The representative., 1894-08-22
STATE PLATFORM.
The Transportation Question in the
Light of Recent Events.

Light OF recent
To the Editor
I'VE demand the government ownership
and operation of railroads, telegraphs and
telephones. Minnesota state platform.
The state platform was framed during
the excitement of the Pullman railway
strike and while the members of the great
convention were closely studying its devel-
opments. From all the delegates from the
country could learn from the residents of
Minneapolis the business and moral senti-
ment of the city condemned the strike;
and generally without a very clear percep-
ton of the moral to be drawn from it,
The objection seemed to be that the princi-
pie of the boycott was wrong and that
the sanctty of the contracts between
the Pullman company and the railroads
ought not to be violated.
The Peoples party of the state could not
and did not assert that the boycott was right
in principle or that the sanctity of con-
tracts should be viola ted; but there is yet
something back of the boycott and strike
which it did affirm, the substance of which,
the business and moral element of cities
rather too slow to perceive. So alb
Sorbing is the continuous pursuit of the
dollar by business men and so engrossing
the demands of society upon them, that
their faculties in other directions are
blunted so that nothing else but the dol
lar and the special interests of society
seen. AS in the case of the strike
all that was observed was that something
had occurred to derange the position of
the dollar Striven for, or to interrupt the
usual course of trade, and that this some
thing must be wrong; that is the immed-
late cause was wrong-the greater wrong
of which the lesser simply result
the narrow ethics of business fails to grasp
The moral portion of the city is differ
emily constituted, having a finer sense Of
right and knowing well enough that some
thing is wrong in the industrial organiza-
ton, which is back of and beyond the
strike. But this it does not recognize in a
sufficiently clear and tangible form, being
largely influenced by the business senti-
ment, and being also, as things are and is
a certain sense, a beneficiary of the pres
ent system. There is not wanting the
stereotyped expression of sympathy with
labor and the laborer, but from the pulpit
comes the assertion: The laws of the
land the laws of God" Consequently
we infer these laws must be obeyed. But
there are periods in history when the
techncalties of the law are so woven as
to interfere with the great moral princi-
pies upon which constitutional law rests
and when it becomes difficult and. perhaps
impossible to revolutionize the laws of the
vasion of Old Virginia by John Brown was
certainly not legal. but is now pretty gen.
orally upheld by the moral reformers, be-
cause it had a direct influence in the es-
tablishment of freedom; and the Pullman
strike may become known in history as an
occurrence not strictly legal, and not to be
defended on technical grounds, and yet
morally justifable, as having an inner tant
bearing upon the reclamation by the people
from dangerous monopoly of the high
ways of the state.
The highways of the nation are the prop
erty of the nation. This is good law and
has been so stated by our superior courts
Could the strike of the A. r. u. have been
so brought as to have been struggle for
the possession by the people of the ma
tion's highways, the right in the case would
not have been so obscure but that the busi-
ness community could have seen it; as
there is no question as to the railroads be-
ing the highways of the modern nation, or
as to the rights of the people to control
such highways. Although the moral and
constitutional rights of the people are so
plain that he who runs may read, it is an
extremely difficult matter, and perhaps i'm
possible under present conditions to make
up this issue upon strictly legal lines; but
the issue must in some form be made, and a
future generation will not be as critical in
the matter as is this, and perhaps be no
more critical of present methods, then is
the present generation critical of the pre-
1iminary methods incident to the destruc-
ton of the institution of slavery.
W. w. GAMBLE.
Stewart, Minn.