Litchfield enquirer., 1869-09-16

Litchdeld. Thursday, Sept. 16, 6,ls6!
 The Mine Disaster. Was 1t MurderY
 In his last novel. now publishing in th.
 GdLa1y, Charles Reade sets forth in hi,
 vivid way the meanness. brutality and tyr
 amy of the English Trades Union system represent the narrow mfndedness of tn,
 lower working classes in the English facto
 ries, the coarse disregard of human life on
 the part of the mass, and the reckless indif
 ference regarding his own life and safety IT on the part of the individual A saw grind -.. CT sits over a erindstone he knows is defec. tiye for days, while he disputes with his vs employer about the 4 shillings, the expense mer ofsettinga new stone. till finally heois is1 eiauhched into eternity by the bursting of ,a Gsi t the old one. An irresponsible clique exer d soise despotic authority over the whole
 Trade. adding few pennies, or substract- : sI s.t ing them, from the workingmans wages
 by successful or unsuccessful strikes, but
 uever concerning themselves to promote ,as9 his comfort or health, bodily or mental 2. This same tyranny, also. endangers the even the lives of recusant work 3e e9ingmen by system of terrorism which we might deem exaggerated had it not been ria thoroughly shown up by parliamentary in 1-vestigation.o 7a s.a5.@3i .~.a.a 7 '-.I In America this system has never taken
 the same forms of atrocious tyranny over
 those within the Union, ,and dangerous per
 sonal attack upon those without, which r ,s have characterized the notorious Trades
 Unions of England. The nearest approach
 to this species of barbarism is to be found a in the Pennsylvania coal mines. The whole :, labor of these enterprises is now performed
 by a most ignorant and degraded class of : foreign emigrants, mostly Irish and Welsh.
 For months past these miners have been on strike for higher wages. With the reck- ,s lessness of life characteristic of brutish ig- r norance. they have never demanded the additional precautions necessary for the safer prosecution of a dangerous trade, but only higher wages, to be expended in the
 
 7 From the testimony before the Coroner's in y. quest it appears that the risk of fire.and of 1.-the destruction of every life in the mine as its inevitable result, was we'll understood T, by the colliers. Nevertheless, it was sworn sl thatEvan Hughes, inside foreman and one of those who lost their lives, ssdid not en-
 courage the idea of driving tunnel through ss from Avondale to Union mine he said it would injure his ventilation and bother : him with water ;' yet such a tunnel would
 have saved every one of the hundred and ,z ten lives lost by this terrible disaster e.. iifG7 But in addition to these and other evil o, dences of gross carelessness, comes testi- imony indicating that the fire was the work
 of an incendiary-that one hundred and ten lives have been sacrificed by the fend- F ish malice of one man, or set of men. It appears beyond question that the wood work of the shaft was not fired. as was at , first supposed, from the furnace, but much z, higher up. A man who came out of the su mine but a few minutes before the confa- .a grafton saw no indications of fire whatever. .-2 The fnIerence IS almost unavoidable that 1t ,31 was the work of an incendiary who could
 have easily escaped unnoticed. It is but ,,, few days since the Pennsylvania strikers .js were attempting to compel colliers who had s5begun work, to quit, by force. It appears u9 that there was much bad blood between .d tho Welsh and Irish miners and threats to this hellish mode of revenge While we doubt whether this awful myste- f. ry will ever be satisfactorily explained. sa there can be little question that the remote ni if not the immediate cause of this catastro .phe is to be found in the brutalities of the b Union system. y...ss ..4teI ....s..