The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1894-07-06
The Strike and to What it Points.

nearly half the railroads of the country
last Saturday night, shows magnitude
and power for harm never before mani
tested i'll strike. These strikes are not
They may be all indirect means of uniting
the labor class more firmly and in direct
ing public investigation to ascertain the
root of the evil, and there may possibly
be 10 other means Of efecting this all
important purpose.
The strikes which have become chronic,
economic disease. They are the inevitable
war between two antagonistic elements,
the corporation and the citizen.
During the civil war the corporation
secured a strong foothold in the govern
ment, and it has steadily continued by
bribery of one kind and another to
strengthen its power and enlarge its
sphere Bribery and corruption through
the election machinery has been its prin-
cipal line of action till it has packed both
houses Of congress, the Presidential Office
and the Judiciary with-if not its creatures
its class. To this it has bent all the
powers of the press to mis-educate the
public thought, which is completely de-
moralized i'll regard to the rights of the
citizen and the rights of the corporation.
The corporation does not stand i'll the
clear sunshine of fact and declare its pur-
pose. but shields Itself behind the rights
Of property, which by steady course of
teaching has brought the public mind to
acquiesce in the DEGREES of false to lib
erty Judiciary, that property is more
sacred than citizenship the dollar is
above the man.
The consequence is that after the third
of a century corporate power has changed
what the people fondly dreamed was a
simple republican government, into a
plutocratic system, i'll which the corpora
ton has usurped the entire concern of
government, and the rights of the citizen
is now ignored entirely by congress and
the other departments which form as a
whole the government. The laws are all
construed against the citizen when he
constitutes one party and the corporation
the other, or they are ignored.
| This condition of affairs might have
progressed still, and the dull masses re-
manned oblivious to the fact that the
original form of government of the
United States,-the ''Model Republic
had entirely changed and become a cor
poration government, had it not been for
the Unsuitable greed of the money power,
which insisted on contracting the volume
of money i'll circulation, ard necessary to
transact the business of all increasing
population, and whose activity multiplied
and added steadily to the volume of bus
mess. This steady contraction carried
prices of labor and its products to lower
level, and finally the country awoke to
the alarming fact that it was ovrewhelm-
ingly i'll debt to this money power, the
iillSlN vi lllS tCDlS II SSdlllSl lllS
people amounting to more than the pro-
ducts OF their labor would sell for. This
! blight of falling prices struck every line
of industry, and the great corporations
which had become the employers of the
greater part of the labor of the country,
began to lower the wages of their en-
ployes in order to keep up their usual line
of net profits and dividends Bankruptcy
i'll the mean time had overtaken thous-
ands of smaller concerns which employed
much labor, and as they were wrecked,
idle men and women multiplied in num-
bers, while vice and crime, the invariable
accomplishments of idleness and poverty,
grew apace.
! As the power to purchase became more
restricted by the contraction ofthe money,
the vehicle and medium of business,
prices fell and surplus of everything
which is produced for the use and comfort
of the people began to pile up i'll accum-
ulatirg abundance. The short sighted
called this production The
people wanted the goods for use but had
no money to buy them. This cancer of
business has reached the vitals of the
largest corporations, the railroads, and
there is a contest on between the power
full corporations and laborers which has
been chronic ever since the fall in prices
commenced The money power holds
the corporations by the throat, the cor
porations have complete control of the
government i'll all its departments and
threaten to drive their men with armed
power of the State which they control,
every law on the statute books being
either made to favor the corporation
againt the citizen or is construed by a
corrupt Judiciary against the latter.
This railroad strike is getting too big to
be put down by " tin soldiers" which the
State National Guards principally are.
The present strike may collapse as the
mining strikes and all former strikes
against great corporations have done, but
a greater soon rises, and practice is bring
ing organizing men to the front The
railroads employ three-quarters of a mil
lion of the most active, physically devel-
oped, intelligent men i'll the country, who
are trained to discipline and most alert in
thought and action of any class of men
i'll the world When this body of men