Sound Sense
Sam Jones says many reckless and foolish things, but he also says some very true and sensible things. Referring to strikes and the rights of the laborer, he says:
I believe a dozen men or a thousand men or a million men have a perfect right to strike whenever they gentlemanly please—lay down their implements and quit work, and right there and right then they have done everything they have a right to do by human and divine law, and when they do any more they outlaw themselves and ruin their cause. Capital has a perfect right to discharge labor whenever it gentlemanly pleases, but when capital says “I will not employ you, and no one else shall employ you,” then capital has outlawed itself and damaged its cause. Capital has as much right to run around to the employers of labor in this country and beat up or cuss down anybody that will employ their discharged men as laboring men have to hang around the shops and mines from which they have been discharged or voluntarily severed their connection, with sticks and rocks and say to capital: “We won’t work for you, and nobody else shall work for you.”
Samuel’s English may be a little lame at times, but the proposition he here lays down is based on sound sense and justice.—Nashville American.
When?
Mr. Shaffer, the man who is at the head of the big steel strike, said in a speech at Wellsville last week:
Many of the older workmen present who have worked with me in the rolling mills know what the word “strike” means. In those old days we used to close the mills, throw out pickets, guard the railway depots and lay in a good supply of intoxicating spirits, thus priming for mischief and depredations of any sort. If persons thinking other than we did came to take our positions they were beaten and sent out of town. We do differently now.
It would be interesting to know just when strikers began to do differently. Such words as these by the President of the Amalgamated Association would be far more impressive if spoken at the end instead of the beginning of the strike. Let us hope that they can be spoken then.—Courier-Journal.