Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-01-06
FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 1888.
STRIKE, BUT HEAR 7"

These words hanQeQ down to us CnTOuSn the ages have a solemn significance now. Labor has it's duties as well as it's rights; and while struggling for it's dignity it must not permit itself to degenerate into an abuse of power which may alienate the sympathies of it's best friends. In the conflict with exacting Capital it is one thing to assume an attitude assertive of it's claims to receive the bread, for which according to Gods decree it's sweat has exuded-its sweat of brawn or brain, of mind and muscle; it is another, in the inn petuosity of passion or at the instance of false teachers to place itself in opposition not only to their illiberal task-masters- but to the general interests of the public; and, as it will discover sooner or later-as it has painfully discovered in previous con flicts carried to an minimizing excess-that the homes of the strikers are the first to find the effects of homelessness; the fami- lies of the men who are led away by false teachers the greatest sufferers in the social disruption. We would not be mistaken in this expression of opinion. All our senti- ments and sympathies are with the work ing classes-we feel sorrow in their wrongs and joy in their jubilations; we claim the dignity of being of and with them. We claim not to be of the ''fruges consumere nati" class-those who like the lilies of the field ''toil not neither do they spin yet Solomon in all his glory was not ar rayed like one of these''-an the more credit to the memory of Solomon that he did not give example to the dude and the drone in the matter of habiliments. We are, we repeat, in the ranks of Labor and therein all our social loyalty is centered.
 We can, therefore, with the more ease write :remonstrantly on the Strikes in the Pennsylvania coal regions. Think of it.
 Seventy thousand men in idleness, self-im- posed; or put in by capitalist revenge and reprisal; the products of the labor of these seventy thousand pair of hands kept back from the material wealth of the country; and in seventy thousand homes averaging, perhaps, in each family of three, nearly q quarter of million of mouths without a suficiency of food, with all the other hu- miliations and heart-burnings incidental to this forced or capricious idleness. Yes, yes
 ''Strike but hear''-Strike on inforcement of legitimate claims to just requital for work performed; but hear reason when it tells you to surrender pride and passion at the voice of good sense and manly honesty. Strike for the comforts of your wives and children, but hear the demands of society that you carry not your demonstration to the extent of causing privation and discom- fort to the homes and wives and chil- dren of those who in all your just aspira- Sions and actions would aid you. This last-named condition is the impending con- sequence of the Pennsylvania strike. We shall feel the results here. A coal famine will cause famine prices for f. el. Our b. cal workingmen stand in amicable relations with their employers. There is community of interest and harmony of feeling existing between our great firms and their numer- o1s hands. We need no preaching on the moral of strikes in Waterbury, save in warning of the evils of example from a distance. Our workers are, nevertheless
 in sympathy with the struggles of the working masses elsewhere; and nothing could more readily alienate their sympathy than to find a reckless pursuit of sup posed right in the mining districts of the Keystone State producing distress in the Labor dwellings of the Naugatuck Valley.