Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1881-02-12

other workmen, organized or not, will
derive lasting lesson from the ISSUE
of the alleged riot at Salisbury-that
labor reforms cannot be effected by
force, or demonstrations of force.
The law, the courts, our whole ma.
chinery of sentiment and practise, are
inveterately against all exertions or
displays of factious power to coerce or
overawe Others into any measure, no
matter how good.
jefferson wrote of "force" as "the
vital principle and immediate parent
of despotism." In this case also "the
child is father to the man." To use
it as propagator of reform is to sui
tify our condemnation of corporate
tyranny.
Too much emphasis cannot be en-
ployed here in stating that the zap.
pearance of evil" is quite as fatal to
the cause of the accused as the fact
established.
The JOURNAL will never cease to
insist upon peaceful effort to inspire
the poor blackleg with manllness as
against terrorism which may scare
him into treason and cowardice.
The wise leader in any economy ac-
cepts circumstances and conditions as
they are.
The fool takes them as he thinks
they ought to be.
In the very moment wise man
discovers his fellow laborers carrying
measure outside the law, he knows
that in the nature of things they will
be beaten moreover, that if the le-
gal and moral nature of movement
is questionable, it is much easier fol
enemies to put them in the wrong than
for them to establish in the popular
mind possible deception that they
are right.
The fool, with his senseless carica-
lures, "rawheads and bloody bones, "
"cofins and spades" and threatenings
of slaughter, alarms no brave man, but
like everv other Minotaur OF ignorance
goes to the deeps at last, leaving the
anonymous memorials of his baseness
as load of reproach for innocent peo-
pie to carry.
Suppose a body of women and so
Der men, suffering from the evil of
drunkenness, were to attempt by
violence and riot, real OF apparent, to
redress their wrongs, who are the
rational temperance people who would
not stamp the "crusade" and "crusa.
ders" alike in the dust
Society, itselfan organization bound
together by chain of moral obliga-
tions, is not, therefore, if it ever can
be, ready for reformatory violences
which strain or break its links; it is
intolerant of intolerance, and impa-
tient of contempt of its reasonable
restrictions.
But it looks with suferance, appro-
baton, encouragement, upon all ad-
vancements based upon moral suasion
and honest industry.
Liberty ofconduct, regulated by law,
is the true monarchy in politics, re-
ligion and personal economy, every
man is claw unto himself "a SOW
ereign of the realm. The citizen who
assails his neighbours high preroga-
tives, denies his own !; he who destroys
them, commits political suicide.
In popular government the civil
and political rights Of one citizen are
the civil and political rights of all
citizens. Each is as much interested
in maintaining those of his fellow as
in preserving his own.
The miner who enforces his views
by intimidation or otherwise, is no
worse than the operator who employs
civil or military power to coerce the
miner. Perhaps not so bad. The
blackleg is the great "rock of offence"
he destroys business arnity by his lep-
rous touch, ruins the miner and makes
tyrant of the operator.
1t will never do, however, to whip
the wretch into good manners; beat
him into virtue, or shoot him out of
life. Whatever injury his baseness
may accomplish here, be sure he gains
no vantage ground in hell.
The men who most completely rec
ognize these conglomerate, crystalzed
demonstrations of all the ages as the
central, dominating, electrical facts in
ethical philosophy, will be "wiso in
their day and generation"