Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1880-01-24
THE COST OF RIOTS.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has
it 10 stated, compromised with the county of
Allegheny for losses which were suffered by 1t.
and it's dependent roads, from the disgracetul
Pittsburg riots; accepting 81 900, 600 In settle
nent for the 50, 000, 900 worth Of property de-
stroyed. There still remain losses to be set
tied as follows: Freight destroyed, $500, 200:
other railroad companies, $50, 600; private
property, $3.50 600; grain elevator, $2lO, ZOO;
Pullman Car Company. SIC, 200; Keystone
Hotel Company, S32, 700; total, 81 ,4l9 900;
BY the time the property owners of Plttsburg
and Allegheny counties have paid the bonds
which will be issued to settle all these claims,
they will have vivid realization Of the cost
of having their affairs controlled by imbecile
and mob sympathzing officers. Sc Chicago Rail
way Age.
The above goes to show that it is not econ
omy TO pay men low wages. The cause of the
Pittsburg riots was the starvation pittances
payed employees by the nnsylvania Il. K
Company. The monopoly is one of the richest
in the United States. Yet before those riots,
there were men on the road, brskemen, work
ing SIX teen hours day in all sorts Of weather,
for ninety cents Some of these men had fam
lies to support, and the prlvatlons and hard
ships of a family with ninety cents day to
kuy fuel, food and clothes, can be imagined
When you starve a human being, you reduce
him to q british level 1t is not surprising
that a man who gets ninety cents day to sup
port family, becomes reckless when he sees
his employers building palaces out OF the econ
omy forced upon himself and his neighbors
When he sees his children on the verge of
starvation and feels the psngs of hunger grip
ing his own vitas, it is not to he wondered at
that he takes a shotgun and joins the mob
The grasping and souless corporations who
forced serf' 3 pay on American laborers should
shoulder a good deal of the responsibility
which is attached to the Pittsburg riots. The
destruction of property amounted to about
three M illions and half and had this sum been
paid out in decent wages, hundreds of homes
would heve been glad6ened and the destrue-
ton of this amount of property avoided.
American laborers are as mass quiet, law
abiding citizens, but there is certain limit
beyond which they will however not be driven
without fighting for their rights. 1t would
strike the ordinary sagacity that ninety cents
a day for twelve and sixteen hours work was
about the lowest limit that manhood could
be expected to stand. This system of starva-
ton wages was tried in France and the popu-
lace in its frenzy soaked the soil with the
blood of the nobility. The country, purged
of class of people VINO would live in idleness
and fatten of the privations of the poor, ex-
perienced an une1ampled season of prosperity
after its terrible baptism Of blood. No man
has right to live in palace at the expense
of i've hundred who live in novels A man
is base born, heartless and inhuman who has
twenty suits of clothes while those who work
for him are shivering through their rags. The
gulf between labor and capital is widening ev-
cry day, and the experiences of the past show
that it may at any time be bridsed by revolu
ton.