The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1895-04-12
AT OLNEYvILLE.

pavements of Olneyville square.
Twenty-Five hundred men, but yester-
day toiling mid the buzz and b-r-r and
whirr of rafting looms, counting picks
from dawn till dark, are today in Oiney-
vile square. They are on strike-the
whole force of the great Atlantic Mill.
No flowers blossom from the pave
ments of Olneyville square and there
are no flies on the strikers.
They have quit work because they
don't think the owners of the Atlantic
Mill pay them as well as they would
like--that is, some of them don't. In
these strike matters few usually under
take to speak for the many, and the
withdrawal of the workers in one de-
rartment inevitably compels all the
oTher workers 10 stop working whether
they are satisfied with their wages or
not.
However, if man doesn't think he
is getting all he is worth he has perfect
right to quit working. So have twenty
five hundred men for that or any other
reason.
And the Olneyville strikers are
naturally in a very buoyant state Of
mind today. Who wouldn't be? Is
there not fund established by these
and other men and sustained by men
who continue to work in other mills to
support the strikers 80 that their holi-
day may be enjoyed without imposing
upon them the troublesome prob
lem of keeping body and soul to-
getherp Who wouldn't step forth
from most any employment to
go out and breathe in this glorious
spring air il no had bank account or a
strike fund at command and could
get his old job again just so soon as he
got ready to go to work? As for our
selves, we would drop our pen this min
ute under such circumstances and,
Fastening to Olneyville square, join our
$500 free and untrammelled fellow
citizens and play at leap frog with them
in the merry sunlight.
There are, OF course, other features
associated with what seems to be all
roseate and joyous. The community of
Olneyville has not forgotten the last
great strike of year ago-and it hasn't
recovered from it. Mills were shut down,
but perhaps the manufacturers weren't
much concerned on that account because
times were close and hard anyway. But
long that the strike funds, apparently
exhaus:less at the outset, became act
ually exhausted. Misery and suffering
took the place OF the early joyousness.
But that was not all. The business
men of Olneyville, the men who were
neither mill owners nor mill workers,
how did they fare? They did not fare
at all well, to tell the truth. The man
ufacturers were all right. They did not
suffer because they had a little some-
thing laid up for rainy day. The
strikers got along finely, for some time
and when the strike fund ran low they
had to get along just the same.
How did they do it? The
business men of Olneyville
can tell. The clearinghouse keepers
of Olneyville can tell--we won't men,
tion the "hated' landlords, but just the
good men and women who run boarding
houses. and spent all they had saved and
mortgaged, all they could earn for year,
to keep the penniless strikers in food
and lodging trusting to them to pay
when times should be good and wages
should be earned. And the business
men of Olneyville-well what they did
is matter Of history. They sold all
their stocks--on credit. They bought
more goods and sold them-on credit.
They went to the bank and bor-
rowed money and bought more goods
and sold them-on credit. Nobody
had any money to pay for things, but
people could not starve or go without
fuel. So the business men of Olneyville
trusted the thousands of idle persons to
the last limit of their resources and their
credit in town.
Well. the mills started up again. The
manufacturers began once more to make
little money. The mill workers began
to get wages. Everybody started up
after the long months of idleness exactly
where they left off-everybody but the
business men of Olneyville, who had
stood up to the rack with courage and
a loyalty that we doubt II their equal
can be quoted in this country.
Wedoubt very much if the business
men of Olneyville have yet recovered
from that strike. We doubt very much
IL all the states have been wiped off. 1t
is easier to make debts than to pay them.
The Olneyville business men had to pay
theirs to the wholesaler, the jobber, and
the banks in town. But how about the
army OF debtors to the Olneyville busi-
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