LABOR-STKIKES. 



427 



represent the spirit and intentions of the strik- 

 ers on most of the railroads: 



Jtesolved, By the train-men and employe's of the 

 Pennsylvania Company and leased lines, in conven- 

 tion assembled: That we will in no wise interfere 

 with the passenger traffic or with the United States 

 mail trains. 



liesolved, That we agree to furnish a full crew of 

 men, free of charge, to the railroad company, to 

 promptly move to the city all freight now in the 

 yard intended for Pittsburgh firms, to the Duquesne 

 depot. 



Jiesolved, That under no circumstances will we 

 move through freight until we are allowed sufficient 

 wages for our labor to keep our families from actual 

 want. 



JResolved, That-we fully appreciate the sympathy 

 so fully tendered us by the public at large. 



The ruinous competition between the trunk 

 lines for the freight transportation of the West, 

 in which freight prices were reduced far below 

 the normal rates, was the subject of general 

 complaint. 



Actual suffering was felt far more generally 

 and pressingly among other classes of laborers 

 who struck notably among the workers in the 

 coal industry and among some who did not 

 strike, than among the railroaders. The pict- 

 ure of the condition of the miners given in 

 the following expression of one of the leading 

 strikers is no doubt literally true : " We have 

 for a year done men's work on two meals of 

 mush per day, and a bit of dry bread for our 

 dinners, and we have learned to endure a great 

 deal. We will eat the grass in the field before 

 we will go to work again for less than we de- 

 mand." Some of the miners could not earn 

 above $10 a month few of them over $25. An 

 obnoxious institution in the mining regions is 

 the companies' stores, the men complaining that 

 they dare not buy from other dealers, at lower 

 prices, lest they lose their places. The coal- 

 heavers who struck at Bergen Point, in New 

 Jersey, were not able to earn over 60 or 70 

 cents a day. These men, mostly Irish, pre- 

 served a quiet and peaceable temper. It was a 

 note worthy symptom of these strikes that, when 

 they were ready to return to work at the old 

 wages, they were shamed out of it by the plead- 

 ings and taunts of their wives. A set of new 

 men were brought to New York to take their 

 places, but left before evening, finding that 

 they were earning at the rate of not more than 

 25 to 60 cents a day. The stone-quarrymen, 

 who got out stone for the New York pave- 

 ments, in New Jersey, complained of the 

 prices at which they were obliged to sell to the 

 contractors, the quarriers at Weehawken de- 

 claring that they could make but 50 cents per 

 diem. A representative case of low wages in 

 factories was that of the silk mills in Newark, 

 Paterson, and New York. In the Newark 

 mills the men-spinners were paid $1 a day. 

 Some of these men have worked at their trade 

 for 20 years, and have wives and children to 

 support. Small boys were paid from $1.10 to 

 $2.10 per week. The wages of the girls ranged 

 from f 3 to $5.50 a week. The highest wages 



paid was $9 a week to the dyers. From these 

 wages a reduction was made of 15 per cent. 

 In a New York factory, the wages of the weav- 

 ers were reduced from 9 to 6 cents a yard, 

 making a reduction in the girls' average pay 

 of from $4.50 to $3 per week, while formerly 

 they were able to average $8 a week. 



The elements in this labor-outbreak were: 

 1. The railroad strikers. 2. The miners, fac- 

 tory-hands, and other laborers in different 

 parts of the country, whose wages were op- 

 pressively low, whom a breath could have ex- 

 cited in their desperate or uncomfortable cir- 

 cumstances, and who thought they read in 

 the popular sentiments excited by the rail- 

 road strike a disposition to befriend and en- 

 force the cause of their suffering families. 8. 

 The trade-unionists, who, like the next fol- 

 lowing class, rejoiced in another instance of 

 the power of labor-combination, and who ex- 

 pressed on every hand the liveliest sympathy 

 and well-wishes for the railroad unions, and 

 predicted in their success the advantage and 

 strengthening of all their organizations. 4. 

 The " communistic " element, which could 

 hope for no immediate benefit from the strike, 

 unless it should lead to a general social revo- 

 lution and disruption of property tenures. 5. 

 The " tramps," being, for the most part, me- 

 chanics of more or less idle and irregular 

 habits, who had been for years deprived of 

 employment in their regular trades, owing to 

 the general contraction of the productive in- 

 dustries and the improvement of labor-saving 

 machinery. 6. The dangerous classes the un- 

 productive, the untaught, and unprincipled 

 multitude which congregates in all larger towns, 

 thousands in number, from which come most 

 of the thieves and paupers. The latter ele- 

 ment, which is always ready to inflame and take 

 part in a riot, partly from the hope of booty 

 and partly from motives of envious destruc- 

 tiveness and misanthropy, was most conspicu- 

 ous during the Sunday of robbery and arson 

 in Pittsburgh, but was out in force also in 

 the street-riots in Chicago and St. Louis. The 

 " tramp " class and the unemployed were over- 

 ready to take part in the closing of the shops 

 and the chasing of willing mechanics from their 

 work. That portion of the demonstrations 

 may be supposed to have been conceived and 

 carried out by this class. Both of the latter 

 elements thought they sympathized in, if they 

 did not understand, the motives of the third 

 class, the "communists." There were many 

 voluntary strikes, especially among the West- 

 ern factory-hands, where no particular com- 

 plaint could be alleged, except the universal 

 inferior condition of the laboring-man. Men 

 threw down their tools, under the excitement 

 of the hour, to prate about the wrongs of their 

 class. Meetings and knots of men gathered 

 in all the large towns and industrial sections, 

 to listen to harangues upon the oppression of 

 capital, the social revolution, and the labor re- 

 public, and to pass resolutions calling upon 



