The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1893-11-02
THE SANDER OF THE BOSS WALK
ING DELEGATE.


A few days since a well-known citizen of
Indianapolis, who has been a prosperous
manufacturer for years. in referring to the
dark outlook, said:
1t is a great loss to us. We lose the in
terest on our plant, and we have consid
cradle money invested in stock which is
deteriorating. We must pay insurance and
taxes; but these are nothing in comparison
with the knowledge that the men whom
we have employed and to whom we will
give days work when we get nothing
in return are idle, and their families are
now or soon will be suffering. 1 confess /
was angry a year ago. when many of
them voted for the free-trade heresy, but
all that is over and my heart bleeds for
them. Their condition gives me sleepless
hours. We would gladly run our works at
a loss if we could sell the goods which
their employment would produce, but we
cannot sell them. / have travelled hundreds
of miles among old customers, but cannot
place full order Our one thought now is
to help these people as soon as possible.
Some of them have houses partly paid for
which they must lose if we are not able to
help them or to give them employment.
1t is to me the great anxiety of the present
stagnation.
The foregoing were the literal observa-
lions of man who year after year, has
been giving employment to thirty or forty
men. They were not intended for publca-
ton, but simply an expression Of the good
feeling and the interest he has in the well
fare of the men he has employed. There
are in this and other cities hundreds of en-
ployers who have the same feeling regard
ing the outlook for the men whom they
differences in the past, but all these
forgotten when they foresee the suffering
which threatens these worl1men and their
families. Doubtless large part of the
manufacturers would willingly run their
works without profit if they could sell the
goods they would make. But just now they
can sell very little, and less for the cash
needed to pay wages. The remarks of this
indianapolis manufacturer are recalled by
the declaration of well-known labor lead
er contained in a call for a national meet
ing, one paragraph of which is as follows:
Never in the history of the world has so
large number of people vainly sought for
an opportunity to earn a livelihood and con-
tribute to the support OF their fellows. In
society where such abnormal conditions pre-
vail there must of necessity be something
wrong at the basic foundation, and it re-
QUireS but little study to come TO the con-
clusion that the ownership and control of
wealth, of the means of production, by pri-
vate corporations which have no human
sympathy or apparent responsibility, is the
cause of the ills and wrongs borne by the
human family.
The impression which the foregoing is cal
culated to give the country and the organ
izations to which it is addressed is that
manufacturers, who are referred to as pri-
vate corporations, are refusing to give en-
ployment simply to show that the we'll be-
ing of the men and women they employ or
could employ is in their hands-that they
have closed great factories and mills and
have given over their property to be sold at
working people of the country to feel their
dependence or to punish them for some as
sumed offense! This idiotic but malignant
SANDER is uttered by man who never gave
a dollars worth of employment to labor
but who is supported by the contributions
of the labor of the country. He makes it
against the men who have paid the highest
wages ever paid to labor, who paid them as
IOilS as Iney were aDie, ana VINO would De
gratified beyond expression to resume their
payment tomorrow.
1t may be added that the same labor
leader who now arrays or attempts to ar
ray employee against employer told the
labor of the country, in June. 1892, that it
could make no difference with labor and
wages whether protection was continued or
free trade should come with Democracy
Tens Of thousands of workingmen, accepting
the advice Of this ignorant leader, voted the
anti-protectiOn ticket a year ago. If this
dogmatic stirrer-up of strife has not seen
the folly of his advice the mass of those
who accepted it year ago and are now It's
victims have discovered it to their grief. 1t
is a good time to drop such mischief-mak-
ing leaders