The record-union., 1891-04-12
THE RIoTING IN PENNSYLVANIA.

THE RIOTING IN PENNSYLVANIA.
The recent rioting in Pennsylvania by
coal and coke laborers resulted in the
killing of eleven men. There is and has
been all along confusion of explanation as
to the original cause of the conflict. But it
is not, perhaps, essential to know just
what occasioned the irritation in the first
place. 1t is enough to know that rioting
ensued, and that body of officers shot
eleven of the rioters, all aliens and igno-
rant and british beings, and for which
the officials have been arrested.
On their part the laborers, all foreigners
and most of them aliens, and none of
them intelligent, claim that they were
not assaulting the coke works with arms,
but were making demonstration to in
timidate other worklnen more intelli-
gent than themselves. That, in itself,
I was unlawful and constituted assault,
Sand that many Of the rioters did bear
lrms in the assault is proved. It was
natural for the owners of the property, in
the face of the demonstration, to aim to
protect their possessions, themselves and
their workmen. To that end the en-
ployes were qualified as peace officers
and commanded by a Deputy Sheriff,
and aided by several regular deputies of
the Sheriff of the county sent for the pur-
pose.
The hundreds ofmarching rioters, the
intrenched defenders, the fact of each
bearing arms, constituted a state of vio-
lence and, in one sense, a martial situa-
ton. The rioters knew that the deputies
We're massed and armed to resist their
unlawful approach; that it was, on its
face, an approach with all apparent pur-
pose to destroy, and to kill, if resisted.
Their plea, therefore, that they intended
no open violence goes for nothing. They
marched upon the deputies, were warned
to halt three several times and told that
their action was unlawful, and still ad-
vancing with turbulence and defiance,
the deputies opened fire, killing eleven
anu WOunulllS IOTIy,
Out of this event it viii be impossible
for the rioters to evoke sympathy. Nor
will it be possible Tor them to enlist the
working people of the country in their
behalf. The fact is that these rioters were
not only ignorant but utterly careless of
the law. They were Poles, Italians and
Slave Of fba lov-art Ordav rTbory have
not the slightest love for the Government
under which they came to better their
condition. They immigrated to the
United States with no idea of their rights
or duties here, except that they had some
sort of fancy that in the United States
one can do as he pleases regardless of the
rights of others. No sympathy, there
fore, viii be extended to them. On the
contrary their action will contribute to
the force and emphasis of the growing
demand that tho bars shall be put up
higher against these cheap labor ele-
ments, and that the refuge this country
offers shall be limited to political exiles,
those conscious of the duties residence
here imposes, who have fair conception
of American institutions, have honest in
tention to conform to them and who are
not of the criminal, dependant and other
wise dangerous classes. We do not ap-
prehend that such as composed the mob
of the coke regions, degraded, ignorant
and unassimilative aliens, viii receive
the countenance of the genuine labor ele-
ment of the country, or of the decent
organizations of labor. If it should hap
pen, however, that labor unions, associa-
tions and federations take up the quarrel
eYthese coke region rioters, it will serve
to weaken the cause of labor, and to
broaden the breach between it and capi-
tai, and bring closer together all men of
the middle ranks IN business and pro-
duction whose property and lives are
imperiled by violence engendered be-
tween forces in which they have no i'm
mediate part. These constitute by far
the masses of our people, who control not
only peace forces, but can shape the
legislation of the country.