New-York tribune., 1877-07-23

other classes of laborerS can railroad employ e.
justly ask to escape their share ! Before the
war, railways received for transportation per
passenger or per ton more than twice as much
as they now receive, and yet the employees
now get very much higher wages than they
were then paid. No reduction in wages pro-
portioncd TO the reduction in rates is asked.
II is not even asked that wages shall he as
low as they were before the war. The greater
part of the loss the companies have borne and
consent to bear; they ask only that some part
of it shall be borne by those whom they en-
ploy. Can it be said that this is unjust
The strikers say, "rcal prices and the cost
"of living have not been correspondiDgly re-
duced" This is natural. Water does not
flow up hill, unless it is forced, and the cost
of living does not decline until people are
obliged to pay less. Those who have suffered
no reduction of wages have not reduced their
expenses, and therefore have helped to main
tain retail prices at an unnatural level. Men
who are still paid war wages for work are
not unnaturally compelled to pay war p1ces
for board. This is peculiarly the case in towns
where a large share of the custom comes from
railway or other employees whose wages have
workmen know that prices never will come
down until they are forced down? Expansion
is always easy. Contraction of profits, wages
and prices is always hard, and comes only by
compulsion. Whenever workmen find that
they cannot pay, and therefore refuse to pay,
the extravagant prices which were customary
in flush times, then those whose business de-
pends upon that class of workmen will begin
to reduce their charges, and not before.
The final argument always Is, awe cannot
live upon the wages proposed.' Perhaps not,
without any change in the mode of life in the
place of b arding, or III the cOnvenlences or
comforts procured. Those who are not willing
to make some change for time, and to prac-
tice greater economy or sef-denial until prices
settle to the new level, are only trying to avoid
their share of sacrifices which other men in
every walk of life have been compelled to
make. Stockholders by the hundred thousand,
who used to live upon their dividends have
been compelled to get along without any.
Workmen by the hundred thousand, who used
to live in manner unknown to their fathers,
or TO like wOrkmen in any other land, have
been forced to modify their expenses. DO the
railway men hope they are to be a favored
class, exempt from the sacrifices which III hard
times all others have to makel That 1t Is in-
possible to sustain life and health on two dol
lars or even one dollar day, no intelligent
workman will claim. Bat the sufficient answer
to this plea of the strikers is that other men
can live, and are willing and even anxious to
get employment, on the terms proposed. The
strikers themselves prove that they know this,
when they resort. TO intimidation or force to
prevent the movement of trains. They know
that if employment of new men is not thus
prevented, every vacant place will be imme-
diately filled. What right have they to say
that other needy men, who can live upon the
wages offered, shall not be permitted to earn
them? II a striker is entitled to higher wages
it is because, even III the present state of bust
ness he can earn them somewhere else. In
that case let him 90 where he can get the sum
which he considers necessary to sustain life.
He has no business to bar the door against
others who are willing to perform the same
service and to live more economically. The
man VINO cannot live on the wages which the
railways can afford to pay has no business i'll
their service, and it Is a very mean and cruel
crime for HIM to steal the bread from other
hungry men who can live upon it, and are
wiling to earn 1t.
The case is one of necessity. The railways
cannot escape bankruptcy, and some cannot
even continue in operation, unless they reduce
expenses Any employ6 VINO is not willing to
bring his own expenses within the sum which
the roads can afford to pay, has right to 90
elsewhere and earn if he can the larger sum
which he demands. The railway worSmen do
that they cannot get as high wages in any
other employment for which they are capable.
They prefer to stay, even at the cost of living
ont of work for a time, for they know that in
almost every other occupation the hard times
have caused as great or greater reduction in
wages than that proposed. Yet they are madly
wasting their own resources, and destroying
the resources from which employers must
take whatever wages they pay. They are
making still greater that prostratIOn of the
business of transportation which has caused
enormous losses to others, aud the sacrifices
which they must inevitably share. They
might, by good sense and prompt acceptance
OF their part in the burdens of society, lessen
the losses both of capital and of labor. They
prefer to increase the losses of both. TO
escape their share in the end they will find
utterly impossible. Men who cannot get such
interest as they desire for their money must
put it into something else, or be content with
less. And men who are not willing to live
upon the wages which transportation can pay.
must take their labor to some other market. AS
for men who declare that they cannot live upon
wages offered, and that others who both can
and will shall not be permitted to do so, they
deserve no sympathy, but only punishment.