The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1894-07-19
THE LABOR CONTEST.

1t seems possible that our posi-
ton here, as distant spectators Of
the contest now going on in the
United States, may give US an adj
vantage in Judging of the points at
issue in the great strike over those
who are involved in the fray.
In California, at least, there are
special causes which lead many
people to lose sight entirely of the
principle really at stake. No other
State has been so much oppressed
and plundered by grasping and
unscrupulous corporations, chief
among which has been the Southern
Pacific Railroad, and it is quite
natural that its people should take
for granted that the railroad must
always be in the wrong, on general
principles.
1t should be observed that the
present movement is not strike
in the proper sense of the term,
but a boycott on a gigantic scale.
1t has nothing whatever to do with
the rate of wages paid by the
Superintendent of the Southern
Pacific Railroad, OF with its man
agement in any other respect.
Neither was it intended to relieve
the people of the State, who COM
plain of the extortion of the rail-
road company. On the contrary,
it has inflicted vastly more injury
on them, especially on the hard
working fruit farmers, than on the
railroad company. Mr.. Pullman,
against whom the boycott is di-
rected, suffers the least damage, as
he retains but one-fourth interest
in the Pullman cars which are run
on the tracks controlled by the
Southern Pacific Railroad. He
holds, moreover, contract with
that company, from whom he can
recover damages by law for a
breach of the same.
Without considering the legal
aspects of such a boycott, when we
consider the widespread and in
calculable injury caused by it to
multitudes of American citizens,
the interference with interstate
commerce and with the United
States mails, and the Indictment
given to the lawless and criminal
classes to pillage and burn, it re-
minds one of the farmer who burn
ed down his house to get rid of a rat.
But when we consider that the
principle in question strikes at the
foundations of individual liberty
and the rights of property, and that
it would set up foreign despotism
within the Republic, we must say
that the remedy is worse than the
disease. Two wrongs do not make
a right. The whole system is a
foreign importation and incompati-
BILE with the American idea of lib |
erty protected by law.
If an irresponsible foreigner, re- /
siding in Chicago, can forbid all |
railroad companies in the United !
States to run Pullman cars, he can !
forbid the purchase of Baldwin
locomotives in case Of any dispute
about wages in the Baldwin works.
In like manner, the head of the
printers union might forbid the !
use or purchase of a particular
kind of presses or of type from
any type foundry where there
might be dissatisfaction among the
The same thing may
be done in regard to any other
or invention. In our
highly complex and artificial mod
ern civilization, it is easy, as we
have seen, to take society by the
throat, to cut off whole communi-
ties from INSTRUMENTATION, or
even to deprive them of the means
of lighting and of the necessaries of
life.
In the general scramble for the
almighty dollar, free competition
g attended by great evils, which
must be guarded against, but they