Threatened Labor Troubles in New York.
The New York Commercial Advertiser of Tuesday says: “According to the outgivings of a meeting of workingmen held in this city yesterday, there is to be a renewal of the labor troubles during the coming spring. Preliminary action has already been taken, and the enforcement of the eight-hour rule is the ostensible object of the movement. The real purpose of the trades, however, is understood to be a concerted movement for an increase of wages, and the opening of the spring is selected as the time for a general and formidable demonstration. The same game was tried last year. The Commercial of the 7th of March last, announced that there was reason to believe that a general strike was then impending; the first blow was to have been struck on the first of April, but the trades-unions concluded to wait until the spring work had fairly opened in May, and accordingly, in the first week of the latter month, the journeyman painters led off, and were speedily followed by the carpenters (May 13), the bricklayers, plumbers, cabinet-makers, and the rest. The effort to coerce the employers was a dismal failure. The men, egged on by the trades-unions, demanded too much and got nothing. Great manufacturing establishments were closed, the idle workmen were compelled to subsist upon their small savings or upon charity, and before the middle of the summer, the employers had won the battle. The men returned to work at the old rates, having discovered that trades-unionism was powerless against a thorough combination of employers. Had the unions been less exacting or less meddlesome and impertinent, the majority of employers would have gladly made a compromise; but the demand for all or none was promptly denied, and the unfortunate workmen were the chief sufferers. Before the trades-unions complete their plans for a new strike, next spring, they should recall the history of their failure a year ago.”