Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-09-04

tolls, not only financially and physi-
cally, but also mentally and morally.
| Organizations are continually Hfrlng
people whose condition Was no better
than that OF serfs, from the slough OF
despair-people who were bound body,
aye, and soul, to their unprincipled
employers. Is not this grand and
noble work-a work that deserves
warmest commentator instead or
reckless condemnation.
say, all honor TO the men who made
these conditions possible, and may
| they and their followers never 1alter 10
the march of progress until we reach
civilizations highest peak.
Organized labor may not be able to
enforce the golden rule; it may not be
able to eradicate human greed and hu-
man selfishnes, but it is able to check
many OF the evils and abuses that
| greed and selfshness impose.
| Workingmen are the bone and sinew,
| the ministry of every country. They
develop it's wealth in time of peace, and
| tighn its battles in time OF war. from
them comes its soldiers, it's police and
! its constabulary With a free ballot
| they can select it's officers, shape its
policy, and make its laws, could they be
made to realize their power and would
! they but act in harmony.
| But for the sacrifices made and bat
ties won by labor unionists in the past
the wages and comforts of to-day
would be unknown.
| A skilled workman who does not sup
port his union acts of course Within
his legal rights, but so does citizen
who refuses to support his country In
time of greatest peril. His fellow men
will most assuredly refuse to applaud
| his action, nor will his conscience JUS
tify the act.
During the past few years we have
heard much for and against the Wis
dom of using the only defensive weap-
on the worker has at his command
I the strike-and, while never was, and
never will be, a believer in radical
! ism, in settling trade disputes, think
no meaner creature crawlS on Gods
footstool than the man who refuses to
strike when he has just cause.
Had it not been for the salutary les
sons taught employers by our great
strikes in the past we would, without
a doubt, be on a much lower level to-
! day. They have learned from bitter
experience that a strike, conducted by
a disciplined organization, with a
strong treasury behind it, is far from
| being childs play and they have
natural tendency in locking horns with
what they know will prove an adver-
sary worthy of their steel.
There is nothing higher or holier in
human nature than that impulse that
tresists oppression. dog will bite;
cat will scratch; even worm, when
trod upon, will turn, and the man who
will not strike to resist tyranny and in
justice, is, in my opinion, much lower
than common yellow cur. The man
who is too cowardly to resist is a bar
nacle on the ship of progress. Had his
advice been followed, mankind would
be but few grades removed from ami
mails.
Suppose American workmen never
struck, but accepted every cut in wages
with Christian resignation and Chinese
humility, would it be a good thing?
If they would pursue such a course,
every lover Of liberty and justice would
leave the country.
Every strike is a proof that Ameri-
| can workmen have not yet lost the
spirit of 1776. Our revolutionary fore
fathers organized against unjust Eng
| lish taxation, and were successful; just
about forty-one years ago John Brown
started small strike at Harper's Fer
ry that struck the shackles from the
| nty n
call your attention to the fact that
Uncle Sam struck against Spanish mis-
rule in Cuba a short time ago, and
won the strike hands down, and, my
| friends, with all these inspiring ex-
amples before us, organized labor will
strike and keep on striking until the
| ShacklsS are torn from the limbs Of
every workingman who has an en-
| ployer whose greed for gold obscures
| his sense of justice.
! Mr. James next introduced Hon. c. L.
Weems, of St. Clairsville. He first said
! the weather had been a little discourag-
| ing, but he supposed all of those present
| remembered what the Good Book said in
regard to small gatherings. He spoke flu
emily on the growth of this century and
! said that some thought a republic was
| like man-could only live so long and then
die. Men had spent their lives on writing
volume after volume to show these reas-
ons, but that they had failed. The sue
cess of every nation was to the extent OF
| the standing of nations responsibility
| to its laboring men. For examples he
spoke of the way the North overcame the
South. First was that labor was despised
and in fhe war. bravery was equal but