The Weekly Kansas chief. [volume] (Troy, Kan.) 1872-1918, 1877-08-02
The strike.

The great strike is about ended, and business
is resuniDg on all the roads. The strike got to
be too big thing for those who started it, and
soon passed beyond their control. 1t commence
ed with railroad employees, on account of a re-
luction of wages; but it was taken mp by all the
malcontents, roughs, tramps, thieves, and other
dregs of society, who made it an occasion for
outlawry and plunder. Men who never worked,
banded together and visited all the shops, conf
pelling the laborers to cease work, even those
who were satisfied with their wages. And now,
after it is over, the railroad men have not bet
tered their condition, they have lost much time,
and famine is staring the working men in the
face This was not intended by the originators
of the STRIKE but it is the effect of bringing ban
dts and beasts of prey to the front for the time
being.
The blame for all the trouble will generally
be placed upon the railroad strikers. While the
mischief was an outgrowth of the strike, the rail-
road men were no more responsible for it than
the woman who builds fire in her cooking stove
is responsible for con6agration that may be
caused by the sparks going out of their usual
course, or falling upon some combustible mate
rial lying around loose. The men struck for
Lu6lI IdIuillts 1uu tuci Ahcii ooJcSe "t>0
j justifiable. 1t is poor doctrine that men must
always submit to injustice and oppression lest
somebody take advantage of their efforts to per-
petrate wrong. There are roughs and bad men
among railroad men; but taken as class, they
are not outlaws, and men who will malciously
damage or destroy property. They daily have
the care of hundreds of lives and thousands of
dollars worth of property, and their schooling
and daily habits are such, that it becomes part
of their nature to watch and protect others lives
and property, while they know that their own
lives are in constant peril. When the mobs be-
came unmanageable, the striking railroad EN-
ployees themselves volunteered as guards to pro-
tect railroad property.
We hear any amount of such stuff as this: that
capital must be protected; that if men cannot
work for the wages offered, they have right to
quit, and let others take their places, who will
work the wages offered and much else of like
nature. All this is we'll enough to sit ON goods
boxes and talk about. Why should not labor be
protected, as well as cspitalf Labor produces
capital, yet it is the slave of capital. The capi
talist fixes the prices of his own commodities
and his his own services and also fixes the price
that he will pay the men who produce his capi-
tai. Capital has all the rights; labor has but
one right-the right to starve on the wages that
capital sees fit to give it, or to quit work and
starve. All men are brutcs it only requires a
certain amount of oppression and injustice to
cause the brute to rise above the man. If a man
with family cannot live on the wages the rail-
road corporation sees fit to pay him. let him quit,
and fill his place with cheap vagabond; who
will perhaps leave his work at the ED of the
first week, to be succeeded by another cheap man,
who will do the same thing. But the reliable
man who has quit the railroad, perhaps finds
every other field of labor managed in the same
way. When he cannot earn a living, he will
steal it, or organize a mob, and take it. Men
will no more starve than wolves, as long as there
is game to prey upon. When men are willing to
work, are reliable and understand their bnsi-
ness the safest plan is to let them work and live
Men who gamble in railroads, and pay them
selves princely salaries, not the ones to CON-
plain of not making dividends, and try to make
it up off of the daily wages of working men.
Tom Scott would not stand between two freight
cars, and couple them they crashed together,
for hundred dollars and Jay Gould would not,
for thousand dollars, hustle around all day on
the sleety roof of cattle car, With the mercury
ten degrees below zero, and the wind blowing a
gale in his face. But they can coolly decide that
a poor man may do it for 80 cents or 81 day, or
quit. The one is capitalist, the other labor
er. Yet the train could better be run without
capital than without labor.
The next thing we hear, the railroads will be
putting up freights, to make up their losses from
the strike. The farmer will get less for his pro-
duce, and the farmer and laboring man pay more
for their goods, because freights have advanced.
Here will be another phase of the rights of capital
over labor. The capitalist has the right to make
up his losses by taking the money from other
peoples pockets; but if the price of farm pro-
duce or labor goes down, the farmer or the labor
er must bear the loss. Yet they tell us that cap
ital must be protected. Why not the other side ?
1t is this one-sded protection-this law for the
capitalist, and root, hog die, for the iaborer-
that has caused all the difficulty, and will con-
tinue to cause trouble, until the law works both
ways.
D.x,c