The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-07-26
Right and Wrong of Strikes.

IT HE RECENT great calamity at
Johnstown, Pa, involving hun
dreds of lives, and the still more
recent explosion at the Daly-West of
Park City,>which extended to another
great producer-the Ontario-gives us
but faint idea of the risk every man
takes who works underground in either
coal of aurtferous mines. Three dollars
Shift is the top wage paid to the
man who takes his life in his hand
every time he enters a shaft and steps
upon the cage which carries him
down, down, down, almost to the very
edge of the crust which covers this ball
of fire we call Earth. Yet there are
men rolling in wealth who regard
three dollars too much to pay for the
risk of a human life. So they COM
bine together as mine owners, and
they combine together as railroad
carriers of the product of these mines
and combine as capitalists to enhance
the price of the product by limiting
the production, thereby inflicting an
injury not alone upon the consumer
but upon the producer, by depriring
him of the mean opportunity to risk
his life for bread
SO it is that when a miners strike
is heralded by the daily press, popular
sympathy goes out for the miner. es-
pecially if a railroad company is mixed
up in the controversy as against the
man who works underground Now
these strikes undertaken by miners
are not always good strikes. We
mean by good strikes such as are un-
dertaken with careful de!iberation as
to the outcome as well as to the JUS
tice of the position assumed by the
miners union. Every plan to prevent
a strike should be exhausted before a
strike is ordered, and we believe this
policy has been adhered to by the
heads of these great miners unions. 1t
we mistake not, John Mitchell presi-
dent of the United Mine Workers of
America, was present along with Sam
uel Gompers, president of the Amer
lean Federation of Labor, at that
memorable meeting of the Civic Fed
Grafton at New York. Both labor
leaders addressed the meeting on lines
in harmony with addresses made bv
Archbishop Ireland and Senator Han
ma, and we think it was Mitchell who.
at the close of the meeting, stepped
up to Senator Hanna and said: Sen
ator Hanna, / never really understood
you before today. All my life 1 have
been opposed to YOU
The great strike in the anthracite
coal region, which began last month
and is still on, is justifiable strike.
The strike of the teamsters and freight
handlers in Chicago is, at this writing.
practically over, four of the great
trunk roads partially conceding an adj
vanced scale and the state arbitra-
ton board laboring with the other
roads to bring about a similar condi-
ton. During the strike much loss
was occasioned to the industries deal
ing in perishable goods and the mer-
chants got so exasperated that they
made a demand upon the governor to
call out the state militia. Fortunate
ly this appeal was unheeded and blood
shed avoided.
1t was strike lily conceived ane
worse managed, and from the start
was disapproved by the Chicago Fed
GRAFTON of Labor, the central body
without whose aid or counsel no strike
should be undertaken in the great
western metropolis.
But to return to the coal strike. All
attempts to end the trouble through
the Cancellation of the Civic Fedora
ton were unavailing, more's the pity,
but the onus does not rest upon the
leaders of the miners. 1t gradually