Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1882-03-29
TRADES UNIONS UNITING
An Address to the Workingmen Calling
for Organization Against Capital.

At the meeting Sunday last of the Central
Union of the trades and labor organizations Of
New York and the neighborhood, the union, by
large majority, decided to adopt resolutions
previously reported They demand that the
State should supply the necessary machinery for
prison Industries and work the convicts; that
products should be sold for not less than similar
products Of free labor; that a large proportion
of conyicts should be employed in raising agri-
cultural produce for their own subsistence and
in making clothing for their own exclusive use:
that not more than per cent. Of the inmates
Of an institution should be employed at any one
labor should not exceed eight hours per day,
and for persons under fifteen not over five hours
The following appeal was adopted:
"Fe0o,c- Worksrs:-The situation Of labor lie
critical. Let Us calmly consider it. For years
past our work OF organizing the trades has been
in measure futile. If this were not SO we
would not be to-day at the mercy OF those who
do not labor, but possess not only the soil, but
all the means Of life. The men who misrepre-
sent US in the legislature Of New York have, In
stead OF protecting our interests, spent more
than three months in adead-lock over the strug-
gle for the spells Of Office, while the governor
calls out soldiers and sheriffs to compel hard
working farmers to pay the bonds of thieving
railroad monopoly. Walton, a STRENGTHENING
contractor in this city, leads squad of police
against thirty-hve men. who refuse to starve at
| S1.37 a day. In Glen Cove q factory aristocrat
has the audacity to send for the sheriff because
few emaciated wage-saves ask for q pit
lance over one dollar a day to pay the back
rent of the land thieves. In Maryland the
miners are threatened with a diet of lead for as
serting that they have right to eat enough
In Nebraska the railroad laborers and in Min
nesota the spinners are told that they and their
families must not ask for more than one-third
of what loungers and drones, who never work,
live on, and If they dare to say otherwise they
are shot down Ike dogs. We must expect to
meet the same answer il we declare that we can
no longer pay tribute to the ever-greedy land
lord, the usurer and the Wall street gambler.
that unholy trinity whose powers are concen-
trated in this great metropolis, which, with all
its palaces, wealth, luxury and c0mforts, was
created by our fathers hands. It is high time
that the power Of using the peoples property,
the machinery OF state and municipality, should
be wrested from the grasp Of our enemies and
returned to their rglNful owners. the working
men and the workings omen. Therefore, let Us
be united; east aside all prejudices of the past,
| and rally around the standard Of united labor
Organize, organize, organize. Our work must
| go on until all wage-wOrkers of New York and
vicinity are gathered into one solid body Of de-
termined men and women, who will in an ire
sist,bie phaianx assert their rights and extermi-
nate the abominable system of spOlation and
robbery which has made the majority the abject
slaves Of ridlculously small minority"
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