The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-07-31
MAKING PROGRESS.


While there has been considera BILE
disorder in many places to which the
strike Of the coal miners has spread,
and number of instances of coercion,
intimidation and violence, 1t would be
unfair not to notice the admirable con-
duct Of the men in the vicinity of
Pittsburg, and the excellent advice
| given to them by their leaders. 1t is
spectacle seldom or never before seen
in this country to find an assemblage
OF 5000 people, mostly strikers, gath
cred to attempt to persuade their fell
low workers to quit employment with
| out any kind Of outbreak. The reports
say that, after this great meeting, the
| miners who chose to do so returned to
work, and ''the presence Of deputy
sheriffs was not needed, as there was
no trouble of any kind" Previous to
this meeting the principal officers of
| the strikers unions went among them.
exhorting them to keep within the
bounds of the law and to preserve good
order. Even Mr.. Debs, who is not not
ed for moderation in speech or action.
in his address to the strikers, told them
! that he was there to appeal to reason,
not to encourage passion, and that they
should fight their battle soberly and
quietly to the end.
| We find in this situation much that is
of encouragement and good cheer to
1r-1I
strikes of the past, great or small, have
been marred by violence. If they fail
ed it was due to a denial of their
rights to others, which was a greater
wrong than any that the strikers them
selves could complain Of. If they sue
ceeded it was success made barren
and worthless by the employment of
! means unworthy of honorable labor
fhe WoESingmen of this country have
now, as they have always had, abso-
lutte control of the situation whenever
! they are great enough to exercise it
wisely, instead Of throwing it away.
AT any time that they are ready to
act in harmony, they can bring their
employers to terms, If their demands
are just. by purely pacific measures
Their first great victory has always to
l.be won over themselves 1t REQUIRES a.
magnificent self-control for men en-
| gagged in an Industrial struggle to hold
| themselves aloof while others are TAX
ing their places ard their cause goes,
! apparently, to defeat. Yet it is only by
| that policy that they can ever win.
The progress Of the labor movement
has to be measured, not by the num-
| Der OF strikes that succeed or Of those
| that fail, but by the advance oe the
workingmen themselves to a point
where they can win solely by moral
suasion and the justice OF their cause.
When they reach that point there will
never be strike that ought not to sue
coed. and there will never be one that
| fails
It is splendid sight to view the
! ranks of labor in the mining regions,
where the employees are not Of the
highest grade Of intelligence or moral
SlGllutnS III OrueclY array
and waiting to triumph by the justice
| Of their cause. Could they impose A
like self-restraint upon all their fell
lows, their path would be easy Such
policy tends q thousand times more
| powerfully to draw volunteers to their
side, and to make others throw down
their tools and join them than the
contemptuous yelling of "scab," the
flostlishing of bludgecns or assaults
upon life and property. We are wit
Messing in this country, en- a grand
scale the evolution of the strike When
| 1t comes to be, at all times and in all
| places. purely moral movement, adj
dressed to the intelligence and sense
/ of justice Of workingmen, and directs
against the employer no weapon other
| than the concerted demand of men who
put their occupation, their little accu-
mutation and the very lives of them
selves and their families into the scale.
i 1t will be irresistible. 1t is far from
that yet, unhappily, but it is making
great and rapid progress.