The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1922-06-30
THE STRIKE ON.

The Press and Banner does not
believe that two laborers or a whole
set of laborers have any more right
to combine and strike in order to
enforce their demands for higher
than two manufacturers, or
two railroads have to combine to
put freight rates up or to put labor
prices down. Labor should command
on the market its market price, and
so should every other service.
But considering the strike now Or
dered for railroad employees we may
concede the right to strike, and the
right to quit the employment of the
railroads in a body. Having conced-
ed that, we are to consider the rights
of the public and of other people.
One of the outgrowths of CON-
bines, land among these are labor
%unions) is a disposition to believe
that the country was created and
government and society organized
for the benefit of the combine only.
The ideas of the labor unions in this
regard were expressed in vi hear
ing some years ago by a member of
one of the legislative delegations to
Columbia. Replying to a suggestion
of another employee of the railroad
that the offer to submit to arbitra-
ton a question then in dispute be-
tween employer and employee was
fair, the member of the delegation,
declared that the arbitrator
could not render justice, or would not
between the parties; then giving his
reason for so stating, he said, "They
do not know what we want" And
that is the whole law in labor I'M
ions. It is not a question of what is
right to the employer, nor to the
public, but it is a question of what
the labor union wants and how near
ly it's members can come to forcing
the demands which they make.
The truth of this statement can
not be better proved than by the or
dering of the present strike. The
new scale of wages fixed by the La
Dor Board was fixed by a three
cornered tribunal constituted by law
for the fixing of wages. The rail-
roads furnished n set of judges,
the labor unions another set, and the
third set was furnished by THE
PUBLIC. The public represents the
country at large and is supposed to
be fair and impartial as between la
Dor and capital and their respective
contentious. The labor unions SUBJ
mitted their rights to this tribunal
and the award has been made. The
railroad judges and the judges on the
party of the people who pay the
freight have agreed on a fair and
equitable scale of wages, we assume,
but the labor unions do not think so.
What the latter think may be offset
by what the representatives of the
railroads think, and we have left the
judgment of the men who represent
the public, the worker and the capt.
talist alike, the man who ships and
pays the freight on the one hand,
and the railroads and their employ
ees on the other, each of whom must
live from the income of the rail-
roads. That judgment is that the
railroad workers should submit to a
small cut in wages, not such a cut
as all other men have been called up
on to accept, not a cut to a pre-war
basis because we shall not soon re-
turn to that, nor would such a re-
turn be entirely fair, although the
returns to the farmer of the South
and to a great many other people
from their labor are far below a
.2re-war basis. But the labor unions
will not accept the verdict of the
people, (the verdict of the represen-
tatives of the public on the Labor
Board is the verdict of the people
whom they represent). They strike.
Well, as we stated, we shall not
for present purposes, deny their right
to strike. But having quit their en-
ployment, the public which has heard
-