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Show Right and Wrong of Strikes. THE RECENT great" calamity at Johnstown, Pa., involving hundreds hun-dreds of lives, and the still more recent explosion at the Daly-West of Park City.which extended to another great producer the Ontario gives us but a faint Idea of the risk every man takes who works underground in either coal of auriferous mines. Three dollars a shift is the top wage paid to the man who takes his life in his hand every time he enters a shaft and steps upon the cage which carries him down, down, down, almost to the very edge of the crust which covers this ball of fire we call Earth. Yet there are men rolling in wealth who regard three dollars too much to pay for the risk of a human life. So they combine com-bine together as mine owners, and they combine together as railroad carriers of the product of these mines, and combine as capitalists to enhance the price of the product by limiting the production, thereby Inflicting an injury not alone upon the consumer but upon the producer, by depriving him of the mean opportunity to risk his life for bread! "" So it is that when a miners" strike Is heralded by the daily press, popular sympathy goes out for the miner, especially es-pecially if a railroad' company is mixed up in the controversy as against the man who works underground. Now these strikes undertaken by miners are not always good strikes. .We mean by good strikes such as are undertaken un-dertaken with careful deliberation as to the outcome as well as to the justice jus-tice of the position assumed by the miners' union. Every plan to prevent a strike should be exhausted before a strike is ordered, and we believe this policy has been adhered to by the heads of these great miners' unions. It we mistake not, John Mitchell, president presi-dent of the United Mine Workers of America, was present along with Samuel Sam-uel Gompers, president of the American Amer-ican Federation of Labor, at that memorable meeting of the Civic Federation Fed-eration 'at New York: Both labor leaders addressed the meeting on lines in harmony with addresses made by Archbishop Ireland and Senator Han-na, Han-na, and we think it was Mitchell who, at the close of the meeting, stepped up to Senator Hanna and said: "Senator "Sen-ator Hanna, I never really understood you before' today. Aft my life I have been opposed to you." The great strike in the anthracite coal region, which began laist month and is still on, is a justifiable strike. The strike of the teamsters and freight handlers In Chicago is, at this writing, practically over, four of the great trunk roads partially conceding an advanced ad-vanced scale and "the istate . arbitration arbitra-tion board laboring with , the other roads to bring about a similar condition. condi-tion. During the strike much loss was occasioned to the industries dealing deal-ing in perishable goods and the merchants mer-chants got so exasperated that they made a demand upon the governor to call out the state militia. Fortunately Fortunate-ly this appeal was unheeded and blood-shed'avoided. blood-shed'avoided. It was a strike illy conceived an worse managed, and from the start was disapproved by the Chicago Federation Fed-eration of Labor, the central body without who&e aid or counsel no strike should'' be undertaken in the great western metropolis. But to return to the coal strike." All attempts to end the trouble through the conciliation of the Civic Federation Federa-tion were unavailing, more's the pity, but ihe "onus does not rest upon the leaders ot t;he miners, it gradually became, apparent that the strike was not so much one for increased wages j or the abatement of specified griev- j ances as for full recognition of the j miners' union and the adoption In the anthracite . regions of the wage-scale system. The principal operators, as represented by the heads of the coal-carrying" coal-carrying" railroads, stuck steadily to their doctrine that it is not feasible to regularize labor conditions in the hard coal regions. An easy reply, of course, is that, in spite of the different conditions prevailing in different parts of the anthracite field, the capitalists I themselves have succeeded in forming a combination "by which they have completely eliminated competition, with the result of regulating the total output and controlling the market price. : . ' . . In refusing so persistently to deal with the miners, the operators would seem to be challenging public opinion rather boldly. For these operators are, in effect, the railroads themselves. Contrary to established principles and to . the laws of most states and countries, coun-tries, the roads have gone beyond their legitimate functions as common carriers car-riers and have assumed monopolistic control of a necessary article of traffic traf-fic and ordinary use. This relation of the railroads to the mining, shipping and marketing of coal i3 at the basis of the whole anthracite trouble, of general industry. Meantime the immense strike is on. but no breaches of the peace are yet recorded. The convention recently held in Indianapolis to consider the advisability advisa-bility of a sympathetic strike in the bituminous mines resulted in a plan to assess all workers in bituminous mines to sustain the strikers in the anthracite anthra-cite region. |