The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1894-07-07

pioyed and objected TO only when 4.So
hands we're employed. Il was agreed ina
the Old rate should return when times i'm
proved. Times were better IN Pullman
but were not IN any other shops. and with
the old wages would not have been there.
The men complained thar while Their
wages were reduced the cost OF the tene-
mems owned by the company was not
modified. Mr.. Pullman replied that the
capital invested in these tenements was
returning but asa per cent In Sep
TENDER, 1854. in the whole city OF 1.520
houses. having 6, 4s5 rooms. the average
monthly rental per room was $3.50 As
over 600 employees OF the company own
their own houses, and in 1892 OF the en-
ployes 1, 40 more lived out OF Pullman,
this does not apply to one-halfs or 2.5oo OF
the strikers. The others. tenants OF the
company, were in arrears $4,000 for rent
when the strike came.
The facts show that q mutual reduction
in wages and profits Of capital was resisted
by the employees, led by the higher priced
men, vEo were reduced rather more than
the lower priced men. The strike was
made at the worst possible time, when
half the carmakers of the country have
nothing 10 do, and it was precipitated
without any attempt to verify Pullman's
assertion that the old wages would mean
no contracts and no pay. Such strike
ought to fail, and undoubtedly will fail.
The strike OF the American Railway
Union.in sympathy is utterly senseless.
The Pullman employees at Pullman
struck on q question of wages. The
American Railway Union struck to make
the Pullman company concede the de-
mand of their employees. These railroad
men have no grievance, aud the action of
the American Railway Union was only
the interference of the many to enforce the
demands of the few. and the result is that
railways that had nothing to do with the
difficulty between the Pullman company
and its employees, and the public, which is
wholly disconnected with the cause of the
trouble, are subject to inconvenience,
annoyance. delay and loss because of a
disagreement between the Pullman COM
pany and its shop employees. The en-
ployes do not claim that the railroad
companies have treated them unfairly,
and yet war is declared upon them and
the unoffending public In order to force
the Pullman company to pay higher
wages to the hands at its shops IN Illinois.
1t does not appear that the reduction at
Pullman was greater than at thousands of
other establishments. When 3. 900 men at
the shops stopped work who had been paid
5000 per day, an average of 1888 per day
for every employee, the company which
owns the town and the houses leased to
the men did not attempt to eyict any of
them. though many are far behind in their
rent, or to start its works with other
hands. 1t declared that in the PROSTATE
condition of business it could better afford
to lie idle than to pay the wages de-
manded.
The railway hands have no part or share
in the controversy and have suffered no
injury, and the railway companies and
the travelling public have no share in the
profits of the Pullman company or power
Union therefore deserves neither sym
pathy nor counteuance, and it has no
right TO use its organization against the
public or the railroads, inflicting loss
upon both, because a car builder whom
neither can control declines to pay 81 80 a
day to his car builders when he thinks his
business will not permit it.
This action of the American Railway
Union is an abuse of their power, like
that perpetrated by the managers of the
recent great bituminous mining coal strike,
which offended the public because it CON-
PEELED many thousand men who were sat-
istied with the wages they were receiving
10 stop work in order to force the pay
ment of better wages to other men. The
recent bituminous coal strike resorted to
violence. as the American Railway Union
strike is doing at Chicago. LABOR only
weakens its own cause by such demonstra-
tions.
The long strike of the bituminous coal
miners and coke workers. embracing about
10000 men, cost the strikers, who were
beaten at last. nearly $40, 900. This is
more than 20 cents a ton on all the btu
minous coal mined in year within the
district affected by the strike, and the
miners not only lost more than they could
hope to gain in year. but ended by &C
cepting no definite settlement whatever.
1t was the great John Stuart Mill, a
lifelong English champion of the rights
of labor. that said it owed its greatest mis-
fortunes to the utter Ineapacity, ignorance
and demagogy of its leaders. Grand Mas
ter Sovereign. of the knights of Labor.
has illustrated the truth of this remark by
taking his organization into this Pullman
strike.
United States Senator Carey. of wyo-
ming, reiterated Mills remark when he
telegraphed the Cheyenne branch of the
American Railway Union: "Your order
does not advocate anarchy. nor do /.
Labor's enemy in times Of trouble is the
professed friendship of demagogues. I"
Senator Carey IS right What we need is
more patriotic instruction in our schools
that tends to suppress all tendencies that
have for their object the supplanting of
American ideas in the foreign-born and
breed anarehism.
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