New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1883-05-31
THREATENED IRON TROUBLES.

THREAIENED IRON IhOCDLEo.
1t may be assumed that the iron workers
who propose to strike work this week do not
intend to cut their own throats. Industrial
suicide however does sometimes occur. Men
occasionally fancy that they are wise In resisting
visible and tangible present loss, when 1t
turns out that this very loss if manfully sus-
tanned. would have saved them from incompar-
ably greater disasters. The irun-workers Oh
the West have been receiving high wages
They have accustomed themselves and their
families. and adapted their modes OF life and
their personal habits, to this scale OF income,
and 1t seems to them utterly impossible to live
on smaller wages, even for time. But how
will it suit them to deprive Themselves OIL any
wages whatever, for an indefinite perlod
Great industries do sometimes sustain pro-
longed and tremendous reaction. Even II no
widespread disaster should result from long
stoppage of works, it may be well to remember
that great industries do some times move from
old to new centres, and that these revolutions
are often brought about by strifcs between en-
ployers and employed. The manufacture OF iron
does not necessarily find its permanent head
quarters at Pittsburg, for example. 1t Is at
least conceivable that Pittsbarg workers may
wake UP some day and find that new men IN
Eastern or Southern or far Western towns are
doing the work that they used to do, and that
there is no place at all left for them.
These are mere possibilities, it is true. But
the last long strike certainly gave a great i'm
petus to work somewhere beyond the influence
of that disturbance. More iron was made
somewhere else, and that for months, as the
records prove and it found "a market with those
to whom Pittsburg iron had previously been
suppied After the strike ceased, II was sup
posed that prices could be maintained. Buta
great decline followed This was in part be-
cause strikers in Western mills had stimulated
an increase of production elsewhere, and
those mills, when they began work again, had
TO confront new competitors. The consequence
is that some important establishments have
gone into bankruptcy. New works can be
erected, without long delay, in several regions
where recent developments have furnished
new supply of cheap iron. For example, Nlr-
gnia has vastly increased its production OF ex-
cellent and cheap plg-iron within the past year
one new furnace. the largest in the United
States, having just gone into blast. Suppose that
the English capitalists who have put million
or two into that enterprise should see fit next to
mt M works fer the manufacture and finishing
of the iron-with cheap labor, cheap iron and
cheap fuel at hand, would not such an estab-
lshment make difference ultimately IN the
market for Pttsburg iron The same ching
might be done in Alabama or 1ennessec, has
been done in Colorado, and is likely to be done
whenever strikes at Pittsburg make supplies
from that region uncertain.
The pig iron costs more money at Pttsburg,
and at some other places WHERE disturbance is
threatened, than it does in many localities.
Holders of the raw metal have rather obsti-
nately held up the price, insisting that they
could not afford to make iron for less money.
1t may be that they cannot the stoppage OF
work at some furnaces supports that claim.
But long strike, by diminishing the demand
for pig iron within large district, and that at
a time when the market Is already much de-
pressed, and when new and cheaper iron from
other quarters is seeking market, may
cause suspension Of work at not few estab
lishmepts. Ia it quite clear that these will
start up again, whenever the striking workmen
get ready to work Their market may mean
while get filed with other iron, and accustomed
to a lower range of prices. Then, when Pitts
burg, for instance, has become dependent in
part upon a distant point for its supply of
metal, the establishment of manufactures at
that other point will offer clear and decisive
advantages. Thus in a thousand ways which
can be anticipated, a prolonged interruption of
industry at any great centre may surprisingly
accelerate a transfer of trade and industry from
that centre to some other.
OF course the wOrKmen can move more easily
than the mills. But the men are very apt to
stay because the mills stay. They calculate
that after time, at all events, these same mills
must resume work and require hands. While
the men wait, the business which has kept tho
mills alive can be imperceptibly carried off by
rival cities, never to return. Snch things are
possible ard have actually occurred. This
present condition of the iron industry is pre-
cisely that in which such large changes in bust
ness occur most easily. 1t is recorded that
more than 1000 miners, who quit work in one
of tho great strikes in the anthracite region, ex-
pecting to resume again in few days OF
weeks never found employment again in min
ing anywhere, but were finally obliged to seek
different employment at the West. 1t is alto
gether possible that prolonged struggle
about wages in the Pittsburg iron mills, occur
ring in the present state of trade, may result
in no wages at all for thousands of the iron
workers engaged therein, until they seek
living in some other employment. Those
who resolve to throw great industry into
disorder need extraordinary wisdom to decide
whether they are bringing disaster upon them
selves.
FOREIGN TRADE.
The official report of foreign commerce for