Arizona republican., 1904-08-03
What the Meat Handlers Are Strlk.
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ing For.
 The Independent publishes an article on the meat strike from Ernest Poole,' formerly a university settlement work CT and now in Packingtown, studying the strike on the spot. which gives very fully the strikers side of the trouble and conveys a good deal of information that the public is not familiar with.
 Of the 6OOOO men on strike two thirds are unskilled la0orers. The 2O,- 900 skilled men are striking in behalf of the rest because they feel that their turn will come next if the packers shall 2S the unskilled men got 1S15 cents an hour in Chicago and generally else where, but MT. Poole says that, taking the year round, the men only work for ty hours week, so that their average weekly earnings do not exceed $7.40 The packers cut wages two cents an hour, which would take 80 cents off the average weekly wage. It was against this that the men struck.
 The packers do not attempt to justl- fy the reduction on the ground that business is impaired or that prices are declining. They do not claim that their end Of the business requires a curtailment of expenses. They merely point to the thousands of men who are seeking employment and would work for fifteen cents an hour if they could get no more. It is not business like. they say. to pay more than they need for anything.
 Perhaps not; but there are some qualifications to be made to that Nearly every business has to pay some attention to tke condition of the work men in it, and if the packers could pay lS12 cents last year, and their business is as good now as it was then-and probably better, for they have been raising the price of meat-then they have no business to use their advan- tage of position as a practical monopo- to reduce the wages of the men be- low an average of less than s1.25 a day But 1t ought to be possible to arrange the work so that the men employed would have work eight or ten hours a day, in which case a smaller number would be employed but they would get decent wage. Both in the packing house and the coal mines 1t will be difficult to give men a good annual in- come who are employed only two thirds or three-fourths of the time.
 MT. Poole says the strike leaders are making every effort to prevent violence and mentions some instances of it. No doubt the leaders recognize the danger of violence; but the dispatches from Chicago show that they have little in- fuence with their followers, and some of the acts elready committed are pe- culiarly offensive. It is impossible to feel that the mana gers are equal to the responsibilities they have assumed in view of their concession after a weeks stike of the arbitration conditions (their acceptance of which would have averted the strike), and of their calling a second strike prematurely and upon doubtful construction of the terms of the treaty of peace. But Mir. Poole says the condition of the skilled work men has improved very much since unionism was introduced four years ago, and that the packers have a marked preference for the lowest class of immigrants, who have not yet been in the country long enough to learn English The men feel that their own existence is at stake