The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-04-11
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THE MINERS RIOT.
From the N. Y. World.


From the N. Y. World.
The pitiful story which our special CORE.
Bpondent from the mining regions tells needs
little comment. The assault of the idle
miners upon the working miners was un-
doubtedly brutal thing. But though the
men who committed it may have been brutes,
In the sense of being ignorant men who had
never been taught or trained to control their
passions it is not at all to be supposed that
they were fends. A feeling, although it has
found bloody if not fatal expression, which
extends through large class of persons and
q large tract of territory is by no means to be
lightly dismissed upon the easy hypothesis of
q homicidal mania. These men had real
grievance. They were not maniacs. They
were not drunkards. In fact. their demeanor
since the beginning of the "strike" of which
they are accused, but which it should not be
forgotten was q strike of their employers
against them, and not strike of themselves
against their employers, has proved, accord
ing to hostile as well as friendly testimony,
degree of self-control highly creditable to
them and not at all frequent among men of
their sort and condition. In the face OF
these facts it behooves us to inquire what
their real grievance was, with view of
redressing it.
1t has been the luck or the skill of the coal
operators to put the blame of every sudden
increase in the price of coal upon the shoul-
ders of the miners The extent and the
suddenness of the recent rise in the price of
that product has instituted inquiries and
induced revelations which will make that
pretense forever hereafter impossible The
difference between the highest rate de-
manded by the miners and the lowest rate
accorded by the employers does not
amount to a difference of half a dollar
ton in the price of coal to the
consumer. When we see the evident
endeavor OF the great coal operators to stop
the production of coal, coincidently with the
endeavor of the great coal carriers to raise
the freight of coal, it needs no ghost come
fr ON the grave to tell us that the two classes
are acting in collusion. But when we find
that the great ooal-mining companies are
identical with the great coal-carrying compa-
MES the surmise becomes certainty. The
great operators reduced the wages of their
men, not because the price which the men
were receiving was too great for their work,
but because the operators meant to stop the
production OF coal at any price. They reck-
oned upon and instigated the strike of which
they made pretence of complaining. They
deliberately took the bread out of the mouths
OF the poor laborers of Pennsylvania, and
kept the coal out of the stoves of the poor
laborers OF New York, for the sake of filing
fuller their own plethoric pockets. If coal
mining and coal carrying had been q free
trade, corner" in coal would have been
impossible. Because it has been monopoly
Or 'tripoly" of great corporations, the
corner was effected.
1t is not to be expected that the miners to
whom this was question, not of profit and
loss, but of welfare and starvation, of life
and death, should regard this operation,
begun under such auspices and from such
motives, with a friendly eye. But il is ad-
mltted that they abstained from violence
until not only men had been taken on to work
when they were excluded from work but until
the last hope of Legislative redress had disap-
peared. Then they came out confoundino,
as was natural enough to such men in such
circumstances, the men who really took the
bread out of their mouths with the men who
palpably took the bread out of their mouths,
and assaulted these latter. The damage to life
and limb was a small thing. But the feeling
which it betokened was not a small thing. 1t
behoeves the monopolists in coal, and the
Legislature whose function it is to take care
when 1t bestows an exclusive privilege that
that privilege shall not be abused to the
detriment of multitudes Of men, to take this
slight but still significant warning lest a
worse thing happen to them. The narrow
parsimony which, by neglecting to provide
necessary outlet, smothered 1OS miners to
death like rats in hole at Avondale, is but
another phase of the same reckless greed
which has caused uncounted suffering for
many months among all the thousands of
miners in the Susquehanna Valley. The tur
bulence of rude and ignorant men is to be
put down at all hazards and under terrible
penalties to society But the grasping greed
OF shrewd and calculating men, intrusted by
law with boundless power, is to be con-
trolled by law under penalties to society still
greater.