Los Angeles herald., 1890-08-11
CAPITAL DIsTRUsTS LABOR.

CAPITAL DISTRUSTS LABOR.
The wires are now laden with ac-
counts of another great railroad strike
in the east. The Vanderbilt lines are
tied up between New York and Buffalo,
and the commerce of the country will
suffer seriously if the railroad employees
succeed in paralyzing the vast business
that depends upon reaching tidewater
on the Atlantic through the Vanderbilt
system. 1t seems that this formidable
strike is the result of determination
on the part of the company, to get rid
of men who have heretofore been con-
spicuous in fomenting troubles between
the employees and the great corporation.
If this. is the true reason that lies at
the basis of the strike, the question re-
solves itself into one of fact. Men who
precipitate strike without cause, as
sumo a very serious responsibility. They
not only injure the men who employ
them, but they injure the workmen they
force out, and, further, they injure the
public by suddenly arresting production
and stopping the wheels of commerce.
If the Vanderbilt company were pur-
suing a settled policy that was entirely
antagonistic to the men, and they were
fully assured of the fact, then they
would of course be justified in resisting
that policy; but if their object was
merely to rid their forces of certain in
dividuals who are always making
trouble and always rendering them
selves obnoxious, they certainly had the
right to do so, and strike resulting
therefrom could not be justified.
The HERALD has always favored the
industrial classes. 1t has always sus-
tanned them in their efforts to better
their condition and it has always paid
the highest wages current to the men
it employs, but it must be apparent to
every right thinking man that there is
atendency amongst labor organizations
to forget that employers have rights
which ought to be respected. In large
sense labor throughout the United
States is in very unsettled and un-
satisfactory condition. There are causes
for this state of affairs. Labor in many
cases has not had it's just share of the
fruits of its industry, nor has it had
that fair consideration from capital to
which it is entitled. The way in which
it has been oppressed and wronged in
the great manufacturing towns and in
the great coal regions is we'll known
and fully recognized by every man Of
correct principles.
If labor organizations would always
be guided by sense of justice to the
employers aud the public as well as
themselves, no strike could occur with
out good cause. If their judgment
were never warped by prejudice, or a
desire to overreach when they take the
least important step, the public would
feel more at ease about labor troubles
than it does. There is now a feeling
that labor is prone to become unjust
in its demands and dictatorial in its
actions, and that feeling is doing great
injury everywhere.
A we'll known gentlemen of this city,
who has large interests here, and who is
man of brains and enterprise, was in
New York short time since. He in
.terviewed a number of capitalist
friends OF his there about going into man
ufacturing enterprises here. He showed
them how large tannery could be made
to pay here, and then he submitted to
them the profits they could realize upon
glass works. He told them he had deposits
upon his place of material for max
ingglass that had been assayed and found
to be the finest in the world. After
listening to his statement and verifying
his figures, they told him that they were
satisfied that his propositions were good
ones and that there was big money in
them. "But," they said, "labor is in so an
tagonistic condition against capital that
we prefer to take two per cent or even less
. year for our money, with undoubted
collateral, than to take the chances of
it being wiped out by some unlocked for
freak on the part of labor" They then
went on to cite number of instances
where great manufacturing enterprises
had been utterly wiped out and all the
capital invested completely annihilated
by unlocked for and capricious strikes.
This then, seems Ito be the tendency
of thought with eastern capitalists. If