The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-06-27
GRAVITY SEWER DISPUTE.


by the prominent men of the Labor
Trust, in their investigation of the dis
pute about the wages of workmen on
| the gravity sewer, and their admission
Of having been mistaken as to the
facts, will strike the public very favor
ably. The Herald had already given
many of the true particulars, but as
they came chiefly from the contractors
they were likely to be viewed with
some doubt, except by those who know
the parties.
The attitude assumed by some speak
ers at the Labor Trust meetings, in
which they made demands and took a
position not warranted by their stand
ing in the community, has been the
means of prejudicing many thinking
people against the organization. But
the frank and manly way in which
the error into which the Trust had
fallen about the wages question on the
gravity sewer, viii do much to remove
that feeling.
The Herald is in sympathy with ev-
cry rational and lawful movement, to
aid in the struggle of labor to main
tain its own against the oppression of
organized capital. 1t desires the amel-
ioration of the masses. 1t favors fair
wages and short hours of labor. 1t
advocates the principle that workmen
should receive their due proportion of
the products of toll, which in too many
instances they have not yet obtained.
But it is opposed to the use of force
in any form to compel that which may
only be obtained legally or morally by
peaceable and reasonable methods.
The Labor Trust, or any other or
ganization in the interest of the work
ing man, may take peaceable meas
ures for the raising or retention OF
wages at a desired figure, and to pre-
vent any abuses such as too many
hours for a days work or compulsion
of men to trade or board at a given
place. But it has no right to make de-
mands on the city council as to con-
tracts into which it has entered, or as
to interference in any way with its
duties. Nor has it any right to dictate
what contractors or other employers
shall do or abstain from doing
No labor organization can remain
Ilong in existence which seeks to pre-
vent men from working at wages they
choose to take or for hours they are
willing to labor The boast made at a
recent meeting, by some agitators,
that they had induced fifty men out
of a hundred on the gravity sewer tc
quit work, was false in fact and wrong
in principle, and caused a feeling OF
disgust in the breasts of the public
In these times of scarcity of work and
a plethora of workingmen, the folly OF
such movement is apparent.
The whole furore raised on this cues
ton turns out, after all, to be nothing
but froth and foolery. The statement
NAAAS1 opPOcAA Al c1lOl1ICl part VI luIs
paper proves that. The result of this
investigation should teach the sober
minded and respectable working PEG
pie, the necessity of examining both
sides of a subject before forming g
conclusion and taking any decisive ac
ton.
To stop work on the sewer would
throw a great many men out of EN-.
ployment To say that a certain fig
ure shall be the wages on the work
is not the business of anybody but
the employers and the employed. The
aim of all labor organizations should
be to promote good feeling and har.
mony between employers and theil
work people, and by peaceable and
rational means to secure to labor the
best returns which are compatible
with the power to pay, and with ali
the circumstances attending each in.
dividual case. There should be union
not warfare between labor and capital