Porto Rico Laborers Ask for Work
In Porto Rico more than a hundred laborers, with their wives and children, reached the capital, August 17, after a two-days’ march without food, led by a woman with an American flag, and carrying banners bearing the inscription “Give Us Work.” They marched straight to the executive mansion. Their spokesman then called upon the governor, and told him that the object of their visit was to ask the government to open a road between two towns in their district, thus enabling the laboring classes of the district to get a livelihood. The governor promised that the government would do all in its power to relieve the situation. The procession immediately left the city on its return journey; and “orders were promptly issued for work to be begun on the road, and for the employment of as many persons as possible who might apply from the district.” And now that all that can be done under the American flag in Porto Rico, how long before the like will have to be done in the United States? That shirt of Nessus is swiftly making itself felt, and will only do so more and more.