Litchfield enquirer., 1877-08-02
Communism and The strikes.

suit IS what any reasonable person would have expected. 'Labor," so-called, has been defeated by s'capital' all along the line. The strikers are glad to get to work for the wages they had refused, and they have done all they could for a week tu make it impossible for the railroad com. panies to increase those wages. The se yerest sufferer is the Pennsylvania Rail. road Co.,, whose property destroyed at Pittsburgh cannot easily be replaced, and the stoppage of business on other roads entails heavy loss on the companies and great annoyance to business. The Pitts. burgh loss will eventually fall, however. upon the community to whose supineness their twenty-four hours reign of terror is mainly attributable.
 It is mistake to attribute the late out break to Communism. It was not Com munism but barbarian. Communism does not propose any destruction of prop erty, but different tenure of property. It proposes that the bulk of the accumu- lation of people should be held by the community at large. not by individuals. Our present system is the more natural one, but it tends to great accumulations of property in few hands, and gradually reduces the great majority of citizens to dependence on the few. This tendency is nowhere more obvions than in Ameri- ca, where, though all originally started nearly alike, superior strength, thrift or capacity is rapidly producing all the inc qualities of wealth and social condition which are the chief danger of Europe. Communism proposes to level these diff ferences of the individual system; to raise the virtuous poor above all danger of want. and to take away from the rich those immense advantages which they of ten owe to the accident of birth. or to op- portunity, rather than to any extraordina- ry merit of their own. The difficulty with Communism is that it is as yet only theory. Practically it seems to give even greater power to the few over the many than indiyidualism. The Oneida Community. and the Shakers, are. if we are correctly informed, autocracies rather than democracies. The theory of the railroad company is, in a certain sense, communistic. It associates the property of individuals in large masses for the ac- oomplishment of vast objects beyond the power of any individual. The govern ment of the railroad company is republi- can in form, but autocratic in substance. Vanderbilt rules his great trunk line" as despotically as Alexander governs Russia. Tom Scott controls the Pennsylvania trunk line, and other railroad magnates manage other great roads more or less despotically. In no case is there any thing democratic about the management of great corporations, such as the theory of their government might lead us to ex- pect. Would there not be the same diff fculty in the practical working of Com munistio government? Would not able men acquire power over the community which they now find it impossible to ex- ercise over individuals?
 Whatever may be the advantages or dis advantages of Communism, the atrocities of Paris and of Pittsburgh are utterly foreign to it's true spirit. which is con- structive and not destructive. It's per version is due to the selishness of pop ulace, mostly European, who construe 8 theory of community of goods into g practical license for the pillage of the good of others. The mob that burned millions of property at Pittsburgh was pursuing European not American methods. The strike itself is European and not an American invention. The em- ployee flies from the supposed tyranny of the employer to the real tyranny of the Trades Union for protection, plan that belongs to the barbarism of the Middle Ages rather than to modern civilization. It is great blunder, natural to the ignor- ance of an European laborer, but one of the first errors he must unlearn if he IS to succeed in America
 There is much about both our system of mammoth corporations, railroad and oth- CT, and about our whole labor system, that thinking mon regard with concern. Of one thing. however, there can be no doubt, that these evils must be corrected by the methods of an advanced civiIiza. tion, not by a reversion to the methods oi barbarian, with it's strikes, it's riots and it's devastation of property.