Year: 1875




The conflict between labor and capital


which is perpetually breaking out from time


to time raises one of the most important


questions Of the period, and a question of
which nobody has yet discovered the solu-
ton, although it has engaged the minds of
some of the wisest thinkers in Great Britain
and this country. The freedom of labor is
right which cannot be disputed man may
work or not, as he pleases and if he prefers
starvation to low wages, it is his own affair
He is at perfect liberty to starve and let his
family starve if he makes that choice. The
right of association is, perhaps equally in
disputable. If two men, or any number of
men, think fit to make an agreement that
they will not work except at a certain rate of
wages, it is right which the law comedies
70 them. If they prefer no income to a
small one they must bear the consequences.
But when they go further, when they adj
vance from persuasion to force, and by acts
of intimidation and threats of violence COM
pei other laborers to enter into their COM
bination, they are on utterly indefensible
ground They violate the great principle of
the freedom of labor on which alone their
organization can be justified. All laborers
have equal rights Those who are forced to


Join strike when their own free will would
lead them to labor for such wages as they
can get are the victims of an intolerable
oppression, and if the evil continues tosgrow
the question will have to be considered
ic tha Int &c nc 4O
interpose for its redress.


A strike by the voluntary action of all who
participate in it cannot be assaied in prin-
ciple, however misguided it may be in point
of expediency. 1t is always blunder when
it fails to accomplish its object, and some
River strike, whose results were described In
the letter from that place which we printed
was an egregious mistake. When
it had continued for six weeksst the weavers
returned and signified their willingness to
resume work at reduced rates, but wished to
make conditions. The mill owners refuse
the conditions, and the strike continues
The weavers have lost during this
period not only the ten per cent
but their whole wages, and many
Of them are brought to hunger, rags and
beggary. If the compulsive unions were
dissolved and the starving weavers permitted
to act freely as individuals the greater part
Of them would be too glad to earn such wages
rs are offered. They would break the mon
strous usurping tyranny if they dared. 1t is
pitiable that they first lent themselves as the
lupes, and are now compelled to submit as
the victims, of the designing men who have
reduced them to abject slavery. They are
suffering all the evils of slavery without its
Slaves are fed, clothed and
by the masters who hold them in
bondage; starvation, or the fear of it, never
stares them in the face


strike was never worse timed or entered
upon with so little judgment as this at Fall
River. The long stagnation of business is
likely to continue the market for cotton
goods is narrowed and prices still falling
the mill owners have little motive for turn
ing out more goods, and the operatives had
no chance of success when they entered
on strike in such a condition of general
business cold, hard winter is coming on,
and if they were wise they would emanci-
pate themselves from the tyranny of the
unions that hold them in involuntary
servitude and go to work. The time for
successful strike is when the market is good
and the demand for goods so active that en-
ployers cannot afford stoppage of their
mills. These Fall River weavers have mis-
calculated every way, and the sooner they ac-
knowledge their mistake the better it wi II be
for them and their fellow sufferers