The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-07-25
Public Opinion on the Strike.

Let those railroad strikers stop and wonder
how things would 60 if the cash boys should
try to run the store.-Detroh Free Press.
The eminent Democrats who have money
invested in railroads, or whose property is so
situated that it may fall into the hands of
present or prospective strikers, have not so
much to say today about the abolition of the
army as they had few months ago.-N. Y.
Commercial Aduertiser..
In the great emergency which confronts
the country to-day, there is one clear, straight
course before us. The first commanding du-
ty of the hour is to declare the united public
voice against all riotous demonstrations and
to support the strong arm of authority in
crushing every movement against the public
peace and security. Albany Journal.
Why not send another surrender commits
sion to negotiate with Governor Carroll and
Governor Matthews for the delivery of the
Maryland and West Virginia governments
into the hands of the dominant mob? With
out the aid of federal bayonets they could not
maintain themselves, and the mob constitu-
tes the ''de facto governments" more
thoroughly than South Carolina and Louis
iana.-1Boston TfdoelLer.
1uc IdlIOdE uou Iudy ICdliLO tuC
fatal mistake they have made, and when it is
too late. A call for meeting of leading rail-
road managers of the country is out, to con-
suit upon such measures as will secure them
from such dangers as these strikes have en-
tailed, in the future; and in all probability it
will result in united determination TO en-
ploy hereafter no men belonging to trades
union or other secret organization of similar
character.-BOst0n Globe.
The Presidents proclamation sounds well,
but there are no bayonets to enforce it. The
American Army has been pared down by the
Democratic House until it is a corporaps
guard beside the armies of foreign nations.
Yet that little army has to patrol the Rio
Grande, garrison long chain of forts on the
Western plains, overawe the treacherous
tribes in New Mexico, prevent the return of
Sitting Bull to the Yellowstone Valley, fight
with Joseph in Idaho, and now repress
domestic violence in five States. The
Government ought to have material as we'll
as moral power in an emergency like this
N. Y. Tribune.
We repeat, therefore, our warning to hon.
est and respectable workingmen not to let
their sympathies 60 out to wrongdoers. The
men who are blockading roads, burning cars,
attacking troops, breaking open and sacking
shops, throwing stones into moving trains,
are not strikers; they are rioters; it is not
strike, but an insurrection, and it has not a
hope OF success. 1t may still further cripple
the railroad companies and disable them from
paying fair wages, it may put the public to
great inconvenience, loss and expense; but
it will be crushed out; and when the end
comes, after all the disgrace such anarchical
attempts bring upon the country and upon
its workmen, what good will have been ac-
complished?-N. Y. Herald.
The real railway men have been swept
aside and supplanted since the outbreak of
the pending strike by persons who have no
real sympathy with the workers on our rail-
ways, and who are attempting to transform
this movement, for their own purposes, into
an outright ainsurrection against public order.
1t is both the interest and the duty of every
railway man in the country, therefore. no
matter how humble may be his position or
how strong his feeling that he has not been
fairly dealt with by his employers, to lose no
time in separating himself completely from
all association with the reckless rioters who
are trying to precipitate nothing less than a
social war on the people of this country.-N
Y. World.
SOluO SuCA vain pCAiOu 10 uPOn tAO COQbtAJ
as followed the dropping out of the bottom of
values after the Revolutionary War, with
something OF the same kind of outbreaks of
violence and organized rebellions against the
new and hard conditions imposed. These
present formidable strikes, for organizing and
spreading which the great railroads, unknown
in the previous. similar crisis, offer unprece-
dented facilities both for combining the mall
apd for ipiu fhoir ptaon 70
while crppling the whole community, are in
their force and ferocity timely warning that
the readjustment must be mutually consider
ate, and that the lower layers cannot be
made to bear all the grinding without top
pling over the whole fabric.-Boston Tran
script.
These classes of madmen directly incite to
iarrection; they do so knowingly. There are
other ways of encouraging insurrecton,
less direct and unintentional, but scarcely less
effectual. Whatever encourages the strikers
and rioters to believe that they can succeed
ia their violent measures has such tenden-
cy. Every day tine state and federal govern
ments fail to put down the rioters they en-
courage them, and so incite to insurrection.
demands of the strikers has like effect; and
therefore we are afraid that the Central Pa
cific and other railroad companies which are
reported to have raised wages in obedience to
the violent demonstrations of the last few
days have made mistake.-N. Y. Post.
Another effect Of the riots will be to cause
pronounced and vigorous popular condem-
nation of trades unionism, as a peril to the
public peace and the interests Of property
holders in general. The railroad managers
of the country are to NEE. to consult on
measures to protect themselves from the RI
oters, and if they unite in the determination
in future not to hire men belonging to any
trades union or secret organizations, as they
probably will do, that resolution will have the
support OF public opinion, as it would not
have had before events of the past week. And
no doubt other corporations and employers
will adopt the same policy.-Sprinafeld
Union.
The men who started these troubles and
their fellow-workers will inevitably suffer
most from them. If they could succeed in
their insane attempts, as happily they cannot,
their condition would be worse than it was
before. They depend tor their support uron
the orderly and peaceful progress of the in
dustries OF the community. If property
were put at the mercy of lawless mobs, and
could be used only in such manner as riotous
combinations OF men should choose to die
tate, capital would lie idle, all the industries
of the country would be checked or destroy
ed, society would stagnate, aud period OF
destitution and misery would follow, compar-
ed with which the hardest of hard times hith-
erto known would seem exuberant prosperi-