The San Francisco call., 1898-04-08
THE FIRST MURMUR. Strikers Are Objecting to Methods Used by the TYpothetae

While the position of the striking print CTS remains practically unchanged, the first murmur of discomfort from the strik- CTS at the actions of the employers was heard yesterday from President Hawkes. we have hardly begun to do any aggressive work as yet" he said, and have held back from doing so, as there is a kind of unspoken agreement to the effect that no efforts will be made to permanently fill the positions vacated by our men until next week, and we pre- fer to wait until that time before showing our hand. There is one thing, however, against which I think we have good req son to protest. This city, as everybody knows Is full of idle r,en of all calings. The typothetae have brought men from out of town to fill the strikers places. A short trial showed many of these to be hopelessly incompetent, and now we have them coming to our headquarters penni- less, away from home and applying for assistance. They all tell the same tale They came to San Francisco in answer to advertisements for help, and being un- accustomed to the conditions existing in a large office were turned out after a brief trial. Now they apply to us for enough money to take them out of the city, but we have no funds set apart for that purpose and must either assist them out of our private purses in answer to the appeal of suffering humanity or turn them away hungry and penniless to drift about in a strange city We think this is wrong. If the typothetae brings incompe- tent men here il should feel bound to as, sst them to a certain extent at least. Wa have drawn but very little on the strike fund so far, ill fact, up to date our eX- penses have been something less than sl5, but as we expect to begin paying strike benefits next week, of course our bills will be little higher; but we have abundant funds to draw from"
 The employers feel fully as confident of ultimate success as the union men, II have twenty-five men at work" said Walter N. Brunt yesterday afternoon, ''and getting all my work out as us- ual. Some of the men l put on were in- competents and I was obliged to get rid of them, but others are flrst-class men. I had been sitting for years to get good workmen who were members of the union, but now that they have left me be- cause l would not accede to their de- mands, I am ready to go through the sift- ing process over again. If any of the old hands are anxious to come back and their places are not already filled, I am per fectly willing to take them, but thev can't expect ten hours pay for nine hours work. l simply cannot afford to pay 1t and have no desire to go out of the business because the members of a trades union make unjust demands
 MT. Brunt's words are a fair sample of the sentiments expressed by other mem bers of the typothetae. They all say that if the union men do not care to como back they will fill their places with non- union men as rapidly as competent work men can be secured.
 The printers yesterday issued a pamph- let setting forth the whole history of fhe struggle, from its beginning a few years ago; which will be distributed among To- cal business men. It was reported at headouarters yesterday that in several of the offices valuable machinery had been disabled by incompetent workmen and that the work on Crocker's directory had practically been stopped.