The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-07-14
Boycott of the Pullman Company.

most obseured. Just at this time the following readable article from liar per's Weekly on the subject will be
 found interesting'
 The Pullman Palace Car company has long boasted not only of the best equipped and most efficient shops on this continent. but also of the most contented body of skilled workmen in the world. The town of Pullman. near Chicago. has been everywhere des- cribed and praised as the model home of the artisan. founded upon the great idea that the interests of employer and employed are one. and administered by its owners with such generous re- gard for the welfare and the wishes Of the resident laborers as vindicates their far-sighted wisdom by making strikes and serious trouble among It's men impossible. Yet on May Il of this year three thousand of these working men suddenly refused to do their work: the shops were closed: and bitter hos tility has taken the place of the excep- tionally friendly relations So long pre- served between them and the company. The families not only of the strikers. but of many others whose opportunity to earn a living Is destroyed by the strike. are in great want. meagrely supported by charity.
 After six weeks of likeness 1t was clear that the company would not yield to the dictations of labor unions. and that the men must soon starve or re- turn to work at the wages offered. Un- der these circumstances the American Railway union, an association of work ingmen employed upon the railroads of the country, most of its members on roads running out of Chicago deter mined to interfere. On June p a com mittee of the body waited on officers of the Pullman company to demand a settlement which should satisfy the workmen, and threatened that if this were not promised within few hours the union would proclaim a boycott" of the cars and business of the Pull man company throughout the country.
 to take effect at noon June 26 The Pullman company could hot confer with railroad men with whom they had no business relations on the conduct of its works, and the threat of the union was carried out with little delay. Be- fore night of June 2S every signalman. swttchman. brakeman fireman and yardman belonging to the American Railway union was ordered not to han dle, move, or in any way assist. in run ming any Pullman car or any train con- taining such car. Most of the rail- roads ending in Chicago run Pullman sleepers and chair-cars by contract with the Pullman company. Fifteen of these were suddenly thrown into con- fusion, and all of the through passenger traffic on three or four of them was stopped. The railway union has called for aid in its boycott upon all the large associations of workingmen and some of these have promised cooperation. The Knights of Labor, 1t is reported, will be asked by their general master workman" MT. Sovereign, to enforce the boycott everywhere. while the great Brotherhood of Locomotive, Bremen is expected to follow.
 It is not easy for community train- ed fin the spirit of obedience to law and of respects of the rights of its members to understand the principles on which the American Railway union is acting. The union has been informed by cer- tain men, who formerly worked for the Pullman company, but have left Ats ser vice that they want to return to its work at higher wages that it is willing to pay. The union at once sends a committee to order the Pullman com- pany to open its shops, now closed for want of orders, and to employ these men at wages satisfactory to them selves, under the threat.that otherwise the union wiN embarrass and confound the transportation business of thirty millions of people, and inflict inestima- ble inconvenience upon the whole trav- cling community. Like the union it. self, several of the large organizations formed ito improve the condition of la Dor" are really controlled by a few reckless demagogues, who meet in se- cret and deliberate whether or not they shall join in the conspiracy to extort terms from particular company for a set of men who want it's wages, by in turing the nation. The argument in favor of the boycott in plain words is this: "The labor organizations are able to make life intolerable in the United States. Let them show thesr power and public opinion will require all en- ployers of labor to submit to their dic- tation."
 It is not necessary to discuss such a position. The power to do harm be- longs to every man. The more compli- cated our social organization becomes, the greater is the opportunity for small number of people to throw it into disorder. In the, simplest of savage communities any man may become an assassin. But 1t is only In a complex system of society, in which the inter- change of services is constant and es- sential that very few men. engaged in some one minor but Indispensable employment, car1, By sudden assertion of their post bring annoyance or even disaster to multitudes. But the com- mon Sense of mankind recognizes the use of this power to do harm, as a means of extorting by threats advan- tages or profits of any kind, as the bas- est of crimesg The brteand who de- mands ransom for his prisoner. with mutilation or death as the alternative; the police captain who sells for money his power to arrest the dealers in vice and crime; the news monger who gath CTS scandal in order that. he may be paid for suppressing it--these are the