Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1877-10-24
WENDELL PHILLIPS ON THE LABOR
QUESTION.

Wendell Philips has recently published g
letter in which he gives his views of the labor
question. We take from it the following
paragraphs. Referring to railroad managers
he says:
"Trusted with vast interests, heralded to
the world as men of marvellous ability and
with all the means of success at their hands,
one-half of them has landed the stock holders
in bankruptcy, and the other half has helped
to plumber them to an enormous extent. Elk
press companies and the Pullman car COM
panies and other cliques, made up from the
so-called managers of the roads, have been
allowed to take the cream of the business and
eat up the earnings of the road. This fraud
of incapacity has lessened the fund out of
which the ordinary employees of the roads are
paid Hence one source of distress to labor
Enormous salaries have been paid-S5, GOO to
$50, OOO-to the higher class of officers, and
in some cases large dividends have been de-
clared, while the ground tier of employees
have had their wages reduced to starvation
point. Twenty -fve cents a day is a great
loss to them, while by such reduction the
company does not save as much, perhaps, as
it would by dispensing with two comparatively
useless Vice Presidents. Who wonders that
labor frets at such unequal arrangements {?
Recklessness in running into debt has added
another burden to labor by mortgaging the
fund out of which its wages were to come. L
abhor and denounce all violence, every assault
on private right or property, OH the liberty OF
the individual workman, and above all on life.
But these outbreaks are transient and ex-
ceptional In spite of them every thoughtful
man must rejoice that the laboring men are
awake, intelligent and independent. Lord
Chatham said he rejolced that America had
resisted British injustice. Submission to it
would have shown the Americans to be slaves
and ready to make other men slaves. | re-
joice in the clear judgement which enables
the workmen to discover the danger which
threatens him. and in the widespread and I'M
conquerable determination to avert it. l re-
joice in his readiness to resist state of affairs
that degrades him, threatens to undermine
republican institutions and to condemn his
children to want, ignorance and dependence.
1t is one of the chief benefits of education,
civilization and progress that they make, and
are intended to make, such violation of right,
such injustice and oppression dangerous and
almost impossible. The inevitable dangers
land there are inevitable dangers) which at
tend such in Justice are enough to arouse the
keenest anxiety of capitalists. That spur is
enough to quicken their consent to do justice. |
l counsel working men to frown on resorts to
violence. 1t can only delay the remedy they |
seek. Let them rely on agitation, discussion
and on associations for mutual help and pro-
lection; but only such discountenance
violence and abstain from all interference
with the rights and free action of individual
Voters under representative
government, let them unite in political action
and let them appeal to the moral forces of the
age. The necessities which underlie free in
situations and the soundest maxims of politi-
cal economy are their strong allies, and the
conscience of mankind is on their side