The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-18
TYRANTs IN TURN.

Capital and Labor are both tyrants at
times, because human nature is sometimes
so stupidity selfish as to be blind to its
highest interests; it behaves like pig that
in its furious efforts to swim cuts it throat
at every stroke. Our dispatches concern
ing the war in Chicago between the Broth
erhood of Railroad Trainmen and Switch
mems Mutual Association gave the most
recent illustration of this short-sighted
tyranny of labor. The switchmen claim
the right to coerce every man in the
switching service to become member of
their association; the right to say who
shall be yardmaster.
Every employe has right to refuse to
work and every employer a right to refuse
to employ; employees have no right to in
terfere with the material interests of the
employer to manage his own laborers
in his own way by the coercion of strike
which is enforced not only against the of
Tending employer but against the whole
body ofemployers.
Masters and workingmen are on an
absolute equality before the law in the
matter of penalty for breach of contract,
and the law recognizes the right of COM
bination; the right to refuse to work for
less than certain rate of wages, and to
strike in order to bring employers to the
terms of labor, and the right to say on the
part of labor that it will not work with
men obnoxious to the cause of the trade,
right as sacred as the right of capital to
discharge communist as the enemy of
the interests of property. The right of
violent coercion or intimidation of dis
senting workman is forbidden under the
law, which distinguishes between refusing
to associate with him and seeking to mo-
lest him or make him afraid.
We do not patiently endure any APP
proach to industrial anarchism in Amer
lea. because every rebellious worker has the
vote to right his real or fancied legal
wrongs unless he chooses to sell it, and we
do not regard with favor that peryersion
of protective labor union which is prac-
tically become vast machine for the
boycotting of laboring men by each other"
Every strike ordered on the vicious princi-
pie that every member of the order must
contribute portion of his weekly wages
to support in idleness several thousand
men who have left their work for no griey
ance of their own, but because some other
men had been discharged for not giving in
dustrial satisfaction to their EMPLOYERS.
has been disastrous failure. Martin
Irons failed in st. Louis in 1886; the coal
handlers strike failed in New York city
in 1887; the Reading strike failed in Penn.
sylvania and New Jersey, and the last
strike on the New York Central failed
also, because, like all the rest, it was
founded on vicious principle, most
subversive OF business stability and de-
structiye of the interests of business
men, employing or employed. The failure
OF the last great strike in Australia was
due to the same reason, and the
tyranny of labor has become so oppressive
in England that the shipowners have Or
ganized counter combination, or revolt
of capital against the lockers, firemen
and seamen's unions, whose great strike
cost the employers SIS, 000, BOO, as much as
the great strikes of labor have cost New
York and Chicago.
The trend of American legislation has
always been in the line of protection for
the workingman, and il is only within
recent years that capital ard labor have
been at war, with labor as often disposed
TO be unjust and tyrannical as capital.
| Unjust, oppressive strikes. which are gen.
orally inspired by the professional labor
demagogue, usually an imported agitator or
| 'iawsmith, are generally failures because
| they lack the support OF popular sympathy
and good Will, since evaporation always
/ takes the place Of sympathy when the gem
| eral public believes il is neither Just nor
necessary on the part of the strikers.
| There are not lacking, on the other hand.
illustrations of the tyranny of capital over
| labor. There are villages in the United
| States, East and West, almost entirely
| owned by mining companies, whose own
ers really coerce the miners to trade st the
| company store, bulldoze their votes at
local elections and exercise an absolute.
! despotic rule over the whole village In
| which their mines are located. This is
| one Of the genuine grievances of labor in
| Ohio. Pennsylvania, New York and even
| in New England. Legislation against this
abuse was earnestly asked for by repre-
sentative of the miners and loggers at the
last session of the state legislature, but in
vain.
Labor and capital are but short-s.ghted
when either one seeks in turn TO play
tyrant. Not only is honesty the best
policy, but humanity, honor and justice is
always the best policy between capital and
labor; between employer and employed.
Strikes cost money. A strike of 1000
men on one OF our great railway systems,