The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1902-09-29
How One Writer
Views the Strike

of print. The following sizing UP OF the
situation Is from the pen OF the special
correspondent of one of the leading
daily papers of the country, who wrote
1t In letter to his brother, resident
of Washington. 1t is copied for what
1t Is worth:
Scranton, Pa, Sept. 81, 1902.
My Dear Brother: Your letter of the
10Th inst received, and In reply to your
questions about my Impressions of the
strike and the strikers 1 will give you my
views.
During the three months I have spent
In this valley have had ample time, be-
cause of the paralysis of business, to
form pretty accurate opinion of the
conditions here. So much has been said
and written by the sensational press
about the down trodden miner and his
wretchcd condition that l must own
to an agreeable disappointment when L
found a large number of mine workers so
much more comfortably fixed than
great many well saaried government
clerks could ever dream of being in the
Capitol city. Detached houses (strangers
surely in Washington surrounded by
well kept lawns and flower beds vege-
table gardens and fruit trees bathrooms
in the houses with hot and cold water,
electric lights, carpets and up-to-date fur
nture. do not speak very loudly of OPP
preston and abject poverty" Thousands
of such homes owned by miners can be
seen here in Scranton and vicinity, and
their number is multiplied by every town
in the coal region. or course, there Is
also any number of miners who live in a
poorer quality of houses. But after my
three months tour in the coal region l
have yet to find such ramshackle huts
as can be found in the well-beloved
Washington. yea, even in New York; and
in the much decred company houses
can be seen such efforts at luxury as are
furnished by the plush album -eight-day.
mock porphyry clock and gold-framed
chromo- on-the e-instalment-plan man. But
neither in the first mentioned homes nor
in the better class of company houses
live the men who send their minor chill
dren to the mines as slate pickerS, mule
drivers or door tenders, committing per-
jury before doing so by making sworn af-
tldavits that the child is II years old and
over. When land good garden land, can
be leased from the Pennsylvania Coal
company and others holding large tracts,
for any term of years at from one to ten
dollars per. acre, it does not seem to me
that oppression and greed are doing
very large stunts in the coal region.
But of real. overshadowing causes of
the troubles of the striking miners there
are three; the first and greatest being
gnorance-ignorance of our language.
laws and free institutions by the for
eign element: ignorance of the first prin-
ciples and meaning of the word Liberty"
which that element confounds with IL
cense ignorance of the fact that simple
organization. unless for a good purpose
and wisely led will not avail them for
any permanent good; ignorance of the
fact that there is limit to the pa
tience, forbearance and long suffering of
the American people. In their ignorance
these foreigners show daily to what
abuses the possession of power would
lead them; how soon they would make
an end of our free institutions with gun,
bludgeon and dynamite. The Golden Rule
and the maxim Live and Let Live" have
no place in their creed. Riot and muir
der is an amusement they would provide
for Sunday school picnics, and the sight
of a bruised, bleeding and writhing hui
man body is a vaudeville attraction.
Second place among the causes is taken
by the numerous saloons. Go where one
will In the places where the mine worker
shouts the loudeSt of slavery and starva-
tiOn wages, where vice the lowest, dirt
and ignorance run riot, the saloon is the
most numerous and most prosperous in
stitution. In Shenandoah 1 have counted
seven saloons in a row of eleven houses,
eight dwellings. If the money paid by
these strikers towards the licenses alone
of these saloons during the past five
years had been invested by them in COM
Portable homes for themselves and fam
lilies, hardly company house would have
a tenant today. Even at this writing,
when most of that class are living either
on the charity of their fellow toilers or
by contracting bills they never intend to
hn Snl Il oh, ci
ness. and the mems legs form a living
fringe about the beloved saloon porch,
while the women and children dig and
delve barefooted, in the culm piles for
the supply of next winters fuel. And
here let me cite an instance of the 'un-
fairness" of the operators. Thousands
of miners living in company houses, pay.
ing rent, have from fifteen to twenty tons
of coal taken from these culm piles free
of charge in their cellars. And yet when
an operator, willing to grant all concess-
ions asked for by the strikers, asked them
for 'permssion' to mine sufficient coal
to heat the. school houses and hospitals,
it was refused. But the depressing,
and utterly heartless oper-
ators' came to the rescue of the Pitts
ton schools and are furnishing the nec-
essary fuel to keep the schools warm.
Third in the list is the labor aGitator.
who could not exist without the other
two. He would be as dead and yoceess
as a lump of coal fifteen hundred feet
without these two to help
him. One of .the easiest things in the
world to do for speaker is to convince
an ignorant audience that it is "abused,"
ground in the dust by the heel of the
soulless oppressor," that 1t Is mot getting
its just share of the wealth that it alone
produces" etc, etc, ad nauseam. 1t is
simply impossible for people at dis
tance to conceive by what slender threads
the leaders lead these people to their own
destruction. Time and again have
seen men ready to renounce their alle-
glance to the miners union and resume
their duties as husbands and fathers, only
to be prevented from so doing by the
specious and outright lying promises of
the leaders-such threads We're the prom
ised interference of Mr. Morgan. Mr..
Roosevelt, a choice selection of bishops,
senators, statesmen uhere is a difference
you know, politicians, governors and
even a Wilkes-Barre lawyer. no doubt
anxious for a good standing with the
Jailed rioters, and lastly the slim hope
that the railroad men would refuse to
haul coal mined by "scabs." And yet
some OF the very men who were not sat
isfied with $3.50 to 50 per day have taken
the places of day laborers on the streets
at sl,25 per day, but cannot, or find II
convenient not to be able to, realize that
in doing so they are unfair the polite
substitute for "scab') to the men whom
they have displaced
When one considers that fully seventy
five per cent. of the striking mine workers
are anxious to return to work and are
only prevented by the fear of the other
twenty-five per cent. who so far have
been able to terrorize the business and
working people of the coal region with
dynamite, gun and murderous looking
knives that they subject large part
of the country's population to the danger
of freezing and contracting all kinds of
pulmonary diseases the coming winter;