Where twenty years ago we had a powerful union—for instance, in Pennsylvania: the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers—today nothing but a pitiful remnant is left. Only _one_ union in the steel industry has survived: the Structural Iron Workers. They survived because they contested every inch of ground against the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association. The result of that fight was a long war between capital and labor on the Coast. Every form of persecution and violence was used against labor, and labor was forced to defend itself. In consequence the Structural Iron Workers increased their wages from $2.40 a day to $4.40, and reduced their hours from ten to eight. Organized capital resorted to every trick to strangle the workers, and in Los Angeles a special law was passed prohibiting picketing. But the union defied the law, and five hundred men went to prison during the general strike of the metal trades in Southern California in 1910. During this fight the Los Angeles _Times_, the most relentless enemy of labor and of humanity, was destroyed. The brothers McNamara were arrested, as a result, and then the masters made the solemn promise that the war would be stopped and that all further prosecutions of labor men would cease if the McNamaras would plead guilty. It was only on the strength of this promise that the McNamaras were finally induced to plead guilty. Hardly ten days passed, when the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association broke every promise they made. They began the prosecution of labor men in Los Angeles and Indianapolis, and did everything in their power to railroad to prison the most effective members of the unions. And now, four and a half years later, they have arrested David Caplan in Seattle and Mathew Schmidt in New York, and brought them across the country to Los Angeles to put them on trial for complicity with the McNamaras. This perfidious activity of organized capital has made labor in California realize that the courts are controlled by the employers, and that labor cannot expect justice. They now understand what a fatal mistake was made in the case of John Lawson. The workers depended on the innocence of Lawson for his acquittal. They failed to act, expecting justice to be done.