The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1877-09-01

Company, and made in the month before
the strike what is pronounced by the
miners hereabOuts the best months work
in this county within year. After pay
ing all expenses there was left for him
$37O2 and for his laborer $34.51. Part
Of this was an allowance for driving
cross cut" But his ordinary earnings
are not above $50 to $22, and he has been
in debt to the COmpany's store for twelve
months; was, at the time of his making
that good month, still in debt $SS. 81; and
so did not get Il cent. Since the strike
began the company store will give him
no more credit, and, as he has not re-
Ceived a dollar in money within more
than year, he is absolutely without re-
sources, and in danger of starving. In
good times he bought little lumber and
a lot, and built house, mOrtgaging it to
the lumber dealer for his pay. Now the
mortgage is almost due, and his little
home will have to 90 to satisfy his cred
itor, AS for meat, he "only knows the
color of it by seeing it in a butchers
stall"
No. 10 is a laborer in the employ of
the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company,
makes from as low as 81 to as high as
$2l, snd, living on mush, manages to
support a family of five. We can no
longer be strong or healthy on such diet"
he says, 8" but it is all | and hundreds,
| yes, thousands, of others can get. If
man ever allows himself to take full
meal of dry bread or cold mush in his
dinner pail in the NINE he must feel that
he is robblng his little ones at home"
These cases might be multiplied lndeti-
nitely. Nearly every ragged man or
woman in the mining suburbs of SCran-
ton-and they are all ragged-has sim
liar story of privation and misery to tell
In the houses visited by the reporter-at
least twenty in the course of one fore
Moons walk, widely scattered and taken
at random-there was not one that was
not CHASTITY in its squalid poverty. Bare
floors, scant furniture of the rudest kind,
tattered and c0mfortess bed-clothing,
and empty larders were the rule, TO which
there seemed no exceptions.
And what a terrible number of these
destitute beings there are! The Della
ware, Lackawanna d Western Company
owns eighteen mines, and operates sew
enteen more; the Delaware Is Hudson
| Canal Company owns and operates twenty;
the Pennsylvania Coal Company, fifteen
more. Each of these mines employs on
an average at least $50 men and boys
That is below rather than above the
mark Then the Lackawanna Iron &
Coal Company employ 1900 men in their
works; altogether, probably 5000.
Doctors refuse attendance to miners
families; druggists refuse medicines to
them without leash in advance" for
they know the poor wretches can scarce
| ly hope to pay them, however honest
/ they may be. AS for clothing, never
was there such Il rag fair anywhere as in
these mining districts. 1t may be seri-
ously doubted If there is a sound gar
ment among the men on strike or their
families. With nearly all, the rule is
that they have but two Changes-on and
off. If their condition is not bettered
before winter comes again, hundreds of
them must inevitably freeze to death.
| 1t is significant fact that the poor
house of this county has about 200 in
mates and it is found necessary to build
new one to hold 200 more This
among people who are proverbially in
dustrious, and who have peculiar pride
in caring for their own.-iScrdHton (Pa)
| Cor. ~ Y Sum-