The record-union., 1894-04-10
THE so-cALLED INDUSTRIAL ARMY

IhlS whole scheme OF petltlon IN
boots" to march to Washington to de-
mand issuance of imitless treasury notes
90 be given to States for road building is
absurd. Congress does not possess any
such power. If it did, it could not do as
asked and benefit the unemployed; land
owners and contractors and manufactuY-
ers of implements would be the chief
gamers, together with a multitude Of
bosses and officers.
The so-called industrial armies organ
lied and organizing, are mistakes, stu
pendous mistakes. The right of men to
assemble for peaceable purposes, to move
through the country and pay their way
as they go, to exercise free speech and to
discuss public matters in the open, is un-
questioned. But the right by mobiliza-
ton to threaten communities, to throw
large bodies of men upon towns and
cities for support, does not exist. and can
be aud should be resisted.
Suppose our 65,OOO.OOO brethren at the
their willful tramps, hire trains, pay the
fares of the men and turn the whole lot
in upon California? Is it thinkable that
such procedure would go on legally un-
checked?
We have the fullest sympathy for the
man who wants work and cannot get 1t,
he yE,Dh of oy1lNc at
But we apprehend that if the 1900 men
in the group that was dumped into Sacra-
mento last week had been offered work
at fair living wages, suoh as building
roads and grading lots, etc, not one in
ten would have accepted. This is evil
denced by the well known fact that not
few of this crowd Of excursionists threw
up good permanent places to go upon the
expedition, and scores of them are of the
easily recognized class that never work
willingly, while others were offered good
jobs here and in Oakland and refused
them.
Those men banded together to travel
Eastward at somebody's expense other
than their own; to be clothed and fed by
other people without giving the equiva-
lent of service. They are led by dema-
gogues and shrewd, calculating men.
who wish to gain notoriety regardless
whether it is fame or not.
Their demands, while made without
arms, were not the less threats; they
knew that their numbers amounted to a
menace; they knew that there is no legal
process by which money of the taxpayers
can be taken from the public treasures
to support them in travel and idleness;
they knew that they had no claim what
ever upon this community for food or
passage money and that the exaction of
supplies and coin was not the less by
force that they did not bear arms in their
hands.
While, therefore, human sympathy for
the hungry and the naked is not one jot
to be clrcumscribed and no word is to be
uttered TO check its generous impulse,
there is a greater charity which begins at
home, and it begins right now when
the threat is made to send another horde
of hungry men to this city TO be fed and
forwarded. We have our own poor TO
care for and Sacramento does its full
duty in this regard. There is not a city
or county in the Union that has better
record than this in such matters.
This community, moreover, is the
warm friend of labor; it is the strongest
unionized town in the State we are told.
1t has more wage-earning industrial
people to the hundred of population than
any other in the State. 1t respects labor
and stands for its rights and its obliga-
tions alike. The great majority of the
taxpayers of Sacramento are wage earn-
ers, honest, hard working men and
women, by hand and head earning a
decent living, maintaining costly city
government and paying off an enormous
debt contracted by dead and gone
generation.
This community, with unexampled
generosity and speed, fed the late gang Of
travellers and sent them on their way.
But they will not encourage these picnic
excursions or do anything more TO foster
the nomadic business. 1t is the worst
possible way to aid the unemployed to
send them upon these precarious expedi-
tions. If the worthy who have not labor
are to be aided effectively, let us provide
for them work on the public highways,
or elsewhere, at wage that will not in
cline them TO become dependents upon
the labor furnished. and yet sufficient to
insure them food. shelter and raiment.
The communities able to adopt such a
plan should set about il at once, and so
soon as it is done the ehaff viii speedily
be sifted our and worth he kent decently