The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-09-12

workers not been so we'll organized as
they were, there would have been no
limit TO the depth to which wages
would have fallen. As a result, the
consuming power of the workers would
have been SO much further reduced as
TO render the economic and industrial
depression still more acute, and the de-
Tnoralization and misery of the workers
so much more marked that, by COM
parison, their present conditions would
represent a Yeritab bic paradise. In a
word the unions of labor during the
past four years have stood as rock
TO check wholesale reduction in
wages, with all its conconlitant misery.
Further, the labor movement has
served to shorten the duration of pam
les themselves as well as to enable the
workers to maintain the consciousness
of power and the hope that full jus
tice viii be secured to them in the no
distant future Finally, the movement
has been the one great preventive of
much more serious conflicts, If not Of
a revolution.
The miners strike affords a study
for US all. In the coal industry, as in
faster than new employments are
founded" Before the panic of 1898 the
miners were comparatively poorly or
gained; reduction after reduction was
the order of the day; machine mining
had been freely introduced without the
slightest attention being paid to the
new conditions under which the miners
were required to work. Of course, no
obSerVer-certainly no intelligent union
menber-5ntertains the thought Of OPP
posing the Introduction and tull devel-
opment of machinery; but union labor
insists that if through the genius of
man. the production OF the necessarles
and even the luxuries of life be made
easier, the producers of these-the
WorkerS-if they do not become uhe
beneiciaTies, shall certainly not be
made to suffer thereby. Union labor
insists further that if new machinery
be introduced the worker shall enjoy
at least part OF the fruits 1t also in
sists that the burdens OF the worker
be ightened by a reduction in his daily
hours of labor and that he receive as
a reward for his labor a living wage
q wage which, in the dawn Of a higher
manhood and a nobler ciViiiza ton, Will
afford him an opportunity to keep pace
with the INCREASING responsible
tiles devolving upon him as a husband,
a father, a, man, and a citizen.
As above stated, the condition of the
miners organization in 1898 was such
that the men were unable to insist
upon a fair consideration, of their in
terests. The old abuses of the com
.pany stores where the Worknlen were
compelled to deal. were. reinIroduced
and extended, thus compelling them TO
pay. in most INSTANCES. an excess of 90
to 80 per cent for every necessary of
life. The novels in which they dwelt.
the we'll from which they drank, the
church at whose altar they knalt, We're
all owned or controlled by the COM
panies; the workers were truly their
bondmen and their slaves.
There is a limit of poverty and mis-
cry among the workers in civilized So
ciety; and, rather than sink below it,
they prefer to incur the dangers of
open revolt. Though they deplore the
disturbance it occasions. it is the cour-
age. hardiheod and temporary self
sacrifice which this course involves that
often prevent a relapse of societyinto
barbarism, and the people from being
thrust into actual slavery. 1t was this
state of feeling that provoked the min
ers' strike of this year.