Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1892-07-29
THE HOMESTEAD AFFAIR.

year 81; six months, 81; three months. 70 cents.
THE HOMESTEAD AFFAIR.
The Homestead affair has eliminated
in a tragedy. Prick, the superintendent,
fred upon by a l%unatic, and now sus-
pended between life and death. This is
the direct outcome of a rapacious and
sensational press, and the presence in
labor unions of a dangerous anarchistlc
non-American element.
Prick has been laboring during the
period of the Carnegie strike for a settle
ment of the difficulties, and an adjust
ment of the grievances, which should be
fair to workingmen, and at the same
time fair to the interests of his en-
ployers. No one, who is mortal, can
censure him for this. He has been
working for the employer, who has made
Homestead what it is, and who has
given employment to thousands of men,
and he has been shot, while engaged in
the performance of his duty, and the
Homestead strike is completed with as
dastardly an outrage as was ever perpe-
trated.
Carnegie's workmen are paid in &C.
cordance with the amount Of material
they turn out of the establishment, and
a scale of wages was made and agreed
to by both owner and laborers. I'm
proved machinery was purchased and
placed in the works, so that a greater
amount of material could be completed.
When the period, for which the scale of
a was made, had expired, it was
thought but right and just that the
scale should be lowered, not to lower the
aggregate of the workingman's wages,
but to keep them from increasing, since,
because of this improved machinery
more weight of material could be made.
The result of the proposed reduction
is we'll known-the workmen melted by
those foremen, who, has been conclu-
sively proven we're receiving from $40
to $l4 a day, struck; and while the right
of strike is admitted, they were not
satisfied with striking, but refused to
give possession of the works to those
to whom such possession rightfully be-
longed.
At this juncture, those journals which
aimed to make political capital out of
the trouble, took up the cause of the
strikers, and, in fearful incidents and
with quivering voices, spoke of the OPP
preston of the workingmen, their
almost reduction to starvation,
and of other evils, which, strange to say,
have never occurred to them before.
They alluded to, Carnegie as a ''bloated
monopolist," to whose success 1000 men
had contributed by the sweat of their
brows and the toll of their hands, for
getting, all this time, that ~foreachdrop of
sweat and hour of toll, the workingman
was literally paid. They forgot, also,
that capital is essential to a plant which
gives occupation to 1000 men, and. for
got, again, to state what employment
there would be for these same men if
capital had not furnished such occupa-
ton. They forgot, while tracing the
strike directly to the republican policy
of protection, to state that without pro-
lection strikes would not occur because
there would be few manufactures to en-
ploy men. These calamity-loving
journals forgot many things, and dilated
mostly, in sympathetic tones, upon the
downtrodden and oppressed condition of
the ~workingmen.
As an almost direct result, some fana-,
tic, melted by these blank, black pic.
lures of desolation and destruction, has
come to consider himself an Hercules,
intended by Fate to %renovate the Hgean
stables of monopolistic corruption; and
he has thought to do it by the deliberate
murder of one, whom an INSCRIPTIONS
press has led him to consider it's prime
source and cause. The result of the
strike is nothing strange, but it is rapid
ly becoming evident that a revulsion of
feeling and change of attitude toward
the strikers is imminent.
The democratic press having attempt
ed to make political capital out of this
affair the from the following Iron Age
showing the proposed scale at which
the workmen struck in the 119-inch
plate mill, will be Of general interest:
PROPOSED SCALE IN 119-INoH PI ATH MILL.
Maximum Minimum
Basis. Basis.
c-8 hours
Roller ................ 50 IS SO 20
g Aoror1roar 40 r