STRIKERS CONDONING CRIME.
By Editor
THE Chicago Record-Herald of the fourth inst. records a state of affairs that borders on a reign of terror. It shows that when men undertake to avenge their own wrongs, real or imaginary, they are prone not only to retaliate upon those who may have driven them to seek revenge, but to utterly disregard the rights of all others but themselves. Since the great industrial strike in that city many of the men connected with the labor unions have been disposed to disregard the peace of their fellow-citizens not of their own class. Therefore there has been formed a Citizens' Anti-crime Committee, and this committee has made a request to the strikers for a better observance of law and order. This action, according to the Record-Herald, has been interpreted by the unions as an "insult to organized labor." At a meeting of the Federation of Labor, "the men who inspired the communication" were severely denounced. One man is reported to have said:— They have forced our young men to go out on the highways with pistols and to demand the money wherewith to feed themselves. And I respect the hold-up man far more than the despairing workingman who weakly submits and takes his own life in his cellar. The reformers said in '93 that we ought to be fed on bullets and bread flavored with strychnin, and they are trying to give us a little of the same medicine now. This outbreak was "greeted with thunderous applause," which was continued when another delegate said that the capitalists of the city were its greatest criminals, and that when the federation attained its object of organizing all wage-earners, crime necessarily would be eliminated. This was a frank admission that the unions were indulging in crime to enforce their designs. Others, a little more conservative, urged that the federation accept the invitation to appoint representatives on the Anti-crime Committee and unite in its work. This was suggested as a means of getting representatives in the "camp of the enemy"—another admission that they still indorsed the acts that called out the committee, and desired to get where they could thwart its purpose to preserve law and order. One of the delegates gave an inkling of the crimes of their antagonists when he said:— "Let's get on the committee with them, and ask the rich merchants why they don't pay their taxes. Ask them why the grand jury spends a month looking up union pickets who may have been doing a little slugging, instead of devoting its time to the forty-eight hold-ups of the past few weeks." The criminality of some men in the capitalist and political classes in our great cities has been discussed until it has become a byword, and the antagonists of the capitalists have come to think that it is the proper thing to commit crime in order to withstand them, or to secure a like prestige in other lines. The caste principle that is growing up in our country, especially in the cities, and in mining and manufacturing centers, is taking on a worse form, if possible, than that in so-called "heathen lands." It is worse in that it is accompanied by violence in the scramble for ascendancy. The same paper gives an account of the assaulting of a non-union painter employed in the Pullman Car Company's shops. He had been six times assaulted by union men because he would not join a union. The last time he was badly beaten and chased to his room in a boarding-house. Here he secured a pistol and shot his assailant. According to his account, he had preferred to spend money for books rather than to pay $25 and dues in order to belong to a union. Verily we are fast approaching the time of which the Saviour said it would be as it was in the "days of Noah." Matt. 24:37. And the record of that time tells us that "the earth was filled with violence." Gen. 6:11.