| Show TheStrike from Mr Goulds Standpoint That astute and farseeing gentleman gentle-man named Jay Gould baa probably heeD deprived of very little Bleep by the Etrike of the telegraph operators If the dear public has suffered inconvenience inconve-nience by being thrown back fifty years in its methods of intercommunication intercommu-nication Me Gould doubtless sorry but tben how could be help it if tbe operators would insist on not work log because they wrongly imagined that they were underpaid and overworked over-worked No amount of argument on his part would convince these wrongheaded follows that their grievance were purely imaginary Besides Mr Gould is not an orator and he really bas not tbe time to take each one of separately and tell him bow much mistaken mere employees are apt to bo when dealing with tbe vexed questions of capital and labor We can picture tbe dear man sighing over the perversity of the operators and adjusting himself to a more comfortable com-fortable position in his steamer chair prepared to take a more general view of tbe situation The dear public would doubtless become dissatisfied with the idea of their electric communication com-munication being hampered and at times out o2 whenever a dispute arose between the companies and the operator To some newspaper fellow fel-low or other would occur the bright idea that the only way to prevent such occurrences in the future would be for the government to take the telegraph tel-egraph lines into its own bands The Western Union company would gladly do all it could to facilitate business over its lines but of course it could not be expected to yield to the outrageous demands of the strikers And poor Mr Gould sighed again as he thought of the poor public pub-lic growing more and more impatient as the strike continued and the necessity ne-cessity for the governmente owning the telegraph became more and mere apparent to the people Against the time that Congress convened tbeir might arise a public howl in favor of taking Mr Goulds telegraph lines sway from him We are afraid Mr Gould didnt start up with horror when this thought occurred to him He doubtless sighed again more deeply than before and let his mind dwell on all the nice fresh water there was in that eighty millions of Western West-ern Union stock It wasnt a pleasant pleas-ant prospect to give up all that water for the bulky surplus of gold eagles and standard dollars with which the United States Treasury is said to be overflowing but Mr Gould doubtless knows bow to manufacture some more water And then perhaps Mr Goulde guileless mind turned towards a calculation of bow many congressmen at how much apiece be would have to buy to keep the government from going ahead and building ita own lines instead of buying buy-ing the Western Union s plant Oon greaamen might come high but he must have them Ten per cent on bgbiy millions would buy quite a number of congressmen Who fifty per cent of water in the eighty millions mil-lions and ten per oent outside figures fig-ures for congressmen at market rates poor Mr Gould would have only tbirtytwo millions of water to exchange for gold and silver dollars Once more the little man sighed and glanced along the deck of his yaoh as he thought what a mercenary world this is and how much trouble striking operators and an unfeeling public combined to place on tbe shoulders of a confiding millionaire The Modern Age for Bnptember |
