The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1882-06-06

it is the duty of those who do understand
the wrongs of labor and some of the
means by which they may be righted, to
tell them the truth
One of the Pittsburg iron manufactur
ers, speaking of the great strike threaten
ed in that vicinity, is reported as saying:
We can stand strike very well just
pay us better to have our mills idle seven
or eight months than to agree to the adj
vance asked.
In all probability this is a sober truth.
The manufacturers have q big stock on
hand The effect of strike win be to In
crease the market value. They have moth
ing to fear from foreign competition, for
the protective tariff framed in their inter-
est keeps out the foreign product Be
fore their stock is exhausted the laborers
win have to surrender, and in the mean
time, while the one side has been MALT
starving and getting into debt the other
will be raking in large profits. This is the
whole case in nutshell. BY a strike the
laborer must stuff er even when he has his
demands acceded to.
In many cases the manufacturer need not,
as our laws stand, suffer at all, and in
some ms tances he actually gains by the
operation. 1t is notorious for instance
that the owners of the Pennsylvania coal
mines encourage strikes when they are re-
lieved by the act of closing the mines, the
odium falls upon the werkmen, and the
public pay more for coal than they would
if there were none of these periodic disturb
Dances. A still more striking though
somewhat familiar illustration is where the
Iron Manufacturers association paid a
large sum to ST. Louis firm to keep their
rolling mills idle The object was to
raise prices by reducing the production.
What difference did it make to those men
whether there was strike or notf And
how they would have laughed in their
sleeves if the ST. Louis workmen who
were by this disgraceful compact turned
out in the cold had gone out on strike.
To what degree of folly honest men
smarting under sense of wrong, and rot
intelligent enough to trace it to its right
source may go, is shown by the men en-
pioyed I'M the Pan Handle mines. Thir-
teen thousand of them have resolved to
strike unless some colored miners who
were imported from Ohio and Virginia are
discharged. This is surely the idelirium of
redress A plain human right is outraged
to begin with, and outraged to the extent
that white men may have a monopoly
of the most slavish and badly requitted
work which it is the lot of human beings
to do. 1t is hardly necessary to point out
that if there were not negro in existence
the condition of the Pan Handle miners
would be no better than it is. The tariff
would remain in force, the laws of COM
petition between themselves would APP
ply, and the iron hand of the monopolist
would be on their throats-
The American laborer has yet to learn
that it is more important for him to have
the purchasing power of his wages ia
creased than to have the number Of dollars
multiplied; that there is no prosperity for
him in any system which imports labor
free but taxes products; that the. so called
protective tariff swells the gains of monop-
olists at the expense of every wage Garner
in the country, and that the. business of
swelling and contracting the value of the
currency is altogether. congenial to specu
lative sharpers and wholly disadvantageous
to plain men. If these elementary truths
were generally appreciated, a great deal
would be done toward making strikes
things of the past.