The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1897-06-03
WILMERDING sMOKE-PUFF.
New York Paper Comments on the
Wrecking of Mckinley Banner.


New York, June 3.-The morning
Journal, speaking of the tearing down
OF McKinley's picture by the McKin-
ley Workingmen's club of Wilmerding,
Pa, says:
The enraged wOrl6ingnen of Wilmer
ding, Pa, who the other day tore down
Mr.. McKinley's campaign portraits, de-
nounced his advance agency as a fake
and his prosperity as fraud, are never
theleSS calm enough to diScrim-
mate and apportion blame. Though
they have been discharged by
the Westinghouse Air Brake company,
they do not hold it responsible for their
loss OF employment, since they say the
company, owing to the hard times
throughout the country, has no work
to give them. Some Of these working
men were prominent among the pill
gr1mS who last fail helped along the
Mckinley canvass by enlivening Can
ton with labor parades." Now they
are out for Bryan and free silver.
The men of Wilmerding and their dis
appointed kind throughout the country
are to be pitied for their idleness and the
hardships it entails, but their manner
of teSufying to their change of political
opinion will not win them respect either
on the score of their intelligence or
self-controI. Moreover, sympathy with
their misfortune cannot but be mitigat-
ed by the reflection that they did their
best to bring it on themselves. They
chose to accept the leadership and ad-
wOrkingman between elections is to get
his labor as cheaply as possible, and
then to do him out of as much of his
wages as special legislation in the in
terest of the least needy makes posi-
BILE. They were sheep who did as they
were counseled by the wOlves-whose
appetite for mutton has been inSatia-
BILE since the world began. These Ia
borers deserted the cause of labor and
took their pay in promises. Their
mentors in politics engaged to secure
for them the continuance of the gold
standard and more tariff, and this en-
gagement is being Sacredly observed.
Meantime the trusts go on monopoliz-
ing the natural resources of the coun-
try, centralizing industry, and through
collision with the railroads crush out
competition and control production and
prices to suit themselves. If labor
does not like the situation it is at lib
erty to go hungry, and amuse itself by
tearing down the portrait of the preSi-
dent of the party of the trusts.
The experience which the working
men, and other citizens whose interests
lie with theirs, who participated in No
Vember'S Republican success are under
going is educating, however unpleas-
ant. When next they see every trust
in the country, every predatory rich
man, every beneficiary of the thieving
tariff, every holder of a special privi-
lege, every selfish plutOcrat, every man
who profits by present conditions and
would lose by a stable monetary SyS-
tenn and a just government of equal
rights-When next the WOrkingmen of
Wilmerding and their kind see all such
rallying to the support of a political
party and shouting that devotion to
their own pockets is patriotic enthusi-
asm for the national Well-being and
honor. perhaps common sense will sug-
gest that it is wise for the feeced
masses to take the other side.
The portrait tearing incident at Will
merding is but one little puff of smoke
from the great smouldering fire that is
burning just below the surface in this
country. When the eruption comes,
as in all probability it will come in 1900,
the party of the trusts, the party of
the privileged, the party Of all who
take things from those who make
things" will be scattered, and we shall
have a trial at government by the peO-
pie for the whole people by way of
change.