The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1875-10-07

I
capital cannot succeed" and the Governor said
81 will aid capital" Did anybody else ask for
about military interference, when you talk
| about Kellogg not being Governor of Louisiana,
and interference between two bands of deSper-
ADDE'S. how do you undertake to palliate the
crime that was committed when capital
succumbing to the demand of labor, ap-
pealed to the Governor, and the Cover
nor said, 81 will not send you argument;
l will not send you tariffs; l will not
send you cheap transportation, but will
send you bayonets and steel. That is
what he said, and that is the record, and
no man can get rid of it. Let it be pro-
claimed in the workshops; let it be pro-
claimed upon the broad plains of the Ma
ton, wherever labor has struggled
against capital, that when the issue was
made in Ohio when capital was going
down, when 1t was struggling against the
hand of labor, it was the Governor of
| Ohio who sent powder and ball, bayonets
and officers and military power to force
labor to succumb and that he did with
out law and in violation of law, and when
the sheriff OF the county in terms had
refused to ask for troops. Answer it.
Answer it, and 1 will meet you with the
| record itself. Is there any answer?
Can anybody tell me where it was writ
| ten in the statute that coal operator, or
| that coal miner or laborer of any kind,
or capitalist of any kind was sufficient
authority to invoke the interposition of
military power? No fact is recited that
iustifies it.
Now, the Governor says that he was
authorized to bring out the troops in
case mob or riot was threatened. Very
well, the law requires that he shall have
his information from one of the officers
that the law recognizes. He had the
La, l, i
clined to ask for troops, and the Cover
nor sent them over the protest of the
officer. But for what purpose were they
brought out? 1t is mere quibbling; it is
mere sophistry; it is transparent dema-
goguery to say they were not called out
They were called out and the fact is here
upon the record. Were they called out
to preserve the peace? The Governor
says, that when he called them out, the
process of the court was respected and
the civil officers we're performing their
duties with promptness and fidelity.
Then they were not called out to enforce
civil authority in the State. But why
were they called out2 We must know
fully the situation; we must look over
the whole ground and take in the whole
picture. 1t will not do to take in this
single feature of the outlook We must
not narrow ourselves down to single
point of observation. These troops were
called out, and that they accomplished
the purpose for which they were called
out, no man can deny. The desolated
homes of hundreds of miners in the
Hooking Valley and about Nelsonville,
will testify how bayonets and bullets,
when thrown in the scale with capital,
will crush labor. The miners had or
ganized to avert the conflict they saw
coming on from the lst of April, in re-
gard to the price of mining. 1t was
great calamity that happened when that
controversy arose. In my humble judg
ment, with full knowledge of the whole
controversy at every step, the operators
of the Valley were not wholly without
fault at the beginning. l am strongly
impressed with the notion that the plan
of measurement then insisted upon by
the operators-the excluding of the nut
coal from the account, although it brings
price to the seller-was and is an act of
more than doubtful justice, and one that
miners consider oppressive, and an evil
that may well be the proper subject of
legislative action to manage, modify and
correct. 1t turns out, however, that
their action was guided by little short of
supernatural foresight, for had the min
ers agreed to the contract that was pro-
posed by the operators on the 1st of
April year ago, there would hardly be
two solvent operators in the Hooking
Valley to-day.
The men who struck on the 1st of
April, 1874, because they could not get
seventy-fve cents per ton, are to-day
mining at fifty cents per ton, and the
operators who at that time could have
paid seVenty-hve cents, are to-day utterly
unable to make money at fifty cents.
That trouble was a misfortune, from the
effects of which twenty years of industry
can not rescue the Valley. 1t has par
alyzed every branch of productive indus
try. Now the operators of the Valley,
seeing that the struggle was to be a pro-
tracted one, seeing that the miners stood
together, supported by strong public
sympathy provisioned for the campaign
by the accumulation of long, prosper
Gus season of mining, and the liberality
of their friends in the Valley, supposed
that by a single blow they could destroy
the strike by importing into that Valley
a class of labor in competition with which
miners must necessarily go down. So
they brought some six hundred colored
men from Arkansas, Tennessee, from the
mines at Brazil, Indiana and from up
the Kanawha in West Virginia. These
they brought in by the train load, and
proposed that they should occupy the
places of the old miners of the Valley.
Now, Mr.. Speaker, this was not a mat
ter to be treated lightly. When the man
who had mined coal in the Valley for
twenty years, who erected his roof tree
there, and around whose hearthstone
had grown up his children, dependent
upon his labor for support, he was about
to be superseded by men with whom he
could not successfully come into compe-
tition. 1t was not strange that they
should resort to combination, to protes-
tations, to even threats of violence and
disturbance. But l must not be under
stood as endorsing the general popular
idea of strikes. | can not approve the
claim set up that one man may not only
refuse to work himself, but NAV also die
tate that some other man shall not work
This proposition can not be sustained
1t is wrong in principle, and leads to
trouble of every kind.
The miners of the Hooking Valley be-
lieved they had some sort of vested
rights that it was the privilege of the
miner to receive fair remunerative prices
for his labor. They believed. perhaps
conscientiously, that the operators were
wrong. When they saw these new men
coming down upon them as the hosts of
Sennacherib descended upon the camp
of Israel, it was not strange that these
miners should assemble around their
hearthstones endeared by the memories
of their long labor in the mines, the re-
suit of which had caused wealth to flow
into the Golfers of the operators, and feel
bitterly. and act imprudently. And it
was discovered, about the 18th day of
June, that there was mighty power in