The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-07-31
NEW YORK, July %, 1877

NEW YORK, July 28, 1877.
The turning point in the riotous demonstra-
tions growing out of the strike of the railway
laborers, was the communist demonstration of
last Wednesday evening in the city of New
York. When application was made to the
Park Commissioners for permission to hold
this meeting in Tompkins square, which is an
old park on the east side of the town in the
poDulous quarter known by tho soubriquet of
Mackerelville, the subject was referred to the
Mayor and Police Commissioners. They very
promptly and wisely decided to allow the NAL
contents to assemble. There were a great
many expressions of dissatisfaction with this
decision in the newspapers and among timid
citizens at the time it was made. But the rea-
soniDg on which they were based was SUPER
fetal and narrow gagged. To have denied the
applicants the privilege of giving public utter.
ance to their sentiments would have supplied
them with an actual ground of complaint The
American mind runs in favor of the broad
est latitude of free speech consistent with
thei maintenance of order. 1t was great
deal better that these people should have
chance to show who they were and what they
wanted than that their murmurings should be
vented in secret conclaves and in the spirit of
defiance engendsred by Intellectual efforts to
suppress them. The authorities were perfectly
assured of their ability to preserve order. The
occasion in fact afforded an excellent opportu-
nifty for display of the power of the NUM-
cipality. The preparations to thwart any act
of turbulence were ample and admirable. The
result completely vindicated the sagacity which
prompted the consent so readily accorded to
the request for leave to hold the meeting. There
was butone Insignificant beginning of fray
during the evening, and that was quelled with
a degree of despatch which gave the partci-
pants in it an extremely wholesome sense of
the danger of provoking the force of the law,
by any overt manifestations of brutality.
There is only one opinion now as to the ex-
pediency of the course pursued by the Mayor
and the Police Commissioners in this matter.
1t seems to be the hardest thing in the world
for newspaper ever to recede from position
it has once taken. 1t is sort of concession
of fallibility which not even the stern logic Of
facts can extort from the average editor. Con-
sequently the journals that declaimed against
permitting the meeting, still persist that it
ought not to have been suffered to be held. But
they have an exclusive monopoly of this unique
view of the case. The Frenchman who met
the objection to his favorite theory that ii did
not accord with the facts, by exclaiming 'so
much the worse for the facts, thenP' was not .
whit more absurd than the man who grayely
maintains still that q line of policy which has
preserved the peace of the city at critical
iuncture, was not the very best that could pos
sibly have been adopted. The subject has got
beyond the domain of argument. 1t has
reached the goal Of demonstration.
But when we are brought face to face with
these ill-requited toilers who are popularity sup
posed to earn scanty bread by copious sweat
what revelation of masquerade and impos-
ture breaks upon us. Their leader is the thrifty
proprietor of lager beer saloon. The wrong
which harrows up his indignant soul is that bis
customers cannot get wages enough to settle
the scores that are chalked against them on the
doors of his ale vaults and to pay for the copt-
GUS schooners whose supplying carg aes course
down their besotted throats. Their orators are
fellows who never did a days work In their
lives l have said before that the retail liquor
dealers of New York were privileged order.
They are autocrats in their way. They have
docile, obedient and unreasoning band of fol-
lowers in their train, through whose patient
vassaiage they gather in pecuniary and poiti-
cal capital. They thus become chief Of their
party and get themselves nominated for and
elected to offices of trust ard profit They Sc
cure themselves seats In the Board of Alder
men and IN the state legislature. They are ab-
solute masters of the infatuated creatures
whom they are destroying, soul and body.