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Show FOWER OF PUBLIC OPINION The railroad shop crafts have lost the strike. They have been beaten as no band of strikers was ever beaten. They were beaten because from the very start public opinion "was solidly against them and no strike can succeed against such opposition. op-position. Public opinion was against them, first, because after the public had established an impartial tribunal to peaceably adjust differences between them and railroad managements they refused to abide by its decisions; and, second, because they refused to accept a wage award though it fixed wages from 29 to 90 per cent higher than in 1914. Strikes are bad things. They symbolize anarchy no less than industrial warfare. This one has visited misfortune and hardship on many who were contented with their rate of pay and working conditions but who went on strike because an arrogant and stupid leadership so ordered. They deserve no public sympathy, for from cowardly assaults on defenseless men who refused to strike to bomb-throwing, train-wrecking train-wrecking ad murder they stopped at nothing to accomplish their selfish self-ish ends. When sympathizers under the false and subtle pretense of "defective "de-fective equipment" deserted trains on a sweltering desert and subjected sub-jected innocent women and children to suffering and hardship thier reprehensible acts were brazenly applauded by strike agitators. If this strike did nothing else it set the sober mind of America in action against bolshevism as it never was before. It has aroused the law-abiding, law-respecting element of the peopel to realization that bolshevism i3 not confined to Russia and that if the cherished heritages and institutions of civilization are to be preserved a public ,duty attaches to the citizen to see that justice prevails, law is upheld and transgressions and transgressors are commensurateiy penalized. - The Manufacturer. |