Show THESTRIKE AND THE MINERS 1 What the especial cause of the strike in the anthracite region may be we do not know It is clear however that the burdens the miners there have been no worse during the last three months than they have during tho last I three years Their p ay Is i poor It always has been V Tho great majority of them are Inferior I i men brought from the lower I 1 classes of Europe brought because they are cheap men and poor as their f pay has been it Is a clear case It Is more than double what they received before coming here Fpi years and years The Tribune has been warning those epplCi that Import degraded labor la-bor with the object of breaking down American workingmen that they are bound In the long run to lose money because an intelligent American worker Is worth r whole drove of them The rumblings of the strike have been in the air for months and it Is an open secret given out last spring that If other means failed to elect a Democratic Demo-cratic President this year the country I would be churned with strikes and the people demoralized with a belief that the sufferings of laboring men were more than they could bear However tho V olrikers have an advantage this year or the more than 100000 who have gone a strike In Pennsylvania they all could Ilnd Instant employment could they get this side of the Mississippi Missis-sippi river The Union Pacific Is short many men The Burlington wants to make extensive enlargements and is held back because of the want of laborers labor-ers The same is true of the Rock Island Isl-and and 1C 1 the road between Los Angeles and this city when begun shall try to rush Its progress It will be crippled by the very same means Many hundreds of thousands of immigrants have landed on our shores this year Many of them are men who came simply sim-ply to obtain work Notwithstanding that there has been a wonderful scarcity of men throughout all tho farming region during the past year It has been the same in the coal I mines and the iron mines It is the same everywhere while from the east coast of Elaine to Cape Mendoclno In California Cali-fornia It Is almost an impossiwm oCuTf U unia j nuiiJ m tne houses jOf the people El lifer the country is exceedingly ex-ceedingly prosperous or It Is losing Its moral fiber T The strangcst flature of the whole season Is that men who work with their hands especially foreignborn r men are less contented when they arc drawing more wages on sllort hours than when they are drawing1 poor wages and workIng work-Ing twelve hours L day It Is hard to explain It excep when they get full wages and short hours l they congregate and talk over thqlr affairs and take up an idea l apparently that they ought to work still less and receive still more wages The disquieting feature is that very many men do not seem to be as they formerly were when the Idea that If any man had a chance to work at fair wages he did not need anything else that with that capital ho could for himself forge out a future while now that Idea has gone and the Idea of men seems Jlo be to get something some-thing for nothing and It they cannot to strike and keep striking and that Mexlcanlzes a country faster than any other possible > |