New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-06-08
M D4NEFR.

The excitement over the labor movement is
chiefly in the newspapers. There Is not the
slightest reason to be apprehensive of riot or
bloodshed. The chief danger to the public
peace will result from the mischievous discus
sions and misrepresentation of the movement
with which some of the journals are filed.
The contestants themselves appear cool and
arRumentative enough. There is less to be
feared from their talk at their meetings and
their demonstrations at various establishments,
than from the fierce unreasoning of the
press, and the unwise interference or a
somewhat excited police which occasionally
tends to incite the strikers to hasty action.
1t is easy enough to make mob out OF ten
thousand idle men, however well disposed; and
heated discussion Of their movements is Grim
inal We do not for a single moment hold
the thirty thousand laborers on strike response
bic as body for the violence of single IN
dividuals or even excited gangs OF half a
dozen or score of men from their ranks; the
vast majority of the strikers themselves re-
pudiate Indignantly the few desperate fellows
who have been guilty of misdeeds. 1t is idle to
conceal or deny that the strikes have assumed
formidable dimensions, but let us not misln-
| terpret the danger, for it threatens less
the public peace than the prosperity
Of the trades thus unexpectedly interrupted
and the thousands of labOrers thrown out OF
employment. The contest is confined exclu-
siyely to employers and employed. and it is
| now solely a question which can hold out the
| longest Only about one-third Of those who
struck for eight hours have been successful,
and the employers who refuse to make the
concession appear as determined now as at
the start In the end, of course, one side or
the other must succumb, or there must ensue
tho compromise which properly ought to have
marked the opening of the strike, and thus
have ended an expensive experiment at the
beginning.
Less than a fortnight ago the strikers seemed
to have succeeded. But the partial victory of
few inspired others to attempt to force an
issue which does not yet promise to be wholly
successful. Still, we have only the same ad-
vice to offer both the successful and unsuccess-
full. The first must justify their triumph by
proving true the declarations they have made
that their labor of eight hours deserves the
wages of ten The latter must yindicate their
action by conducting the strike without
violence toward employers or nOn-sOciety
men. They cannot more quickly or
more grievously injure their cause than
by failure to maintain the PROPOSE
ton they have enunciated except by
resorting to violence. 1t is an agreeable fea-
ture of the present strike that it has been
accompanied by no violent defamation against
employers as the natural enemies of the en-
plOyed on the contrary, the communications
between the two which have been made public
are marked 10y the considerate and conciliatory
language employed. The address of the Messrs.
Brewster g. Co. and the proposition of the
iron-masters, made public this morning, have
been both good-tempered and reasonable; and
we hope TO see the same spirit prevail until
the satisfactory compromise, which is the nat
ural consequence of such negotiation, shall
have been concluded.
In the mean time we trust to see cooperation
strengthened by this strike. The vast major
ity of workingmen in straits like the present
scott at such suggestions az unreasonable, if
not, in fact, insulting. They are neither, and
are not, moreover, impracticable theories.
Half the successful cooperative schemes in the
country found origin in unsuccessful strikes.
The co6perators were not unthrifty workmen
who had saved nothing in their prosperous
days, nor did they begin as their own masters
on scale as grand rs they might have done