The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1877-07-20

that the strikers are regarded Win susPicion
and dislike The strike of the train men
on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
threatens to extend to other roads, and NO
doubt will if the organization OF this class
of laborers is sufficiently perfect and extern
sive. It may be that the travelling public
will be Inconvenience by temporary stop
pages Of trains and that merchants sending
or expecting to receive freight may suffer
from the detention of their goods. Persons
thus disappointed will perhaps feel inclined
to wish that the strikers should be dealt
with summarily and severely punished
merely for striking.
On the other hand the strikers them
selves appeal to their fellow laborers and
raise the cry of Persecution, and they are
likely to receive sympathy in some quarters
which their acts do not deserve.
We propose to take this occasion to set
forth rs clearly as we can the rights of work.
ingmen, of employers and Of the general
public in this matter of strikes. 1t is very
important, most of oil to laborers, operatives
and artisans, that this question should be
fully understood, SO that public sympathy
shall not be misdirected and that the rights
and the limits Of those rights for both par
ties to q struggle of this kind should be
comprehended by everybody.
1. In the first place every man has right
to decide for himself for whom he will work
and at what wages This right is absolute.
II is secured to every man who is not slave
or convict in prison. The train men on
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had, there
fore, the indefeasible right to declare that
they or any of them who chose to do SO
would not work for the reduced wages. 70
attempt to dispute or interfere with the ex-
ercise Of this right Of theirs would be the
grossest injustice, and would, in fact be to
enslave them.
II. The workmen have also the right to
combine, to agree with each other in any
numbers that they will not work on certain
conditions, and to agree to support each
other in striking. Thus if all the train men
on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad volun-
tarily agree together that they will not work
for the reduced wages that is their un-
doubted right, toattack which would be an
injustice of the most dangerous kind. If
all the train men on all the railroads in the
United States should thus voluntarily agree
they would still be only exercising an un-
doubted right, and however greatly the rail-
road com panies and the travelling public
might be inconvenienced both would have
to bear it as they bear any other unavoida-
BILE delay or inconvenience. The train men
have right to organize; they have a right
to determine that they will not accept the
reduced wages and. except in cases where
they had contracted to work for stipulated
periods they have right to stop work at
any time, and all together at the same time
if this seems to them wise. We are now
speaking, observe, of their rights, and not
OF what may be expedient
III. On the other hand the company has
q right to determine what wages it will pay
its servants. This right is as absolute and
indefeasibbe as any possessed by the work
men. The company gives notice, as is it's
right, that it will hereafter pay less; the
train men thereupon stop work, refusing to
are entirely within their rights; and if in
consequence of such deadlock the trains
should be stopped the public would sim
ply have to bear the inconvenience and loss
as best it might. If, in consequence Of such
deadlock, every railroad train in the
United States suddenly came to stand
still, even in that case the public would
have no right TO interfere, except by argu-
ment and persuasion.
w. But we now come to another phase
the question. The train men, having struck,
; as was their right to do, the company pro-
ceeded to engage other persons to perform
the duties abandoned by the strikers. That
the company had an absolute right to do
If it could get any persons to serve as train
men at the reduced wages. or at any wages
whatever it had the right to employ them,
and the persons 80 called on had the right
to undertake the service. To interfere with
this right would be the grossest and most
dangerous injustice; it would be to say to
workingmen, ''You shall not work for whom
you please and at what wages you
please = it would be to enslave them.
But this is what the strikers on the Balti-
more and Ohio Railroad have attempted to
do. They struck and stopped work; that
was their undoubted right; but when other
men offered to take their places they attacked
these and drove them off. There they were
wrong, and not wrong. merely--they were
criminals, who, if they persist, deserve to
he shot down as men who attack society
who refuse to others the very rights which
than ra iuaiaf.ipO ON for fhensalvoc
The train men exercise their right to de-
eide for whom they will work and at what
wages. In that right it is the duty of oil
men to protect them. But having done this
they turn about and refuse to other working
men the same right to decide for whom and
at what wages they viii work. Thatis totally
indefensible; it would be absurd, if it were