The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-04-17

cause of human progress all equally demand
H. Let Mexico once be thrown open to Anne
rican enterprise and we hesitate not to pre-
dict that in ten years from that date the popu-
lation of New York alone not to speak of
other centres of industry, will scarcely be less
than 100000
The strikeS-Eight-HOur Laws-LOwer
Prices.
From The World.
We have published no more important news
during the last ten days than our reports of
the strikes of large bodies of mechanics and
laboring men in this and other cities, and of
the meetings and organizations which have
been and are taking place to extend and pro-
long these strikes. Their influence upon the
prices of the necessaries of life, upon the
wages of labor, upon the activity of trade, and
upon business enterprises of every sort, is
likely to be serious and widespread.
Prices were already excessively high.
Breadstuffs have about doubled in price since
the war began; barrel of State wheat flour,
which was worth $4'30 then, is worth over
$l1 now. Beef has doubled, and pork
has gone up fifty per cent. in the same
period. Butter has doubled. Rice has
doubled and so on through the catalogue of
edibles. What we wear has advanced like
wise in an equal or greater degree, be it
covering for the head, the body, or the
feet, and be the material leather, cotton,
linen, or wool. The housing of our bodies
from the incemencies of the weather has
increased in expensiveness in an equal ratio
| with the materials for their warmth or their
repair. ENilding materials, and the tools used
| in their preparation, have doubled in value
during the same period. Iron, infinite in the
| number and variety of its uses, has almost
l.. ii al, 1i,,,oh ho,vn
than doubled Lumber in every shape has
| experienced an immense advance; and so ON
| through the list. The success of the strikes
| will continue and advance the present high
| prices for all these necessares of life.
Before the strikes began trade was already
| dull. Many a firm, prudent and wellesta-
| blished, found balance against them at the
| end of their last years business, and every
| such firm throughout the country has entered
4 upon the present years business with exces-
Y sive caution, small orders, few risks, and
I short-time sales. This temper in our mercan-
tile classes is of itself almost sufficient to pro
! duce the partial paralysis which we are now
| experiencing. But the causes which bred
| such prudent temper in them-the fuctua-
! tions of the currency, the high prices and the
uncertainty as to their cOntinuance-have
seemed to establish this partial paralysis as
| the habitual condition of the trading class,
which is exceedingly large and among the
most enterprising in the community. The
success of the strikes will make recovery from
this paralysis more difficult.
Business enterprises of every description
the investing of capital in anything new,
whether the building of new house in Fif-
! tieth street, or the establishing of new
| steamship line, or the digging of a new gold
mine in Montana-have languished for the
| same and similar reasons. New York, for ex-
ample, is over-crowded. But small provision
il, 1o-t
! is making now, for the accommodation of this
surplus population. Successful strikes will
! tend to paralyze what enterprise still survives.
1t is in these circumstances that the me-
chanics of New York, the miners of Pennsyl-
vania and New jersey the iron-moulders of
Pittsburg, the operatives of New England, are
organizing strikes. 1t is in such a condition
of our commercial and business activity, and
in such an era of high prices, that petitions
| are going to all the State Legislatures for
eight-hour laws, which demagogues tell our
working men (and they believe) will give
them ten hours wages for eight hours work.
What these demands of labor at bottom
signify, who can doubt They signify that
the national debt and its attendant taxes begin
at last to grind the faces of the poor, as well
as to empty the pockets of the well-to-do.
Four years of war, hundreds of thousands OF
men slaughtered, millions, billions of treasure
spent like gunpowder which is blown into the
air and seen no moroccan these things be
and no one suffer save those who are killed
and those who mournl These strikes are the
workingman's cry of distress. Once the United
States was the working-man's harvest-feld.
Here he had high wages, plenty of work,
and all the means of living cheap. He could
educate his children easily feed them and
clothe them well, and lay up against a rainy
day out of the surplus of his earnings. Now
he can barely support himself and his family,
and the most pnching economy will hardly
provide against sickness or for the feeding of
a new mouth. AS for the luXures in which
he once could indulge-the excursion, the new
dress, the hospitality-they are as impossible
to him as a house ON Fifth avenue. These
strikes, we repeat, are the workingman's cry
of distress; they are his dumb protest, so to
speak, against that sectional party calling
itself to-day, with sublime effrontery q
Union" party, which assisted and spurred
the hot-heads of the South to bring on the
war; against the same men who prolonged il
and squandered double its needful cost;
against the same men and the same party
the "Union" patty, fOrsooth-who for two
years of peace have defeated all the victories
OF war; and who now insult the North with
the prostraton of all its industries, and the
South with the humiliation of a submission to
military despotism, as the necessary" con-
ditions of reconstruction. That is what these
labor strikes signify; and he must have a heart
of stone who can hear without infinite pain
and sympathy this cry of distress wrung from
the men who have no language but this, and
no remedy but this, for the wrongs and the
distress they endure.
But the gunpowder blown into air and the
blood that makes green the Virginia hill sides