The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-08-18
INDIVIDUAL OPINION and
Personal Point of View.
BY FRED. 1. MERRITT.< .<SNN-


'aThese burdened ones (the work folk I
are silent; they know nothing, they can
do nothing they think nothing, they sim |
ply endure. They are hungry and cold. !
Their indelicate flesh appears through
their tatters. Who makes those tatters?
The purple. The nakedness of virgins
comes from the nudity of odalisques.
From the twisted rags Of the daughters
of the people fall pearls for the Fontanges
and the ChateaurouX. 1t is Famine that
giIds Versailles 1t seems to us
right that someone should speak when all
are suffering. The ignorant who enjoy
and the ignorant who suffer have equal
need of instruction. The law of fraternity
is derived from the law of labor. The
practice of killing one another has had
it's day. The hour has come for loving
one another."-Victor Hugo.
The darkest cloud that ever lowered
around the labor horizon of this country
is the present strike of the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers.
1t made it's appearance with the forma
tion of the gigantic steel trust engineered
through by j. Pierpont Morgan. and,
though at first no larger than a mans
hand. it has grown and gathered and
blackened until the whole industrial sky
is overcast and the greatest labor war
threatened.
A brief recital of the causes leading
up to this trouble, and review of some
of the problems it presents may not be
altogether devoid of interest at this time:
The Steel Trust began business on April
CAUSES THAT of it's everlasting
LED TO friendship for labor;
THE STRIKE and with a statement
to the effect that Mr..
Charles NJ Schwab had been made
the executive head of the great corpor-
alton because of his well-known friend
liness toward organized labor and his very
loyal sympathy for the men who work
in the mills and for their wives and chill
dren.'' Just fifteen days later by the
calendar, strike occurred in one of its
mills-thc American Sheet Steel Compa-
strike was the discharge of seven men,
whose dismissal was alleged to have been
due to their membership in newly or
ganized lodge of the Amalgamated Iron,
Steel and Tin Workers Association. The
Trust declared it's intention to stamp out
unionism in mills where it had not hith-
erto existed On the equally determined
other hand Mr.. T.. j. Shaffer. the presi-
of tbo orIyo afnn
ed to "tie up every plant of the new
combine-steel, tin, tube, structural iron,
iron and alI--if necessary to win the
fight
AS the strike grew out of question
Of the recognition of organized labor, and
threatened to spread throughout the vast
congeries of industrial establishments
controlled by the United States Steel Cor
poration, the Trust now proposed terms
of peace and therein was met half way
by the strike leaders.
conference was held in New York
between the labor leaders on the one hand
and the Trust representatives on the
other. The terms of the settlement fully
and frankly recognized the principle, of
friendly conference and mutual conces-
sion, and established the right of the
employees in the union mills to form
lodges in affliation with the Amalgamat-
ed Association.
1t happens that conditions, so far as
labor organization is concern, are far
from uniform in the numerous mills and
plants of the companies that go to make
up the new combination. A great many
of these, such as the mills of the Ameri-
hn
Company, the larger part of those of the
Sheet Steel Company, and the National
Steel Company. have for sometime past
been thoroughly organized under the
Amalgamated Association. The Carnegie
works, on the other hand, had been entire
ly independent of trade unions, as had
also those of the National Tube Compa-
ny. But when these last-named mills were
absorbed by the Trust the men at once
organized, and this fact played an impor-
tant part in keeping the strike from be-
ing settled at the New York conference.
Wnen the labor leaders and the Trust
representatives came to the question of
wages they found it possible to agree that
organized workers in the older union mills
should De paid at such and such rates:
but when 1T came to the mills that had
UecH HoH- uHioH pTlOT TO their amaIgama-
tion into the United States Steel Cornor-
alton, the Trust representatives declined
to grant to operatives the same scale of
wages as had been allowed in union
mills. In fact they contended that in
many of these mills men had obtained
their places only upon signing an agree
ment not to join the union. and this
agreement was still binding on them.
The conference broke up. and after
conference with all the unions he rep
resented, President Shaffer ordered a
general strike of Amalgamated Associa-
tion men.
In word. the issues in the strike
seem to be these, judged by the demands
of the strikers through President Shaffer.
/. That non-union men in the mills for
merly independent, be left free to join
the union; and this Mr.. Shaffer says, is
the really important point at issue.
2. That the scale of wages allowed by
the Trust in the older union mills be
the standard for others engaged in the
same work; this. he points out, would
produce a uniformity and harmony Of