426 



LABOR-STRIKES. 



The following table, showing the average 

 prices of certain quantities of about 60 arti- 

 cles of prime necessity, aggregated according 

 to the quantities of each usually consumed, is 

 useful as illustrating the purchasing power of 

 mechanics' wages in their various fluctuations 

 since the beginning of the Civil War : 



This table does not take account of the con- 

 tinued high rates of rent, nor of the present 

 high prices of many secondary articles which 

 are important for the comfort of the family. 



The railroad workmen were not all of them 

 driven into the strike from actual want, al- 

 though all of them had been obliged, during 

 the successive reductions in wages which have 

 recently been made, to give up many comforts 

 and luxuries to which they had been accus- 

 tomed. 



There was a feeling of deep indignation 

 against the companies on account of the man- 

 ner in which the business had been conducted 

 for several years past. The argument that 

 many of the roads could not afford to pay the 

 former wages, or any wages at all, and pay at 

 the same time the usual interest on their debts 

 and capital, only aroused the greater indigna- 

 tion of the strikers. The impression that there 

 had been a sorry mismanagement of capital 

 prevailed not only among them, but among the 

 public at large, and explains the general sym- 

 pathy which the strikers retained among the 

 people in spite of their high-handed and un- 

 lawful proceedings. The popular feeling was 

 that they ought not to be made to suffer for 

 the gross mistakes and extravagances of the 

 heads of the companies, whoever else should 

 * suffer. The following newspaper report of a 

 conversation with an intelligent brakeman 

 shows the prevailing sentiments of the strik- 

 ing railroaders : 



" When we complain," said he, " that our wages 

 are too small to support a comfortable life, they tell 

 us that railroads do not exist primarily to support us 

 in any sort of life that the managers are trustees of 

 other people's property, and they must conduct 

 their business so as to protect the interest of the 

 property-holders. Now, we can't help seeing that 

 these managers, in spite of their conscientious de- 

 votion to the interests of the road-owners, have been 

 wildly squandering this property, income and assets, 

 in a crazy struggle to slaughtet-each other. Every- 

 body knows that they have been sinking money 

 sinking it needlessly and willfully ; and when this 

 ruinous rivalry flares out in such freaks of puerile 

 and jealous extravagance as those senseless, danger- 



ous, and demoralizing races across the continent 

 with fast trains, we lose some of our reverence for 

 the superior sagacity which capital is said to attract 

 into its service. But it is still more irritating to see 

 the money, which is whittled from our wages by 

 these magnates, spent with open-handed liberality 

 to gratify their own love of display and sumptuous 

 pleasure. Eight here, into this Jersey City depot, 

 there come at least a dozen private cars, each or 

 which belongs to some grandee on one of the lines 

 in this ' system.' Now, there is actual need of 

 some private cars on some occasions, and if the 

 gorgeousness of these vehicles could be subdued a 

 trifle in the interest of economy and good taste, and 

 if they were only made to facilitate the business of 

 the roads, they would provoke no complaint or com- 

 ment ; but hardly a day passes without one or two 

 of these palaces rolling in here. Empty Pullman 

 coaches are running every hour, but the railroad 

 pasha must have a car of his own. He may have his 

 car all to himself^ or he may have all his friends with 

 him. The supplies which are furnished to these 

 luxurious travelers are not such as the families of 

 brakemen habitually enjoy, but they are luxurious 

 meals in several artistic courses, with wines to suit, 

 and all are charged to ' the company.' The occu- 

 pants sometimes live in these coaches for days to- 

 gether, and they (the coaches) are always nuisances 

 here. They are in everybody's way, and somebody 

 is kept switching, and backing, and hauling them 

 about, until they are coupled to an outgoing train, 

 and on the way to another yard. The actual ex- 

 penses of a round trip from Philadelphia for one of 

 these cars is $20, at a moderate estimate ; and when 

 40 or 50 such trips are made in a monthj besides 

 voyages to other places, a clean $1,000 is wiped out. 



" But there are still more expeditious methods 

 than this of bringing about an alarming ' shrinkage 

 of values 'in railroad stocks. Private cars are not 

 sufficiently distinguished to gratify the most lux- 

 urious officials. They must have special trains, and 



everything must clear the track for them. Mr. 



thinks no more of ordering locomotive 1,001 hooked 

 up to car 2,002, than he does of ordering his coach- 

 man to harness his bay mare to his road-wagon for 

 a drive. Last winter he used to roll from Philadel- 

 phia to New York in this grand style, to attend the 

 opera whenever the performance promised to be 

 sufficiently attractive for his elegant taste, and then 

 he would steam back after it was over. It costs 

 about $180 to make the run, and five or six specials 

 a month knock the bottom out of another $1,000. 

 Now, $2,000 a month for private cars and specials is 

 rather precipitous. It is 10 per cent, of $20,000, or 

 the pay of 400 men at $50 per month. And this 

 amounts to saying that the 10 per cent, saved by 

 reducing the wages of 400 men on this division 

 never gets as far as the stockholders, but is charged 

 up in a couple of items to the ' vanity and ease' ac- 

 count. 



" Now, you can snow us under with arguments, 

 and political economy, and social science, and it 

 may be that all this has no bearing upon the ques- 

 tion of wages as viewed by philosophers. Our men 

 are not profound or subtile thinkers, perhaps, but 

 they keep both eyes wide open, and these things are 

 exasperating. If the men who are paring down our 

 wages for the good of society at large, and railroad- 

 stock owners and bondholders in particular, would 

 only pinch themselves a little in the general squeez- 

 ing-up, we could listen with more patience to their 

 professions. They say we have a common interest 

 in the prosperity of the roads. Why don't they dis- 

 tress themselves just a little say to the extent of 

 riding in Pullman palace cars so that we can lux- 

 uriate in some community of suflEering for high 

 principle ? " 



The following resolutions, passed by the 

 strikers on the Fort "Wayne road at Pittsburgh, 



