The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-10-14
HOMESTEAD AND TREA SON.

The cussedness of strikes is about to
| get "set back" in Pennsylvania, if not
in the whole country by the interpre-
tation of the law of that commonwealth.
| Whatever our readers may think of
organized labor and the aristocracy of
Grand Masters, walking delegates or
committees, it is true that strikes as
usually conducted are treason to the
State in which they occur. This way OF
attempting to settle disputes is un-
American and scion transplanted from
foreign soil which is not essential to our
future greatness as wage-earners will
| find to their cost. In Pittsburg. Chief
Justice Paxon of the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania charged the Grand Jury in
the case of the Homestead strikers
charged with treason. The charge con-
tanned over five thousand words and en-
braced graphic resume of the circum-
stances leading up to the riot at the
Carnegie Homestead Mill, and the sub
sequent charges of treason lodged against
33 union men. The Chief Justices
charge is considered by members of the
Allegheny county bar as unfavorable to
the defendants.
In charging the jury, Justice Paxon,
said: "We can have some sympathy
with mob driven to desperation by
hunger, as in the days of the French
revolution, but we can have none for men
receiving exceptionally high wages in
resisting the law and resorting to
violence and bloodshed in the assertion
of imaginary rights, and entailing such a
vast expense upon the taxpayers of the
Commonwealth"
In defining the law Justice Paxon said !:
when the company shut down its
works and discharged its men it was
acting strictly in the lines of the law; it
could not compel the men to work, nor
could the men compel the company to
employ them; no arrangement could be
made in such regard exceptin the nature
of a contract agreed upon by the parties.
The law should be SO enforced from the
Delaware to the Ohio that the humblest
laborer can work for whom he pleases
and at what wages he sees fit, undeterred
by the bludgeon of the rioter or the
pistol of the assassin"
The Chief Justice concludes as fol-
lows: "You will also observe that the
offence charged is treason against the
State, and not against the United States;
it is matter which the latter has moth
ing to do, and over which it can have no
Jurisdiction. A mere mob collected on
the impulse of the moment without any
definite object beyond the qualification
Of its sudden passions does not commit
treason, although it destroys property
and attacks human life. But when a
large number of men arm and organize
themselves and engage in common
purpose to defy the law, to resist its
officers and deprive their fellow-citizens
of the rights to which they are entitled
under the Constitution and laws, it is a
levying Of war against the State and the
offence is treason. Where a body of men
have organized for a reasonable pur-
pose, every step which any one of them
takes in part execution of their common
purpose is an overt act of treason.
Every member of such asserted Govern
ment who has participated in such
usurpation has committed treason
against the State. 1t is a maxim of
criminal law that man must be pre-
sumed to have intended that which is
the natural and probable consequence of
his acts. We have reached the point in
the history of the State where there are
but two roads left TO us to pursue. The
one leads to order and good government,
the other leads to anarchy"