The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-06-10

any such Intermediary bodies. II a mass
meeting of the respectable men of New York
express their preference for Grant, the fact
win be known over the whole country the next
day and other cities will take action for or
against, as their judgment may dictate. Choice
by the mass of the people, not by representa-
tives must determine for the future the great
question of nominations. Time is ripe for it;
the press affords the means of intercommuni-
cation, and by this means the people must
throw off the yoke of so-called leaders, and
cease to be the property, the political ohattels,
of self-constituted conventions.
S2,5OO,OOO,OOO Debt to Pay, and the
Etght-HOur Movement.
From the World
1t is worth the while of the managers of the
eight-hour movement, and those who support
it, to consider what has befallen their Chicago
friends who in like manner sought to interfere
with the free exchange of services between man
and man.
The eight-hour strike has ended in Chicago.
For the whole month of May it was kept up, at
| an expense to the workmen who have been
''on strike" of not less than one hundred dol
lars eaoh-a sum sufficient if there were three
thousand workmen con strike" to have esta-
blished and stocked halfa-dozen cooperative
| stores and manufactures which would now be
| paying profit to the contributors. This would
| have been the most effective protection to the
| workingmen who deemed themselves ag-
| greiyed, and the most useful as well as profit
able experience they could have undergone.
AS employers, they would have seen the
| other side of the questions, "What should
| wages be G' elbow many hours should work
men labor p But the Chicago workmen have
lost their strike and their money too; few of
the employing shops but have obtained all the
men they want, and the railIoad-shop work
men are now sustaining the strike alone,
against combination of interests which ex-
tends wherever iron tracks are laid, from
Arostook to Texas, and from Savannah to
many 'tmiles beyond Omaha"
Indeed, the interests which are combined
against the success Of the eight-hour move
ment are incalculable in amount, for they in
clude the entire community, except the eight
| hour demagogues and the misguided men who
follow their dictation. We shall be told that
several States have passed eight-hour laws,
and that in political conventions parties COM
| pete for the workingman's favor by pledging
their efforts for such legislation. We are very
| well aware that the pusilanimity of hand to-
mouth politicians in both tho great political
| parties has given to this eight-hour movement
| seeming start and promise of success. But
we prefer to justify the favor with which the
workingmen of this country have always re-
| garded the Democratic party and followed its
leaders, by telling them the plain truth about
the business, and by exposing to them the
! groundlessness of hopes which interested
demagogues have nursed and taught them to
! cherish.
Again and again we repeat that the eight
| hour movement could at no time have been
| wise or successful movement. But it was
an absurd and impossible movement at the
end of war which left upon us a national
debt of two and half billions, State, county,
and city debts amounting to two and half
! billions more, and war claims of perhans two
and half billions more. For this debt sig
nifes intermiAable taxes, and such taxes
! signify an endless mortgage upon the capital
| of the rich and the industry of the poor-a
ceaseless discount and drain upon the energies
! of all. When a nation which was free of debt
as we were, incurs debt as we have, then it
| follows inevitably that every man and woman
who joins in paying the debt gives more labor
for the same return, or the same labor for
less return. Suppose a workingman were, in
a fit of passion, to smash his tools and burn
his wifes clothes, could he keep on and thrive
as well, and work as little and receive as
much, after that piece Of folly as before
Would not the tools have to be repaired or
replaced and his wife reclothed, and would
not these be new expenditures to be betrayed
out of his work? The expenditures of war
must in like manner be betrayed, and the
workingman of no degree can escape his share
| Of the burden. The houses and the barns
which are the farmers tools; the cities which
were stored with our wealth; the gunpowder
which was blown into air; the millions of balls
which are sown and rusting in the Southern
fields the diminished increase of our crops
because of the farmers who were called away
from productive to unproductive labor; the
costly transportation hither and thither, and
the costlier feeding and clothing and arming
! of workers transformed to idlers, and OF
parents turned into slayers; all those lives
that were wasted for four years; and all those
that were worse than wasted by the bullet and
| the sabre these we have got to pay for, and
no man can help paying for them, nor any
class hope to shift the burden upon any other
/ class, or all others.
But demagogues tell workingmen that they
can get the same wages for eight hours labor
as formerly for ten. We tell the Workingman
! that he cannot get the same wages for eleven