St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1894-07-05
AN ALARMING STRIKE.

A short time ago the Pullman
Palace Car Company announced a
reduction in wages of its employees
at the works in Pullman, Ill
Twenty-Five hundred men struck
against the proposed reduction.
Then the Pullman people shut down
their works, throwing over three
thousand men out of employment.
The American Railroad Union, a
Western organization, espoused the
cause of the strikers and started a
wave Of sympathy which has
assumed alarming proportions
throughout the whole country west
of Chicago. A boycott was declared
against the Pullman Company, and
men in every department of train
service were ordered by the union to
quit work on any line which did not
refuse to handle Pullman cars.
This arbitrary move on the part
of the employees was very properly
met by a decision of the railroad
managers to stand by the Pullman
Company; whereupon the strike and
boycott spread rapidly until, up to
Saturday last, some twenty roads,
including all the great systems of the
West, were tied up. The strike ex-
tended to the great stock yards at
Chicago, where twenty-five thousand
men were thrown out of work.
Business has been paralyzed, the
mails delayed, passenger traffic
rendered uncertain, annoyance and
suffering caused to thousands upon
thousands of people-fOr what
Simply because of what seems to us
unwise action by this organization
of railroad employees in sympathetic
support of three thousand men who
declined to accept a reduction in
wages.
President Pullman of the car COM
pany thinks that the reduction was
necessary on account of the great
falling off in business during the past
year Senator Sherman denounces |
the Pullman Company and the
Standard Oil Company as I'M
righteous and menacing combina-
tons. Mr.. Pullman may stand up
on tenable ground, SO far as the |
necessity for a reduction IS concern
ed; Mr.. Sherman may not be far |
wrong in his estimate of Mr.. Pull |
mans company. But the very |
beginnings of this now extensive
trouble were matters entirely be- |
tween the Pullman Company and |
their employees and should have. been
settled right there.
If the American Railway Union
had brought its influence to bear in
favor of arbitration of the difficulties |
at Pullman it would have taken
wiser step than can now be accredited
to it. When, in sympathy with the |
assumed the role of dictator and at
tempted control of the great railroad |
systems of the West, because of the |
presence of Pullman cars; when it
established a boycott and inter
fered with the mails and with traffic |
generally, it struck direct blow at
the rights of the public-for railroad |
service is pre-eminently a public
service.
The troubles at Pullman are to be |
deplored as are breaks between capital |
and labor anywhere. But there are
more righteous and effective methods |
of adjusting such difficulties than
those adopted by the leaders of the |
present great strike; and the posi-
ton taken by the American Railway |
Union is not one which merits !
popular approval, because it is in
direct antagonism to principles up
on which the welfare of the whole
country rests.
The vigorous manner in which the
government is taking hold of the
strike in its bearing on the movement
of the mails will have a salutary eff
feet. Federal and state troops have
been called out, and several leaders
OF the strike have been arrested and