The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-05-13
THE LIBERTY OF LABOR.

Ihe SympathieS of the American peo-
pie are with the working population, in
all rational and temperate endeavors
to improve their condition and to rise
above the level of dependent drudgery.
"a fair days wages for fair days
work" is a motto from which no sane
person will dissent. There is a dispo-
sition. too, to favor high wages, espec-
tally for skilled labor. The endeavors
of organized associations to lessen the
hours of work and raise the rate of
compensation are applauded, when
they remain within the bounds of rea-
son.
But there is a growing disposition in
the minds of working people, which
has been fostered by that class of in
dustrials that labor more with their
talking apparatus than with their
hands or their brains, to demand for
their work more than the employer can
afford to pay and himself live out of
the industry which he endeavors to
conduct. When their demands are not
compiled with they go out on a strike,
and render him less capable than ever
of acceding to their unreasonable re-
quests.
They go still further in numerous in
stances. Not content with suspending
operations which are necessary to the
preservation of the very means of their
own subsistence. they trample upon
the rights of other worknen who do not
agree with their demands. And they
then proceed to break the law, by as
saults on property and injury to the
persons of men who are willing to
work at rates that they repudiate.
Such a course destroys the sympathy
which is felt widely for working peo-
pie struggling to rise and having to
compete with capital. There is no ex-
cuse for such conduct. The wires have
been hot with tidings of the lawless-
ness Of labor. It must be put down.
1t as much foe to the working ele-
ment as to the employing power. 1t is
non-American. It comes chiefly from
the foreign laborers imported in the in
terests Of protected capital.
Strikes are seldom of any benefit to
those who engage in them. They are
usually ordered by the chiefs of the
societies which hold their members in
worse bondage than feudal tyranny.
When ordered to strike they must lay
down their tools and walk out, no mat
ter how satisfied they may be with
their wages. their hours of toll, their
employers and their kind of work
That is subordination which smacks
of the most abject slavery. And if they
succeed. after a long and trying effort,
in gaining anything like the point
they started to reach. the losses
they have sustained and the
misery they have entailed on
their families and themselves, to say
nothing of. the property they have in
jured, are scarcely ever compensated
for by what they achieve.
We have no fault to find with lawful,
reasonable and peaceable endeavors,
whether individual or by organized eff
fort, to accomplish any improvement in
the condition of the working classes
Men have the right to refuse to work
for less than any amount they may
name or for longer hours than they
choose. But they have no right to pre-
vent other men. from doing both if they
SO elect When they commence to in
trude upon the rights and liberties OF
other men they seek to become tyrants
themselves. And there is no dominance
of capital which is equal to the despot-
ism of dictatorial labor. when organ
lied to hinder workmen from exercising
their freedom.
To maintain the liberty of tabor all