Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1886-08-07
Ghe Caufastcr 1ntclliqcnter,
LANCASTER. AUGUST :. lsss.
Law and Labor,

Whatever quack economists may teach
and whatever political pretenders may
pretend, the labor issue in Pennsylvania
politics cannot be separated from the issue
of enforcing the state constitution. They
are at present identified. There will be
no protection for the laboring man until
one law governs all ; and while it does not.
there is " discrimination of which un-
equal freight charges is only one phase.
The contest this year, while offering a
fattering prospect TO the Democracy, can
not be carried by any party which ignores
or in any degree is insensible to the lead
ing ideas of the labor organizations of the
state. Chief among the doctrines of this
party (for these organizations are in effect
fast becoming active political agenies) is
the one supreme idea of anti-monopoly.
All the utterances of all the labor
unions throughout the country have long
held against all kinds of monopoly and
none more so than the determinations of
the railways out of which monopoly
in multitude of instances has di-
rectly sprung. IL would be highly
inconsistent and even distinctly absurd for
the labor unions to tolerate discrimina-
tiOns, and cry out against the tyranny of
organized capital permitted to reyel un-
hindered in the exercise of its own sweet
will. No candid man denies the utility to
the workingman of certain organizations
meant to check infringements upon the
individual and combined interests of men
who work and are in subsection to that
impalpable, but powerful body of en-
ployers, the corporations.
When the Pittsburg riots befel, the
strikers presented memorial TO the Penn
sylvania railway, rehearsing how the CON-
pany was robbed by its own management
and determinations against local interests
In favor of outside interests and organized
monopolie5. The chamber of commerce
OF Plttsburg had protested in unison with
the employees OF the road against unjust
determinations affecting the entire in
dustries of that industrial centre. Labor
on the road and labor off the road was
similarly affected. All the world knows
how sl50,000,0O0 of private capital were
swept away by the power OF huge mono
poly over the rates given to it by the carry
ing companies. The grangers Joined the
general cry; and there was not a single
chamber of commerce in the common
wealth but, in set terms, protested against
the hwless reign of railway monopoly
which ignored all the equities of local COM
merce and adhered only in their local
charges to the law of "all the traffic will
bear"
The labor sentiment must go always, as
1t always has done, in favor of the local in
dustries OF the state the farming interest
reciprocally must turn the same way. If
The case was serious once, by reason of the
humoring of Western interests with favor
able seaboard freights over the same inter |
ests nearer home and within the confines of |
the state, it is likely to be doubly so in the |
near future. The United States commits.
si0ner OF agriculture declared it his delib- |
crate conviction, some time since, Ia con-
clusion that is being sorely verified every |
day) that there had been, by reason of rail-
way speculation, the absorption of cOmpet-
ing lines and the contests for Western
Irelghts and in passenger rates periodically
practiced by the great trunk lines an
over-development of the West ''-dispro-
portlonate to her own welfare and detri.
mental to other sections of the country
nearer to the seaboard. The laborer on
the farm the laborer at the forge; the |
skilled artisan of all kinds, men, women
and children of Pennsylvania, the second
state in the Union, are all
concerned in securing to themselves a
nome market. They do not look beyond
the confines of their own state to find
where their bread is buttered.
But now-now that Indian and Egyp-
tian wheat is quoted in Liverpool at prices
which are about the same as those of Chi
cago; and the British empire, with its
snort route to Asiatic seas, is laying out |
It's entire commercial strength in develop.
ing its Eastern ependencies-their grain,
i've stock and cotton, there must perforce |
De further reductions in freights to meet |
this inapproachable competition. Home
markets must become, therefore, the rule
all over the country, at this rate, to sustain
labor. Labor sees this and the labor of |
fennsylvania will support Democratic
candidate who is the apostle of anti-dis-
examination and fixed rates of carriage
under the supreme law of the state.