The Portland daily press., 1892-07-08
THE HOMESTEAD RIOT

| There is a legal and there is a mora
aspect to the deplorable affair at Home
stead. The legal aspect is the clearer
| because the facts on which it depends
are clearer. In the legal aspect the ad
vantage is clearly on the side of the Car.
negie Company. They had the legal
right to discharge their workmen and to
close their works. They had the legal
right to take possession of those works
and place inside of them whomsoevel
they saw fit, and the discharged work
| men had no right to use force to prevent
deputy sheriffs, or Pinkerton men or
anybody else whom the Carnegie Com
pany had selected to guard their mills from
going into them. When the worl1men
threatened to resist the deputy sheriff S
posse they were guilty of violation of law.
1t makes no sort of difference whether
the mills were actually in danger or not,
the Carnegies had right to call on the
sheriff to protect them, and the sheriff to
put his posse into them. In resisting
S-AN S2ASASioO VI Clllo CiCdl IlSIlI UllG WOIk-
men were guilty OF violation of the law
of the land, and in continuing to resist
and to declare that no outsiders shall 90
into the mill, they continue to be in an
attitude of rebellion against the laws.
There is but one possible solution of the
existing state of things. The county of
Allegheny must put the Carnegie COM
pany into actual possession of their works
or the State of Pennsylvania must do it.
To permit the strikers to retain their
present control over the works would be
to permit them to continue to defy the
laws of the state.
AS to the moral aspect of the case it is
not possible to speak with SO much GER
tainty. While the legal responsibility
for the riot may be entirely upon the
strikers it does not follow that the moral
responsibility is all theirs to. Employers
are morally bound to treat their en-
ployes with fairness and with considera-
ton. If by harsh treatment or by an uu-
Justifiable reduction of their wages they
arouse their passions, if by wantonly ex-
posing them and their families to suffer-
ing and privation they drive them to des-
peration they cannot wash their hands of
the results that follow. 1t is not certain
that the Carnagie Company was guilty
of any of these things, and yet there
seemed to be an unnecessary suddenness
and summarizes in the turning out of
their workmen and the closing of their
works. All possible efforts for an ami
cable settlement do not appear to have
been exhausted before crisis was preci-
pitated. The bringing of the Pinkerton
men too, though perhaps within the
legal right of the company, was an act
calculated to excite the passions of the
men, and ought not to have been resorted
to except in the last extremity. They
were particularly hateful to the strikers,
and the effect their coming had could
have been anticipated. The power of
the local authorities should have been
exhausted, and then the State appealed
to. If both had failed or proved indiffer-
ent it would then have been time enough
to have called in an outside force. The
Carnagies had both the legal and moral
right to recover possession of their
property, but they were certainly under
moral obligation to employ such means
as would be least likely to lead to riot
and bloodshed. Of this obligation they
were, it seems to us, culpably unmind-
full and therefore they cannot be held
entirely guiltless of the deplorable re-
suits of Wednesdays riot.