Smyrna times., 1877-08-01
Items About the Strike.
TIE LOSS AT PITTsRURG.


the damage to the property of the COM
panies is placed at five and half million
dollars. This is low estimate. The con-
tlagation involved one hundred and twenty
five locomotives, worth about $4,000
apiece. There were eight hundred or one
thousand cars, from the cheap platform
car to the Pullman palace on wheels.
There were three miles of machine and
repair shops, with their valuable tools, and
OF sheds, platforms, yards, round-houses,
&c., &c. There was costly depot building,
and large, elegant and well-furnshed
hotel. Then there is the loss on the con-
tents of the freightcars burned or pillaged
by the mob. OF this no estimate can
be made, but it must be enormous, and
whatever it is, the city of Pittsburg has
got to pay for it, as we'll as for the NAM
moth grain elevator, and for all the injury to
private houses and persons. And, to COM
plete the punishment of the unfortunate
city, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company
resolves that its shops shall be rebuilt
somewhere else.
STARVATION WAGES.
Says the n. Y. World: We have al.
ready called attention to the simple fact
that there are thousands of persons in the
country just as competent as the strikers
to do the strikers work, and just as much
entitled as they are to earn "enough to
live upon," who think the wages which the
strikers refuse enough for them to live
upon. By what law, human or divine,
are the strikers entitled to prevent these
persons by violence from earning those
wages? AS a matter of fact, the receiver
of the New Jersey Central Railroad. Mr..
Lathrop, who is as good a Democrat as our
correspondent car possibly be, shows in a
table which he sends us for publication
that the men who have struck on his line
were earning exactly the same wages last
month which they now refuse, and he
shows, too, that those Of them who earned
the least were earning considerably more
than men of the same grade can get in other
occupations. 1t appears from Mr.. Lath-
rOp's statement that brakemen on the pas
senger trains on his road earned from $45
to $50 month, while fremen earned from
SCI to So Would the wages of the FIRE
men content the brakemen? If so, how
can the firemen be said TO be living on
starvation wages?'
WHO PAYS TIE DAMAGES?
Says the N. Y-IfiB,ne: Fourteen year,
ago there was a great riot in New York
1t will long be remembered for scenes o.
brutality, but the destruction of property
was far less than at Pittsburgh the other
day. Yet for that riot the taxpayers o.
New York were held liable to the amount
of nearly $2,000,000. Bonds were issued t.
meet the charge. On these bonds we have
already paid more than a million and {
half Of interest. Every penny of thes'
large sums has come out of the pockets o
the laboring men of the metropolis. Every
penny of the much larger sum payable OF
account of Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Reading
Hornellsyille, and other scenes of thu
present disturbance, must likewise com'
out of the pockets of the working classes
WHO LEAD THE RIOTERS?
The Cincinnati Commercial explains tn
character Of the mob in that section b.
saying that ga mob led by thieves tool
possession of the Cincinnati, Hamilton an
Dayton depot and shops, stopped train
and turned the working men out of doors
There was no strike--the mob took posses
sion. Next in authority after notoriou
thief was wellknown IDIOT"
ABOUT WAGES.
The Albany journal compares the wage
OF the present time with those of 1860, an
says In spite of the very general redu,
tion since the panic of 1873 wages, as
rule, are not as low as they were in 1861
Firstrclass New England farm hands eve
for the busy seasons now only get 81 da
for odd jobs, boarding themselves at tina
But skilled laborers, such as engineers an
hremen are still paid from thirty to fift
per cent In advance of the rates of sever
teen years ago. Some corporations whic