Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-07-07
TERMS OF THE DISPATCH.
p1TTsBuRG. THURSDAY. JULY. 1892.
PAGES
THE DUTY OF THE HOUR.

The tragic and terrible scenes at Home
stead yesterday have produced profound
shock through the country. The effect OF
this will not pass away to-day or to-
morrow. Passion has made its sanguinary
record. All thinking men can see that
reason must quickly now resume its sway,
and that there are questions of moment
involved in this affair of vital concern not
merely to Allegheny county, but to the
State and to the nation as well.
The first and most essential thing to
call for at present is acknowledgment by
all of the supremacy of the law. This
will be insisted upon by every right
minded citizen, whether workingman or
capitalist, as an immediate and imperative
duty. 1t is the demand which must pre-
cede all discussion of the causes of the
terrible affair of yesterday. The law
upon which individuals and classes all
alike depend for protection for life and
property-has been set aside. In the in
terests of all, its supremacy must be re-
established without further delay.
Though not so disastrous in loss of life
and destruction of property as the
railroad riots of 1877, the affair at Home
stead is one of the most serious of its kind
that this country has known. 1t is not
even the loss of life, extensive though
thai be, nor the bitterness of feeling that
will result from it, nor the deplorable and
exaggerated color of hostility which it
gives the relations of labor and capital in
our State-though each one of these con-
81 &c Of tha r1oir
and modification in itself-that invests
the affair of yesterday with the
gravest importance There are two other
questions directly involved, representing
radical errors on both sides, which will
have to be met when the tempest of feel
ing calms sufficiently to allow reason to
regain its hold. The denial to the Car
nege mill owners of their legal right to
operate their works is one of them; and
the frequent policy of corporations in
superseding or supplanting the processes
of the law by resort to armed forces of
such mercenaries as Pinkerton's men
whose equipment and presence on such
occasions is in itself an invitation and sug-
gestion of violence-is the other.
The sympathy of the public was
clearly and almost universally with the
Homestead workers in their struggle for
their organization and against what they
claimed to be a reduction of wages. But
that Sympathy neither involved nor could
extend to refusal of the right to the
mill-owners of running their mills. The
law guarantees that right. Any forcible
obstruction was clear violation of law;
and If there were no recourse to the civil
authorities in such cases there would
quickly ensue not riot but armed revolu-
ton and anarchy throughout the land.
When this is said, it is more urgent
and important to say that the action of
the Carnegie Company in sending up the
Pinkerton force was grave and censur-
able blunder, to which is directly trace
able the events of yesterday The COM
pany had already appealed to the
law The Sheriff of the county
by the Company's invitation had the mat
ter in charge. 1t is true he was not sue
cessful at his first attempt, but he had
still recourse to larger posse and to the
services of the State troops if needful in
preventing riot and disturbance. There
was also recourse to be had to well-known
judicial processes of the Courts for the pro-
lection of the Company in its rights. The
Company should have exhausted the
power of the law, through the official
authorities, in place of tanning the flames
by the introduction of the Pinkerton
armed force. But, instead, it practically
invited the hostilities which eliminated so
fearfully by introducing hated enemy OF
organized labor on the scene.
The duty of the hour is to establish the
law. This community has seen what oc-
ours when it is set aside even for a day.
Labor cannot antagonize it. Capital can
substitute no mercenary force for its formal
processes. Society for its own safety dares
not refuse all its powers to repress dis
order and to restore at once every private
right. Establish the law in its supremacy.
That is the duty of the hour