Can such pictures as depicted in these few lines of the Herald about those poor children’s Thanksgiving dinner, the feast proposed by the “Four Hundred” at Madison Square Garden, be accurate and represent scenes in free America, the richest, freest, best country on earth? or are these some occurrences seen in poor, starving, Czar-ridden Russia? A bow of promise was in the sky that Thanksgiving Day, however. The people had spoken a few days before. They had selected their representatives to make laws relieving them of the presence of such scenes as above described. They had selected an Executive of unquestioned honesty, who will execute such laws as will emanate from the representatives of the people.
The people had given no sign, but in silence had been thinking of scenes like that proposed at Madison Square Garden. They had voted November the 8th in silence.
Silence is often more dangerous than utterance. The deadly cobra gives no signal before he strikes. “General apathy” and the silence of the people was deadly earnest, and you know whether it was forceful or not. And if the party that the people have put in power will not do the will of the people, then the people will put some other party in power which will execute the desire of the masses. It is a quicksand that the rich tread upon. So accustomed have the rich become to the patience, long-enduring suffering of the poor, that they deem it impossible that any condition could exist other than the present. Only remember that Charles Stuart, Louis XVI., Tarquin, all thought it was impossible that aught could interfere with the set order of things; but righteous indignation, the wrath of the people, like a whirlwind may obliterate the little edifices of dust built upon the past.
The rest of the story, so vividly portrayed by the Herald, is worthy of consideration and attention:—
“I visited the house of J. W. Grimes, a striker, on the hillside, above the mill. He had a pair of rubbers on his feet. The rubbers were worn away and had been sewed together with twine. ‘You see, my shoes are so bad,’ said the mill-man, apologetically, ‘that I have to wear these rubbers. Jim Sweeney threw them away, but I found them and sewed them up,’ and he exhibited a shoe that would almost have fallen from his foot, but for the rubber which held it.
“Grimes was doing the family washing when I met him. His arms were covered with soapsuds. He told me his wife was very sick. He had been injured in the mill before the strike and had been able to save but little. Since the strike he has been able to get only a few days’ work, and his wife took in washing and did scrubbing to keep the family in bread. Now she is near death’s door, a mere apparition, while her husband has no work and there is little in the house.
“I went to the house of Bridget Coyle, who, during her testimony in the Critchlow case the other day, said she would not tell a lie for all the money Carnegie is worth. Two of her boys worked in the mill; one has secured work in another city, but is making barely enough to keep himself. Another son is at Homestead, and idle. ‘We have enough in the house to keep us another week,’ said Mrs. Coyle, ‘but after that the Lord knows what we’ll do. I just got a little coal on trust, and do wish I had a pair of shoes.
“‘We own this little house; my son paid the last on it just before the strike.’ She had rented, out a couple of rooms to Joshua Bradshaw, a mill-man, with his wife and four children. ‘They owe me six months’ rent, but Lord, I know they can’t pay it, so I don’t ask them. They are poor people, and the missus is badly sick.’
“Patrick Sweeney, another ex-striker, who can’t get work in the mill, and who lives on Sixteenth street, has been hunting for a pair of shoes for several days. Those he has were shoes once, now they are tatters. Sweeney, like dozens of the other men, has paid no rent for several months, and lives in daily dread that his family will be evicted. Being blacklisted, he cannot find work in Homestead or elsewhere.
“William Davis, of Fourteenth street, told me there wasn’t a pound of coal in his house, and a little less in the house of his mother, who lives alongside of him.”
AN APPEAL FOR AID.
“The instances mentioned are only an index to the suffering. Through personal pride most of the misery in Homestead is hidden as yet. When winter sets in, dozens of cases will come to light.
“On Saturday a meeting will be held to issue a call for aid. It has been called by Elmer Bales and John Wilson.
“Mr. Bales said to-day: ‘There is positive suffering in Homestead from lack of food, fuel, and clothing. The sufferers will not speak of their distress to you or any other outsider, but we who live here know of it only too well. In a week or two it will be much worse.’
“Hugh O’Donnell did not eat any turkey in the Allegheny county jail. There was no observance of Thanksgiving in his case. He was compelled to put up with the regular prison fare, which is not fattening to those who have tried it.”
Capital has vanquished labor at Homestead; but the skirmish left scars which will long remain unforgotten. Labor suffered, and learned that the power of the people resided in their presence at the polls on election day, when Carnegie, Frick, Webb, and others of the sham aristocrats and believers in “caste,” became of no more importance than each poor laborer, workman, mechanic, clerk, shopkeeper, or farmer, to whom on other days they assumed an air of superiority. The learning of the lesson was worth all the suffering that it cost the “Common People,” as represented by the workmen and strikers at Homestead, Pa.
CHAPTER IX. POSSIBLE FRUITS OF VICTORY.
We have considered, and we hope with charitable eyes, the scenes resulting from the victory in that skirmish at Homestead, between Carnegie, Frick, and the Common People; we have thought of the result of the picket fire at Buffalo between organized labor and the combination of capital represented by the New York Central Railroad; both of which engagements, while only out-post encounters of the on-marching army of the Common People, were decisive victories for the capitalists, the sham aristocrats, believers in “caste.” In the name of law and order (so dear to the American heart) they had appealed to the power of the State to protect, with militia, their property, and that militia, ever loyal and truly American, had responded to the call of the Executives (both Democrats) of the two most powerful States in the Union. That militia, largely composed of poor men, and men of the people, absolutely abhorring anything like the disregard of established laws, had responded to the call of the Governor of each respective State, New York and Pennsylvania. Law and order were re-established by the people of which the militia is but part. Two Democratic Governors, like patriotic citizens that they are, had bowed their heads before enacted laws—no matter what their personal feeling may have been upon the subject—and granted protection to the property of the capitalists, who, as citizens of each State, were entitled thereto, no matter by what means the capitalists and sham aristocrats may have acquired that property. The result of the action of these two Governors, and the acquiescence by the people and the support of the militia, is incontestible evidence that Socialism and Anarchism have no home in America.