Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-03-11
THE RAILROAD STRIKERS.

lie news TINS morning from the strli0
ing railroad employees, is Of a serious anC
alarming character. The kilograms from
st. Louis tells us that Lieutenant-C Colonel
Walbridge, in response to a call fol-
troops from Governor Marmaduke, has
started for Sedalia with two hundred and
fifty of the militia, with ball cartridges in
their belts, and trailing Gatling guns.
In Kansas there is as yet 10 call on the
militia, and it is gratifying to know that
there will probably be no necessity for
asking the GovernoIIto order them out, it
being feared that the presence of the
military among the strikers may have an
irritating effect, and lead to an armed
conflict between the strikers and troops,
and so an armistice for four days has been
agreed upon, and the troops are fifteen
miles firm Sedalia.
reduction OF wages among employees,
whose salaries are meagre at best, is a
dangerous experiment in hard times. The
danger arises from the want of any SYM
pathy between employers and employees.
High salaried and supernumerous officials
are retained, and while they as well as
section hands, yard men, shopmen, train
hands and the vast retinue it takes to run
a railroad are subjected &c the horizontal
cut, to them ii is merely the temporary
loss OF l6i.e luXuries, but to the rank and
bic 1t is a taking away from the supply of
daily bread.
81 Labor unions have much to do with the
discomfort Of the working classes in dull
times, and they to enforce the full pay or
nopay rule whether business interests can
give it without loss and complete failure or
not. Here again an eatieRte cordiaIe could
often be arrived at, if mutual respect and
mutual dependence were understood as
they should be. Labor and capital are
alike sterile without the union and coop
Grafton Of each with the other; they are
interdependent, and fall without the sup
port essential to both.
The strike on the Missouri Pacific is it.
self momentous one, and is already far
greater than the great strike of u was at
the some stage of its existence. The
strike OF " was the spark that fired
the powder trains with which
the whole country seemed to be
laid. The disastrous consequences of
that strike, followed as it was by wild
saturnalia manned and of1iceIed by the
worst elements that society can produce,
are recurring to the minds of all to-day,
and the question naturally arises, are the
street scenes Of Baltimore and Pittsburg
to be gone through again, as well as the
diITversaI te1dency to strike as there was
IN 1877. But, if it shall happen it will
most likely be as universal in its spread, !
and more disastrous in its consequences
than that great strike, on ac-
count of the presence in most of the |
large cities of the country of well organ
lied and numerous societies such as Com |
munists, Socialists, Nihilists, etc. How
strange it is that men should cling so te-
naciously to the idea that the evils of So
clal systems can be cured by complete
destruction OF existing institutions! Even
Hertzen in the last years of his life,
which were spent in Switzerland, in writ
ing to his Italian friend and biographer,
acknowledged the incompetency of Nj
hilistic and kindred organizations to cor
rect or even cope with the evils and in
of governments in modern
times.
The burning of the Alexandrian library
by Omar was not cure for the eurrors of
and the conflict of religious !
IDEAS no more are are strikes and riots a
'anacea for business depressions and
lard times. To suggest their cure is more I
lifficult than to see their evils.