THE LAWS OF KANSAS TOUCHING THE LABOR QUESTION.
In this State, one of the first acts of the Republican party was of vast importance and general benefit to workingmen. The Wyandotte Constitutional Convention, which assembled early in 1859, was the first distinctively Republican official body ever assembled in Kansas; and one of its most notable actions—and as novel and beneficent as it was notable—was to adopt a constitutional provision exempting from forced sale, under any process of law, the homestead of every citizen. Years ago, too—long before labor questions were much discussed—Republican Legislatures of Kansas enacted laws protecting the wages of the laborer, laws providing for a mechanics’ lien broad enough to fully secure all demands for work or materials, and laws making liberal exemptions from taxation to small manufacturers and dealers. And these beneficent acts have been supplemented, during later years, with laws authorizing the incorporation of associations of workingmen, and providing for the safety and health of miners; while during the legislative sessions of 1885 and 1886, an act establishing a Bureau of Labor Statistics, charged with the duty of collecting facts and statistics concerning the moral, financial and educational condition of the laboring masses, and a law providing for the legal arbitration of all differences between employers and employés, were enacted.
Thus from its first accession to power down to the present time, the Republican party of Kansas has been enacting laws to protect workingmen against the encroachments of capital, and to provide remedies for wrongs done them, or threatened to them. The statute books of no other State of the Union contain so many laws designed especially to protect workingmen, and to secure justice for them. Claims for labor take precedence, under our laws, over all others. No contractor can, in Kansas, cheat a mechanic out of the wages he has earned, for his wages constitute a first lien on any structure he has aided in building. Every home in Kansas, no matter how humble, is protected by the constitution against forced seizure or sale for debt, and any body of workingmen believing themselves aggrieved, can now appeal to any judge in the State for the appointment of a board of arbitration to consider and adjust such grievances. In brief, the Republicans of Kansas have, for a quarter of a century past, been enacting law after law to protect the laboring-man, to shield him against wrong or injustice, and to secure for him a just proportion of the proceeds of his work. Such a record of steadfast devotion to the interests and rights of workingmen is the best pledge of justice for the future. But the platform of the party, adopted in July last, speaks on this question with an earnestness and frankness that leave no room for question or doubt. It does more than this. It draws a wide distinction between the honest, law-respecting, intelligent workingmen of this country, and those noisy, turbulent and vicious demagogues and loafers who muster under the red flag of the anarchist and communist. To the interests and rights of the real workingmen, no matter how poor or humble they may be, the Republican party of Kansas pledges its constant and unfaltering support, while to the doctrines and aims of the anarchist and communist it pledges unalterable hostility.