Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-07-12
Debs VI. Common-senss.

Workingmen at the east are asked to
stop work in order to force Mr.. Pullman
to run his shops at Chicago. But every
strike lessons, and does not increase, the
demand for sleeping cars aud other pro-
ducts of industry. Paralysis of trade
means less means for travelling, fewer
traders on the road. and more idle sleep
ers. How can that state of things force
Mr.. Pullman to run the shops when the
demand for sleepers is too small already?
Are the workingmen wisely advised to
cripple their own resources and deprive
themselves of wages and of power to buy
what they need, in the hope that business
will be better and Pullman will have
more work in his shopsi The naked
truth is that, instead of helping the
Pullman strikers, the sympathetic strike
is simply destroying the last chance of
their success.
Workingmen have one disadvantage
which they are never wise to forget. They
cannot live long without work. The man
who has money can. II food is scarce and
high, he can buy what there is, and suf-
fering falls elsewhere. When business is
Frustrated and property of all kinds is
depressed to half its value, the man WHO
has money can buy, and his profits when
prices are advanced by restoration of Or
der will pay him better than to run fac
tories at risk of loss II Mr.. Pullman
chooses he can invest his capital today in
Chicago cable and street railroads and
real estate and other property. and pocket
profits enough on his purchases to build
another town which he might call
"Debs." Stopping work to ipjure wealth
is the last extreme of folly. If all the
factories in town are shut, and their
men are locked out, does that hurt the
employees or the Employed Americans
ought to have sense enough to see that
the precise remedy which is now proposed
as a help to the cause of labor is the very
same which the most cruel tyranny of
combined employers might suggest for
the purpose of crushing labor and depress-
ing wages to the utmost.
1t seems to some of the men that ''or-
ganized labor must be sustained in this
struggle or all their rights as laborers
will be imperilled. But it does not ''sus-
tain" organized labor to engage in a
senseless and hopeless struggle. from
which all the advantages go to the cap
ieoiioo uhu eho iooSCo Aohi uuU
is the way to defeat and crush the cause
of labor, to take away the support of
sensible and industrious workinRmen
from labor organizations, and to convince
employers that they cannot afford to
make terms with any organization which
Is liable TO order strike at any moment,
not because its members have any com.
plant, but because some men somewhere
else are no. rightly treated by their en-
plOyers. For 30 years the path of labor
has been strewn with wrecks of organiza-
tions which have gone to ruin in exactly
the same way.
The most fatal of all conceivable blum
ders, for such an organization, is to array
it in hostility to the laws, and conse-
quently in hostility to all the conserva-
tive forces of civilization which upheld
them. Debs was an unwise and reckl less
leader Of strikers. But he has become a
breaker of law. a defer of courts, a rebel
against the United States. To uphold
him in resisting the United States court
is not to uphold the cause of labor, but to
doom 1t to the shameful defeat which
must attend every rebellion against gov
eminent by the people. 1t is to turn la Dor
organisations into conspiracies against
Me law and against civilized society. And
, Is to do all this with tho certainty that