The Labor enquirer., 1883-06-16
The Newspapers.
the Editor of The Labor Enquirer.

To the Editor of The Labor Enquirer
ASPEN, June l2-Every person in this
country must have noticed the efforts
that are continually being made by the
capitalistic press to keep from it's read
ers every great movement among the
workingmen. Hardly any of those
papers have a word to say about the
anti-monopoly convention to be held on
July in Chicago, and were it not for
the labor papers we might not know
that any such great movement was on
foot. And when strike occurs in which
the strikers are defeated those papers
never miss the opportunity of pointing
it out as a moral to the laboringmen,
but notice where the strikers are vic
torious they have very little to say about
the matter Vanderbilt's masquerade
ball occupied two columns in the New
York Sun, and when eighty-three men
were killed in the Diamond mine, it
barely mentioned the disaster. And
yet, Thomas, the Sun is the most liberal
of them all, one of it's editors, John
Swinton. being the avoA ed friend of the
worklngman.-ED] When the Cana
dian royal party was travelling through
this western country last fall it was dis
gusting to read in every daily in the
state the trash they printed about the
royalty how the princess admired the
scenery of such place, and what she
said in her superior wisdom of the water
and air of such place. Let any duke
or half-witted lord get married in Europe
and half the papers in this country 60
into ecstacies over the brilliant event."
and one side of Harper's is taken up to
illustrate it; but the people may 60
hungry at home and thousands of men
be out of work, their wives and little
ones suffering for the necessaries of life,
and our great papers have no word of
sympathy for them. If their condition is
spoken Of at all, it is, lowing to the de-
pressed condition of trade that necessi-
tates a reduction of wages" instead of
the true reason, the grasping greed of
monopolies, monopolies that are never
satisfied unless they have wages down to
the very lowest point at which a man
Can exist. sz#S1 4 ,.
| know a corporation in Hartford,
Connecticut, which has been clearing
annually net profit of $4,000, and the
same corporation pays children Is cents
day for their labor. We hear a great
deal on decoration days and at election
times of this glorious land of the free, /
and of the struggle by which slavery
was abolished, when there is slavery !
just as bad over this land to-day-the |
slavery of the laboring classes. A slave
in the southern states was fed and
clothed for his work what more than
hot no 10 h in
of the eastern states, who are working
for s. and So per month How can
man feed and clothe family on 80 or
80 cents day? What is it but slavery
that compels man to toll from daylight
till dark, year in and year out, for moth
ing but bare living?
Sometimes, as has often happened in
Ireland, the people do not get even this
bare living. Sometimes, after toiling the
whole year round, the proceeds of their
labor is taken from them, and thousands
have starved to death.
But such little matters as these are
not discussed very much by our large
newspapers. and the true cause of the
poverty of the masses is kept carefully
out of sight. The poor workingman
comes in for no part of their sympathies.
They are satisfied with the progress of
the few and the poverty of the many,
and no wonder since the most of those
papers are owned and controlled by rich
Now, those capitalistic papers have the
most of their circulation among work
ingmen, and if the workingmen would
only stop supporting them and take the
papers that are devoted to their inter-
ests, defending their rights and uphold
idg them in their struggle, they could
soon make this capitalistic press change
its tune concerning labor, and greatly
improve their condition, which, God
knows, is much in need of improvement.
THOMAS H. HAYES.