The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1892-07-07

iron trade a monopolistic command
over the situation. The first step was
the formation of a trust, the second
was the preparation for a sort of eco
monte revolution by which tn Q wages
Of the iron workers would be mate
rally diminished at onc and by
which their power to resist further re-
duction In the near future would be
destroyed. For weeks the men have
seen the preparations for this deadly
blow progressing under their eyes.
While they worked in the fur
naces or at the great ma
chimes. oil around them, they saw
advancing the preparations to bar
them out from these works which
they had built up, where they had
fondly hoped to earn their bread all
their Interpretations to bar them
out with all the barbaric contrivances
that a cruel ingenuity could invent.
They saw hose laid to deluge them
| with scalding water, wires laid to re-
pei them with the deadly stroke of
electricity. Shot guns and rockets
were accumulated to kill and main,
them. They knew that gangs Of
Hessians were being mustered in
far off sections to carry ON tine
war upon their homes and livelihoods.
Consider the situation of these men.
If they conceded the demands of the
heartless trust which had come to
rule over them, they delivered them
selves over. helpless to aggression
whose extent they could not forsee,
but which they had sufficient parallel
cases to prove would reduce them to
an abject state of poverty. They CON-
scented to a present reduction of pay,
but they refused to compromise the
future. They were met with a stern
rejection of all compromise. The
object of the Carnegie capitalists
was not merely to make a little pres
ent gain by the reduction of their
workers wages. They had set out to
break up the labor organizations, to
reduce the men to a condition of total
dependence or to substitute morgan.
lied men for them. They did not
want the men to come to terms just
at that time. They wanted a war, a
war of subjugation. and SO they
pushed on their military preparations
and refused to compromise. At last
for fear the men would find a way to
compel a peaceful settlement, they
declared war suddenly, ordered a
lockout and practically told the
operatives that they might sell out
their homes for what they could get
and go elsewhere to look for work
wherever they could find it.
AS for the episode of the Pinkerton
force, the case is very plain. The
three hundred men on the boats ON
the Monongahela were simply a dis
orderly mob, armed for violence.
They were not deputized as con-
stables or deputy sherifs. They
had no legal status whatever. II
they had once got inside the
iron mill, they might, indeed, as
watehmen, have had a legal right to
protect the property by force of arms
against attack or damage. But, as
prospective watehmen, they assuredly
had no right to force their way by
violence of any sort from the barges
which they occupied. to the shore.
Their only right was to call upon the
proper legal authorities to secure free
passage and safe conduct to them, and
it was their duty to wait a week or
forever for such protection rather
than riotouslyl and forcibly u ndertake
to open a passage for themselves by as
sailing human life with deadly weap-.
ons.
No person can pretend to- believe
that the true motive for the presence
OF these mercenaries was the ;protec-
tion of the Carnegie mills. Tie work
men had offered to give absolute
pledges for the safety Of, property
SO long a. non union pauper labor
was not brought to displace them.
Nobody can doubt the sincerity of
the pledge. No attempt of any sort
had been made on property, and in
spite of the open fight and the terri
BILE exasperatiOu caused nv II.