The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-07-28
RIVER AT s A. NJ.
WHY THEY FAIL.


A body Of ], 900 miners carrying heavy clubs
marched TO the Castle Shannon mines at
Oak station, where about forty men were
working, and prevailed upon them to come
out. There was no disorder.
If any one seeks for the apparent
failure thus far of the strikers Of the
coal mining region to make Roadway,
he will find it in the above grim an
nouncement. 1t is usual that, when
thousand men armed with heavy clubs
endeavOr Ito persuade" forty other
men to agree with them, there is a
speedy unanimity without any disor-
der The strange part of 1t is that the
men who so on a strike still fail to
appreciate the first rule that can bring
them to success. They disparage the
justice Of their cause and play right
into the hands of their opponents by
policies like this Everybody wanted
to sympathiZe with the striking miners
in this case, and the sympathies Of
most. people are with them. They are
certainly the most hardly pressed Ia
borers in this country, and their en-
ployers receive and deserve the small
est share Of public sympathy. Striking
as they have been for a bare living
wage, even the operators have not had
the face to deny the substantial Justice
of their cause. Why, then, has a move
ment 50 promising prolonged itself to
q point where its partial failure, at
least, cannot be concealed? The rea-
son lies in the adoption of unwise and
unjust policies like that shown by the
extract published at the head Of this
article.
1t will not do. The strike that resorts
10 violence is foredoomed to failure.
We can understand the desperate
anxiety of these men, upon the success
of whose movement depends their
whole future, to have their fellow
workmen join hands with them in the
effort to increase their wages and i'm
prove their condition. We can under
stand, too, the hot feeling Of resent
ment that must surge up in a mans
breast when he feels that another, who
is in the same plight as himself, will
take advantage of his necessities and.
at the very moment when all Is at
stake, desert him for the cause of the
enemy. We do not wonder that these
feelings and the passions behind them
bring more or less violence into every
strike. What we do wonder at Is that
the men who are swayed by them cam
understand haf xy;n1o
to themselves. However disastrous
may be the refusal Of other working
men to join with them In a strike n
IS ten times more disastrous to meet
that refusal with any form of comnuI-
SION AT that moment the striker falls
morally below the level Of the most
conscienceless employer Between en-
ployer and employe there NAV have
existed the relation Of hostility. an I'M
DERIVING feeling Of enmity that OH
scures the identity Of their interests
and makes one feel that 1t is only his
right to coerce the other when he can
But when such coercion comes from
laborer to laborer; when one body Of
workingmen march, with clubs or picks
or other weapons, to terrorize another
body Of workingmen to do worse than
anything the employer is charged with.
to force them to sacrifice wages and
employment under penalty Of bodily
violence, then a quick, but discriminate
ing public opinion says that these men
dc not deserve to win
Until they can learn the clements Of
fair play and justice, they will have to
suffer. Until they can concede freedom
to others, they do not merit freedom
for themselves. Year after year pass
es, strike after strike carries its mel
ancholy record Of losses to the score of
failure, and still this lesson Is not
learned. We do not wonder that
despotism in governments endures so
long among the people, when men an
pealing for freedom and the rights of
freemen are still ready to force others
to their aid by the same measures tina,
the tyrant used against his slaves. The
worst enemy OF the workingman today,