The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-03-04
RIGHTS.

If there is one thing in labor problems
better settled than another, it IS that
men have the right to quit work and
that employers have the right to FLY
their places without interference
Neither the law nor public sentiment
will support an individual or union in
saving to those who have taken the
places of strikers that they shall net
work. In the great strike on the Gould
railways in 1886, the sympathies OF the
oublic wero with the strikers as to their
demand, but when the latter un-
dertook by force to prevent the
companies exercising their right
to employ other laborers, and to
prevent these other laborers working,
the popular sentiment at once turned
against the strikers and demanded
their suppression. So was in the late
big strike on the Philadelphia & Read
ing railway. Nobody complained OF
the men going out; it was their right TO
withdraw from the service OF the COM
pany, and to employ argument and
moral suasion to keep others from
entering the railways employment; but
when the strikers undertook to usetorc7
to drive non-uniOn men away, people
and press said the strikers must be
suppressed il it required the entire mil
itary force Of the State to do it. Even
Chief Arthur, the head of the Brother
hood OF Locomotive Engineers, now
engaged in a contest with the Burling-
ton road, is or record as approving this
principle. He has asserted it mar y
times. In 1886, addressing the officials
of the Brotherhood at Hartford, Conn,
having in mind the Gould and other
strikes in which men who wanted 10
work were assaulted and driven away
and the property of the railroads inter
fered with and destroyed, Arthur said :
No man has a right to say TO another
| thou shalt" or Thou shat not, and in the
violation of this principle is where the
| trouble lies among the wOrk1ngmen to-day,
We have no business to say that an EN-
ployer shall employ or shall not employ this
man man has a right to belong to any
| organization, provided it is not contrary TO
| the law. We say no man has the right to
say TO another man that he must not belong
| to an organization. And. too, we have no
right to go to the companies and say: You
! must not employ that man" We oppose
this way of doing things on principle.
When the Burlington strike was Or
A ~{h ath loolo rod
that there would be no interference
with the property of the road if the
latter hired engineers to take the places
of the strikers; that if the Brotherhood
could not bring the company to term:
bv striking, they would retire and per
NIT others to take their places. The
railroad is fast hiring the non unicr
and Knights of Labor engineer
and il is evident that th'
strikers will be defeated; wher
along come rumblings of discomfort OF
the part Of the Brotherhood, anl
threats of probable violence against thu
new men and the company. For hi
own reputation, and for the good o. thu
order over which he presides, it will Il
well for Mr.. Arthur to reassert his be-
lief in the right of all men to work OF
such terms as they can make with EN-
blowers, and of employers to hire whom
thew can. One outbreak on the part o
, the engineers, one demonstration Q
violence, will lose for that organization
the respect of the great public which
now enjoys, and reduce it to the level {
those blatherskite unions which seem t
5 have been organized for no other pull
: pose than to strike.
e CoALTER & SNELGRovE, the Salt LAX
! music dealers. Estey organs.