The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-11-29
RETRENCHMENT THE RULE.
How Trusts and Labor Unions Have
Reacted on Each Other.

Golfers Weekly.
The trusts have been, in all, far worse
sinners than the unions. The trusts ex-
panded inordinately in both capital and the
demand for labor. Both have collapsed.
The harvester combine is about to discharge
5000 men, and the Acme Harvester Com
pany, one of the biggest in the country,
has failed. The Lake Superior ore mines
are cutting down labor one-half. The steel
trust continues retrenchment. Freight
shrinking, the Pennsylvania Railroad shuts
down 100000 of improvement. BY jan
uary any one will be able to run over a
list of side-tracked road betterments which
will tally round $780, 900.
The Amalgamated Copper trust is loaded
with heavy copper stocks, accumulated in
pegging up the price of Lake copper, and
it has made an adverse judicial decision on
a single mine an excuse for shutting down
all it's mines and throwing 5000 men out
of work. Such things are always compro-
missed and adjusted, but unless all was
shrinking such shutdown would never
have occurred. Judge Clancy's decision in
favor of John McGinns's suit to protect
his property and the injunction against the
Amalgamated is only one step in a long
struggle, which has brought at Butte one
trust and one union face to face, amicably
keeping up miners wages and copper quo
tations at the same time
The attempt has failed. 1t is bound to
fail everywhere, but the difference is that
when the miners make a mistake they
lose, but when the trust makes a mistake
the public loses. The various collapses of
trusts and other risky attempts to discount
the future closed, as a beginning, two
trust companies in Baltimore maryland
and Cnion) and two banks In Pittsburg
(First National and FederaD. One of these
or trust in a series Of country banks. It
collapsed as the other attempts toward par
tial monopoly have. Pittsburg, more than
any other center is affected by the monop-
oily expansion of iron and steel capitalize
ton. There, the Amalgamated Association
of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers and the
Steel Trust divide the field.
The Federation of Labor comes to it's
annual meeting at Boston, therefore, with
the entire round Of the industries ii repre-
sents affected. Railroads, iron and steel,
agricultural implements, building trades,
carpenters, lumber-all show shutdowns
In all, the demand for labor is decreasing
Pennsylvania Railroad trainmen, New York
Elevated motormen, and others. are In con-
ference with the managements. but these
things are small beside the great move
ment in the ebb of industry an ebb due
to the extravagant high tide of trusts
When the lack of work mas spread the
fact will be plain that the unregulated or
ganization of industry by trusts cannot
continue. First trusts expand, then labor.
| naturally aroused by the spectacle of vast
paper profits, strikes, dislocating industry,
| and after a year and half of strikes,
| beginning with anthracite, men are thrown
| out of work by tens of thousands, in the
reaction from the unregulated action of
great combinations of capital and labor.
| A single trust like Amalgamated Copper
deadlocks a State. Should 1t?