Little Falls weekly transcript., 1894-06-22


IL
lBUCHANANS lET IER.
IT DEALS WITH SEVERAL MATTERS IN.
TERESTING TO LABOR. 5 ~
Testimony of q Big Railway Man IabO1ers
With Clean Hands and Empty Heads
Tatters and Rags as Mirth Provokers-A
New Charge Against Labor Agitators.
III. S. Haines, president of the Amer
ican Railway association, said some.
things in his recent address to the asso-
citation, delivered at the Hotel Bruins
wick, New York, which are Of especial
interest to students of the labor question
and particularly to railway employees.
He said that the shrinkage in the earn
ings Of the railways has reached that
point where investors can be paid divi-.
dends only by reductions of wages. The
rivalry for business has become SO in
tense that transportation rates are
brought down to level at which they
cannot remain without large reductions
in operating expenses or ruin for the
companies. Mr.. Haines lays the blame
for this condition of affairs upon the
traffic officials, who are responsible for
gross earnings and are not responsible
for anything else.'
President Haines showed by illustra-
tion that in reducing the expenses of
operating railway about IS per cent of
the reduction must come from the wage
fund. But the most interesting of all
his statements was when he declared
that organization is protection for la
Dor which is not and cannot be disre-
garded by officials in making reduc-
tions. Here is his exact language upon
that point:
On such a road as have used for an illustra-
tion, out Of total expense account of $2OO0 600,
about $1,270,000 would go for salaries and
wages, and Of this amount about $40 600 would
be paid to enginemen, firemen, trainmen,
switchmen and telegraph operators. Where
these classes Of employees are protected against
reduction of wages by contract, the total reduc-
ton must fall upon those classes which are not
so organized, and whose wages would amount
in all to about two-thirds of the pay roll &C
count. Under such conditions the result of an
apparent reduction of 10 per cent in total ex-
penses would be to reduce by 20 per cent the
salaries and wages of all officials and en-
ployees whose pay was not fixed by contract.
1t will be noticed that Colonel Haines
speaks of organization and contracts as
it they were synonomous terms. He
means that labor which is organized
can make and enforce contracts in the
railway SERVICE No stronger argument
in favor Of labor organization has ever
been made than is found in the above
utterances of this leading railway off,
cial
The students of Paris, in an address
apropos Of the workingmen's May day
demonstration, gave expression to a
truth which is not extensively recog-
nized in this country. It is that men
who work with their brain are just as
much workers as those who work with
their hands, and that their interests in
shaping conditions and regulations so
that each laborer may secure the prod
uct Of his toll is Identical with that of
the artisan and common laborer. The
significant paragraph in the address fol-
lows:
Shall not we also be workingmen the day
after graduation, when we go out into the
world as physicians, chemists, lawyers, pro-
fessors, architects, ETC., and shall we not our
selves encounter the greater part of the evils
that assail the working classes strictly so call
ed? In consequence of tho crowding of the !ib-
eral professions We behold ourselves coming
more and more to constitute q proletariat in
tellectuel, with its uncertainty of the morrow,
Its starvation wages and its dependence verg-
Ing on slavery. Hundreds of graduates are
now walking the streets, as unable to find en-
ployment for their knowledge as the working
man is for his hands.
The men in the professions and in
clerical callings who obtain more than
a bare living with hard struggling are
a very insignificant minority of the
whole number engaged in those employ
ments. Like the mechanics and laborers,
they have no share in the great wealth
the united labor of all creates; like
them, they are victims of vicious laws
and customs which enable the few to
appropriate the surplus creations of Ia
Dor and skill, and which have estab-
lished the great American plutocracy:
But when the ''labor question" is up
these workers with clean hands talk
loud and long for the rights of capital''
and snarl and sneer at the protestations
OF organized labor: They seem to fear
that some one will think they are really
work1ngmen - poor, cringing, half
starved ,gudgeons.
OF all the things that tire me there
is nothing like the snobbishness of the
fellow who works and is ashamed of it
for producing a feeling Of disgusted
WEAKNESS. And to think that if those
chaps only had the sense torealize their
true position and to join hands with the
other workers a change could be wrought