Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-11-04
THE sroNE-cuTTERs, PROTEST.

At the last session of the Legislature
certain long-needed work was ordered to
be done upon State property. Among the
preservative improvements directed was
certain cut granite work for steps, but
tresses and posts. But it was provided
that the granite should be procured from
the State Prison at Folsom, and the Prison
Directors were ordered to furnish the ma
terial. This was done, and the Capitol
Commissioners then employed stone-cut-
tiers to fashion the granite into the form
required. After the cutters had been at
work some time the Stone-CCtters' Union,
with headquarters at San Francisco. or
dered the men to cease work because the
granite had been quarried by convicts.
The position of the RECORD UNION con-
corning the strike as a remedy is well
known, as also its view of State economy
in the employment of prisoners. In this
particular instance the stone-cutters are
correct in their position, for the simple
and unanswerable reason that the action of
the Legislature Disseminated against
them. Both the political parties repre-
scented in the Legislature fairly fell over
each other in their hot haste to play the
part of demagogy and convince the trade
unions that they had no better friends on
earth than the Republican and the Demo-
cratic parties. They struggled with each
other to be first in expelling all industries
from the prisons, save only the manufact-
IRE of jute, which does not happen to fall
within the line of competition
of free labor as represented in the Unions.
Having done this, the same legislators
made sharp about face, and ordered the
work referred to done by prison labor,
though it is directly in competition with
the labor of free quarrymen. This is
making fish of one and fowl of another,
and was an example Of unfairness that was
shameful. If all other industries are to
be protected" by Act of Legislature
from the competition of prison labor, why
not that of stone-quarrying and stone
cutting? The free quarrymen are as good
citizens and have as deep an interest in
the State and its material prosperity and
the advancement Of labor, as have the
cabinet-makers, the joiners, the molding-
cutters and the workers in planning mills
and collar and saddle factories. We pro-
test against this discrimination, and we
sympathize with the stone-cutters in their
complaint against the injustice that
singled them out-due, possibly, to the
fact they are comparatively few in num-
Der, and have not so many votes as the
workers in other industries. Let them
insist that when the State of California
"protects" one industry, that it shall do
even-handed justice and protect all. For
tunately for the stone-cutting craft, only a
dozen suffer by the "lay-off" that has
been ordered; but their calling has been
Disseminated against, and they should
demand that consistency on the part Of
the politicians that will serve all the
trades alike 1t was a small piece of
business on the part of the Legislature,
and the reason for feeling ashamed of it is
broad enough to give all who had any
thing to do with the unjust discrimination
against class of Woodworking, skilled
mechanics ample opportunity to blush.