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Lincolw, Neb., Saturday, Jdly 14, 1891.
As a menace to the national peace and well-being, "Coxeyism''
seems to have melted away. Even the newspapers, always on the
alert for news, pay the movement the scant courtesy of but an
occasional notice. Congress does not refer to it. As Byron says,
"It came like truth and disappeared like dreams." Once more is
vindicated the value of the peaceful and rational method of deal
ing with such forms of popular excitement or dissatisfaction.
Very many serious and thoughtful people were greatly disturbed
and agitated over the massing of this idle and dangerous ele
ment of society at the national capital. They thought they should
be stopped on the way and dispersed by arms. They saw in the
movement the seeds of a social revolution. All kinds of perils were
prognosticated. It was supposed that their presence would either
intimidate or exasperate congress into some form of injudicious
action. All these anxieties were proven to be useless. When the
"Coxeyites" reached Washington they saw how helpless they were
to affect legislation or to create profound sympathy
for their method of righting social inequalities. The very
fact, deplored by many, that these tramps were a voting
part of the body politic gave them a half unconscious but real sense
of political and social responsibility. As John Fiske truly says, if
the poor and ignorant of this country could complain not only of
social disadvantages but of the absence of political rights, they
would be a much more dangerous instrument for the demagogue to
play upon. If any one will travel along the Brandywine river he
will see large powder factories, which are somewhat curiously built.
They are constructed with three sides of stone and one side of the
lightest timber. When an explosion occurs the timber side is blown
out, but the stone sides are preserved. The right of free speech,
free press and free ballot make the timber side of our political struc
ture. They offer but little resistence to the explosions of popular
agitation. Russia is built of stone throughout. When the explosion
comes all the walls will shatter.
It begins to look as if the United States court were likely to place
mpoa a rational basis the whole question of strikes. The common
-law has rightly made it very difficult to establish the existence of a
eoaspkacy, because the consequences of this crime are so widely
spread and may be so terrible in their operation. The method by
mesas of which a man may be vitally associated with a capital crime,
although he may be a thousand miles away from the actual offense,
should be very jealously guarded from the potent possibilities of
abase. But when a regularly organized body of men, acting under
the aaqueetiosed order of s recognized leader, engage in unlawful
acts, it ought not to be difficult to convict them of conspiracy. Dis
gaise it as we may, a strike mesas war. Unless the parties engaged
is. it may, as a last resort, compel men by violence to refrain from
; the places of strikiBg Baea, the strike has and caa have no
value to the strikers. There has never been a strike in which this
was not the recognized ethics of those engaged in it And this
meant, and must mean, the direct or indirect loss of property to the
employers of labor. The way the matter works now is this. A body
of men wish to strike on a railway; they quit work, drive off those
who would take their places, stop trains, side track freight cars and
maybe pull down bridges. Bnt, even if they commit no overt acts of
violence except drive away non-union men, they are inflicting a
serious pecuniray loss upon the road. When the strike is ended
there seems to be no way by which the injured roads can secure finan
cial damage for the wrongs they have suffered. Surely, this ought
not to be so. All of the various labor unions have an organic exis
tence, and generally, we may suppose, a reasonably well filled treas
ury. Upon that treasury the injured railway company should have
some legal method of coming. If an individual takes out a legal in
junction restraining another man from engaging in some act which
involves pecuniary profit, he is obliged to give a bond that he can
make the first man good, in case the injunction does not hold. But,
in an ordinary strike a thousand men can practically take out an in
junction restraining a railway from continuing work, and then when
this illegally imposed injunction is lifted, nobody is responsible for
the terrible damage inflicted. It is an irrational and harmful spirit
of public sympathy for the workingman to look on this state of
of things with complacency. The working man will be the ultimate
sufferer if it continues. Any form of injustice in
any community finally reaches the weakest member of the
community. Because we may not personally like George Pull
man or Jay Gould we have no moral right to encourage a system
in which such men appear to be the chief sufferers. The wisdom
and sense of justice of this land will have to combine to right this
great wrong. No railway should engage a man as an employe un
less he is willing to sign a contract in which both parties are
bound to a specific length of service. The public ha3 some rights
in the matter as against both parties to such a contract. And
either party should be legally obliged to give, say ten days'
notice of intention not to renew the contract. The people are get
ting heartily sick of a system in which the property of innocent
people may, without an hour's notice, be ruthlessly sacrificed sim
ply because some incompetent man may have been discharged
from his task a thousand miles from where a strike is actually in
augurated. A thorough overhauling of the whole question of the
relation between railroads and their employes seems to be sadly
needed.
WHAT HE WOULD THINK.
The good, kind old gentleman looked down benignantly on the
email urchin blacking his shoes. "Now, my boy," he said, after ho
had finished blacking his shoes, ''what would you think if I gavo
you a nice, new $1 bill?"
The boy, down on all fours, cocked his head up at his prospective
benefactor.
"I guess I'd think you wanted 95 cents change," ho replied, and
and the subsequent proceedings proved his guess to be correct.
THE PRICE OF IT.
A happy-go-lucky bachelor was taking his ease most delightfully
an the veranda of the hotel, when the lady with five marriageable
daughters came and sat down behind him.
"You seem to be very well satisfied with life, Mr. Frisky," she
said.
"I am always that, my dear madam," he responded.
"And. bachelor?" she said questioning!?.
"That is no argument against it, is it?" he asked. ?
-I think it must be. But tell me why you have never married. -
"I couldn't tell you, I think, if I tried."
"It seems to me that so handsome and cheerful and thrifty a man
as you are, Mr. Frisky, would have been captured long ago. How
have you managed to retain your freedom?"
"Eternal vigilance, my dear madam, is the price of liberty, you
know" he replied, bowing himself away ae three of the aforesaid
daaghtsrs joised their mamma.
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