The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1901-09-17
Seed.time and iayest.
|HE UTTER collapse OF the
Amalgamated associations $
Il ambitious strike To force "a

n
monopoly over the labor
employed in the mills of the United
States Steel corporation will, of course
he followed by the retirement to OBJ
security of Theodore j. Shaffcr, the
leader who failed. \ strike leader who
fails always goes down and out of
sight. In the leadership of labor or
ganizations success alone succeeds
and it has To move rapidly. at that.
This strike, begun without warrant
and carried through at "A cost of mill
ions of dollars, most of it charged
back upon the public. is typical in
stance of what agitation and yellow
Journalism do for the undoing of labor
When it began, the penny papers all
whoopcd for it like war-danCing In
dians, throw immense verbal bouquets
at Shaffer daily and let loose their
choicest bllingseate at the minions of
corporate greed who had declined to
let the 5000 men in Shaffcr's union
impose their rules and sway over the
more than 100000 men in their employ
not connected with the Amalgamated
association. Some of these ardent
journalistic champions of the Shaffer
cause may have been sincere, but how
many of them believed it when they
gloWingly assured their readers that
Shaffcr would win? How many of
them were actuated by the same mo-
tive that caused them to print vile
pictures of President Mckinley or to
dish up day after day the hysterical
vocabulary Of anarchism in their COM
ments upon the officials of city. state
and nation and upon the leaders in
our business and social life? How
many of them We're figuring merely
on tho sale of additional papers?
In the past two years we have had
in our industrial centers a veritabIe
epidemic of strikes and what have the
strikers gained? The one victory of
any magnitude was won by the an
thrdcite miners, who, in the matter of
the charge for powder, had an i'm
apreEnable case. The others, fed up by
ahysterical journalism, dragged their
Victims through months of idleness
and privaton to final defeat and all
but spoiled the reviving prosperity.
Carroll d. Wright United States COM
missioner of labor, a statistical au-
thority than when none Is more trust
fworthy, computes that for the twenty
years ending December 81, 1900 there
was a total loss in this country by
strikes and loCkouts of not less than
's46S, 96S, $751; distributed as follows:
STRIKES.
Wage loss ,S257, ,S as
Assistance rendered strikers by unions lG,l7l.71}
Loss 10 employers .....,.....,..... l22, ,i3l l2l
- l"tdi 1886 iJ2
LOCKOuTs.
eNage loss SIS, Ii5
pNpenses oi unions observation-disclosures. 3,ijli3l
sLosS TO employers ..,.,......,.....,.. 1927 isj
z Total ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ,S72, ,lo9 lS0
~ These totals are for %, 1913 strikes and
5000 lockouts. More than half of them
Jailed as utterly as Shaffer's strike
failed, despite the highly-pitched APP
plause Of yellow journalism and yhe
snorting Of fire-eatng orators. OF
those that won but few won for their
participants fractional part of what
they lost
There is widespread disposition
now, among workingmen, labor leaders
ana the all-wise yellow editors, to jump
with both feet on Sharer who is down.