The record-union., 1892-11-22
THE STRIKE ENDED.

The Homestead strike has been de-
clared ''off." That is to say, the men
who ordered and promoted it officially
confess its failure. This means that there
are more skilled and unskilled workers
out than inside of the trade organizations
affected; that places were filed left
vacant by the strikers bysmen willing to
work for the wages and under the terms
prescribed by the employers. If it were
notso there would not have been such a
rush of applicants to fill the vacancies,
not such a desire on the part of the former
employees to be reinstated.
The strike has cost some millions of dol
lars to the workers, and something more
to the manufacturers. It has been made
and continued at the sacrifice of more
than thirty human lives; it has cost the
taxpayers of Pennsylvania a good many
hundreds of thousands of dollars; it has
punished innocent parties by delaying
public and private works. and causing
halts in hundred of sympathetic indus
tries.
At its conclusion it leaves some thou
sands of men out of employment on the
threshold of winter, with small HkeIi-
hood of securing work; it has cost other
workers several hundred thousands Of
dollars in the way of support extended to
the strikers; it has crippled business, en-
b1ttered the relations of employer and
employe, and has developed an anarchic
spirit that is manifest in loud-voiced de-
mands for the abolition of the militia
system, the only bulwark of the law, and
the only safety self-governing people
have against the assaults of the tyrannous.
So nothing has been gained and a great
deal has been lost. But had not hot blood
prevailed, had wise and cool counsels OBJ
tanned and moral forces only have been
employed, the apparent difficulty between
the manufacturers and the workers might
have been adjusted. We say apparent,
because it is now conceded, and the re-
port of the Congressional Committee,
though strongly sympathetic with the
workers, admits that the advanced
reasons for the strike were mainly senti-
mental; that there was no grievance
which justified resort to it, and that there
was not the shadow of an excuse for the
employment of force, the seizure upon
property and the ousting of owners from
the possession of their goods.
We have already expressed the opinion
that the employers acted with indiscre-
ton; that they were i'll advised in the
employing Of Pinkerton forces, and that
it was foolish and aggravating policy to
send armed bodies of men to retake their
works. They should have relied upon
the power of the commonwealth of Penn
sylvania to enforce the laws, to preserve
order and to reinstate them in full occu-
pancy and enjoyment of their property.
The same law upon which the wage
Garner relies to protect him in the pos
session Of his home and his goods; that
secures to him the right of forcible pro-
cess for the recoyeryof his dues and the
enforcement of all his rights gives to the
employer like protection; no more and
no less. There has been no time in the
history of this Government that the law
has not been able to vindicate itself in the
long run. The power of the Government
has never yet failed it more than tenn
porarily. If it were not so, if the laws
were so weak and the authority of the
people behind them so nerveless that the
citizen, employer and employed alike.
could not be ultimately justified in
maintainence of his rights there would
long since have been an end to self-gov-
ernment.
The strikers have learned this lesson.
and so have the employers, that there
must not be invoked force outside of the
law. That the strike that is backed by
arms is an assault upon the liberties of
the people.
The strike has proved that there is no
natural conflict between employing capi-
tai and labor; their interests are common:
the one cannot take harm without the
other suffering punishment All So
called conflict between these two great
forces in society is artificial, provoked by
unwisdom and false sentiment. Such
friction as develops in the relations of