Morning journal and courier., 1886-04-06
ROYCOTTING MEN.

The Strike Not Against Capital, But
 Against Unemployed and Suffering
 Labor.
 [Fro the New York Journal of Cemmerce.l
 The strikers are struggling ostensibly for the rights of workingmen; and If sufficient number of this class are willing to fill the vacant places may they not do it! Are the workingmen who go out on a strike the only members of the fraternity who have rights entitled to respect? If it is their right to combine and leave the looms, or the forges, or the turning lathes, or the car fronts, si- lent and deserted, may not other working men with equal rights come in to fill the va cancv and restore the old activity! Are the wives and children of men who have been long unemployed and who jump at this op- portunity to earn livelihood any less enti- tied to bread than the families of the stri- kers. who have been the theme of so much eloquence!
 What do we see on every side? The most intolerable tyranny over his fellows practised by the very men who claim to be the an nointed apostles of freedom. For, let all mark it violence is not directed against the employer If there were no idle workmen anxious for service there would be need of bowling mob armed with clubs and pay ing stones to keep the deserted works in the idleness to which they have been devoted. The employer cannot start his works without the laborers, and if a mob is needed to stop the enterprise the violence is not against the capitalist. but against the workmen who are seeking the service If we concede the right of the men to combine and leave the looms, and the forges, and the mines, and the cars, and the carts, and the barges to decay in si- fence, there is no need of an angry word to effect all this unless the rights of other work ingmen are ruthlesslv invaded.
 The spirit of mob violence is not, there fore directed first or chiefly against the em- ployer, no matter how great tyrant he may have been. He is powerless and may fold his arms in silence if no one is ready to en- ter the vacant service. Every act of intimi- dation, every resort to brute force, shows that other workiugmen are willing to fill the deserted places and must be kept from it by the grossest violation of the very liberties these men have vowed to cherish and pro tect There can be no occasion for demon strations of force, except as these are direct ed against men who are willing and anxious to work.
 twill the scabs and the rats take the bread out of the mouths of our wives and children?' demand the angry rioters as they break the windows of the factory, over turn the cars in the street, tear up the tracks of the railway, upset the carts loaded with coal, cast off the lines of the barges, f'kill'' the engines ready to draw the freight, and hardly stop short of killing the men who de- sire to use them for this purpose.
 But have the scabs and the rats and all the rest of the unemployed, by whatever oppro- brious names they may be known, who seek to secure this service, no liberty to put the bread earned by honest toll into the mouths of their wives and little onesa By what new stbill of rights' is this denied to thema Is is not as..much of sacred 'trightn for one man to hire himself out as for another man to quit the hireling's places But eff these men take the vacant places they keep the