hands. We would much prefer to have the moneys turned over directly to John Raincoat to do with as he pleases.
From the Butte Daily Bulletin