Excerpt from The National Dynamite Plot: Being the Authentic Account of the Attempts of Union Labor to Destroy the Structural Iron Industry

It is with a feeling of hope that I send this book into the world. The book is written with a purpose. My life has been blighted by the shadow of the vicious labor union boss. I have spent two years of my existence in jail and I am not at liberty now. I spent four years of my life destroying property at the behest of the leaders of labor, so-called. Thus six years of my life are accounted for. And it was only a matter of eleven years ago that I joined a labor union. Only one conclusion is possible. Were it to do over, again, in the light of my present knowledge, I would die rather than join a labor union, as labor unions are for the most part at present conducted. And I earnestly advise young men earning their living by their labor to study well the effect of unionism upon me before giving their allegiance to any organization which has for its object those things for which most present-day unions actually stand, (whatever their pleas), that is to say, violence, disorder, criminality and destruction of life and property.

There can be but one result to the nation from the unions as the most of them are administered today: Either the unions will wreck the government and lead directly to anarchy, or the government will wreck the unions, and in the disorder that will ensue on the one hand or the stern repressive-measures which must be adopted on the other, the rights of the individual may be crushed along with theindividual. Unionism properly organized and conducted, will result in great good to the nation, to the laborer and to the employer, but wrongly conducted, as my experience teaches me to believe, an overwhelming majority of labor unions are at present, it will destroy everything it touches precisely as fire destroys paper.

I have no quarrel with any lab'or leader. The law has written finis to the activities of those with whom I was associated in a plot to destroy, and the law is supreme. But it has left me an industrial 'wreck upon the shores of human endeavor, and to me will be led scores of others to share my lot if the policies of destruction and the power of the labor bosses is allowed by the laboring men to go unchecked. It is not enough that the labor bosses shall obey the law; members of the unions must make the bosses work for the union and not for themselves. If you are not willing to do your best to see that they do this, and to see that your fellow members also do their best to secure the same end, then in the name of God, don't join a labor union.

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