THE GREAT STRIKE IN NEW YORK.
By Editor
This is getting to be a good deal more than a local affair, and is assuming proportions that entitle it to more than the space of a news item. A dispatch of February 4 says:— "The only hope the strikers have of success is to so hamper business as to bring about a settlement by arbitration. There are now on the strike nearly 40,000 men, with perhaps half that number out of work through the stoppage of business incident to the strike." Another dispatch of same date says:— "The County General Committee of the United Labor party adopted the following resolution last night:— "That if, in the opinion of those now conducting the strike, it becomes necessary to call out on the strike, men of other branches of industry affiliated with our party, we recommend they obey the summons, even to the point of stopping all the wheels of industry, and in time they may learn how necessary to society producing workers are." "The White Star steamship Republic, and the Cunard Line steamship City of Chicago, scheduled to sail to-day with the transatlantic mails, will not be able to get off because of the strike." Another dispatch of February 5 says:— "The calkers and joiners at work repairing the Guyandotte, the steamer that was damaged by the explosion of an infernal machine, struck. They had no grievances, but struck out of sympathy with the freight-handlers. Their places will be filled to-day by non-union men. The coopers employed along the piers, with the mill-wrights, joined the strike to-day. The painters and mechanics on the Guion Line also struck. The Italians who took the place of the strikers at the Hudson River depot quit work in the afternoon." We are workingmen ourselves, and we have a strong sympathy for them when they are oppressed. But we cannot sympathize with them in lawless acts even when they are oppressed, and much less when they have no grievance. Those who first struck may have had a grievance; but for all other workmen to join them, and to deliberately plan to stop all industries, is simply barbarous selfishness. Thousands of poor people will suffer from cold and hunger because of this strike. We insist that there is no monopoly in this country so regardless of the rights of the poor as are the Labor Unions. This is emphatically an age when men are "lovers of their own selves."