The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-01-19
MEANING OF THE COTTON
MILL STRIKE.
Arthur McEwan in the (New York;
Evening Journal

Arthur McEwan in the (New York;
Evening Journal
Phe strike of the New England mill
operatives, if the country could suddenly
awaken to a realization of its significance,
would cause as much alarm as the ap-
pearance. of a hostile fleet off our coast.
But this is only one of the many des-
perate protests of the men and women
who depend on their daily labor for live
lihood against the pressure which is in
eXorabiy pushing them lower and lower
down the plane of living. There will be
no awakening yet awhile, however. Even
Latimer is almost forgotten. We are used
to strikes-as used to them as to suicides
and deaths by starvation in opulent New
York.
MUST BE VIEWED BY ITSELF.
As usual, this strike will be viewedszhy
itself. Prudence and custom will dictate
that. small regard shall be given to it in
its relation to the general industrial con-
dftions of new and rich country, where
there should be enough and to spare for
everybody willing to work.
The cotton industry of New England is
in a bad way This is partly due to
southern competition and partly to the
protective tariff, which raises the cost of
coal, dyes and other raw materials, and
so places American cotton goods at a
disadvantage with English goods. Also,
consuming countries are incensed against
us because of Gus restrictions on trade.
The protective tariff is idiotic as well as
thievish.
: The mill owners have put up with re-
duced dividends, and they have decided
that their employees must stand a cut of
fIom 10 to II per cent in wages. In some
towns the average earnings have been
Sc week, in others as high as SO. The
men and women who have been ordered
to share the losses of their employers
protest that to obey is to starve. While
going on half rations, they would not be
consoled by the knowledge that should
dividends double their wages would
double also. The rule does not work that
way.
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO STRIKERS.
Some 125, 900 workers are affected by the
wage reductions. How these people, these
Americans, have been living in the pros
perity they strike to retain is revealed by
the statement that their Landlords, will
wait for their rent with patience should
the struggle be a long one, since no other
tenants could be got for the dirty and
packed tenements of the mill towns. Those
who have grown up in these settlements
and become factory hands like their par
ents are as ignorant as Indians of the lux
uries, the comforts, the. deeenciesF of hu-
man existence To be able to get food a
place to sleep in and some sort of covering
for the body-that is what life means to
them. The public schools and their own
intelligence have served only to enpitter
them against fate, and, no doubt, to make
them eager for such pitiful pleasures, evil
as well as innocent, that are within reach
Of New England factory, wages.
life in the Republic that one shudders
away from. Contact with it, even in
thought, is hideous Still, it is not as bad
as the life that was disclosed by. the. re-
cent cruel strike in Pennsylvania, Ohio
and West Virginia, but it is nevertheless
SO horrible in it's suffering, its denial of
opportunities to the yong, its degrading
and maddening poverty, that one marvels
at the capacity of human nature to en-
dure. Men and women, in order to bear
it. have to be. educated down to familiar
ity with so abject an exiS Stence. >They sub
nit to it because the environment forbids
the hope OF escape by any other door than
DEATH =
New England is on the stage at the
moment doing her part in the creation
of that monster which everybody fears
but that has as yet not come to curse us
proletariat That is to say a populace
condemned by poverty to Ignorance by
ignorance made unreaSoning, and always
lowering on the edge of want-want that
removes the fear of death and rouses the
animal rage and destructiveness in man.
When that proletarat shall be created
as the fruit of civilization that makes
lawful the appropriation by few of the
resources of the country, the control of
its Industries by trusts and the virtual
enslavement of the common people
through their necessities the mild and
inadequate proposals of the Chicago plat
form, and the anger and terror with
which they were received by the Well-to-
do, will be looked upon with regretful
wonder.
WHAT CONSERVATISM GIVES US
None have so strong an interest as the
rich in the removal of the conditions that
are producing a proletariat, and none are
doing SO much to fasten those conditions
upon an ailing and a restive country
That selfishness, that blind egotism, we
are asked to call by the respectable name
of conservatism. 1t has given us Nc
Kinley in the White House, the Dingley
tariff and the election OF Hanna, which
latter, according to the President elates
our best citizenship" and according to
the enlightened McKenna, candidate for
TIE United States Supreme Court. to
speak of which, without reverence is
treason and blasphemy, gives victory to
"all that makes for good government
To be New England striker, striking
for enough to eat and keep warm as the
reward of hard toll, is not pleasant lot
but there are some that would rather be
the striker than the mill owner who or
ders the cut in wages. The authority of
Jesus is not recognized in business, so it
is not of practical account, perhaps that
such would be His preference were He
with us and of the same mind as when
He uttered on the social problem in
Palestine, where Dives and Lazarus were
no more conspicuous and Misunderstanding
in their contrast nineteen hundred years
ago than they are in Fall River today.