operators, nor of the presidents and directors of those companies, and without their being made amenable in any way to law.

The complaints of the miners against this practice were so earnest that some years ago a law was enacted in Pennsylvania prohibiting it, and providing that the capacity of the mine cars should be ascertained and registered by a specially authorized officer, and that at each mine a "check-boss" or weighmaster might be appointed by the miners. But the penalties for disobeying the law are sadly defective. The law is notoriously disregarded. Yet we have never heard of a single instance in which the operators or owners of coal mines, or the presidents or directors of coal companies, or their superintendents, have been fined or imprisoned, or in any way punished for violating this law. Only a few days ago the operatives in the Clearfield and Broad Top coal region published a list of complaints, one of which was that the scales at the mines were so arranged that they showed less than the true weight of coal in each mine car. They declared that their check-boss or weight-inspector was not allowed to touch the scales, and that all he could do was to notice the apparent weight of the cars as they rapidly passed over the falsely-adjusted scales. At other mines there are no check-bosses, and at still others there are other means employed for cheating the miners, whether the quantity of coal mined and their resulting wages be determined by weight or by measure.

These facts are widely known. There is not a newspaper in Pennsylvania that is ignorant of them, yet how seldom are they alluded to, and when alluded to, in how pointless and deprecatory manner is not the allusion made? Yet the systematic, deliberative cheating of coal operatives that is thus perpetrated amounts yearly to at least a million dollars and probably to double that sum.

Then, again, the system of keeping back wages of employees for the period of at least a month, and of frequently, too, reserving wages to a certain amount, or for a certain period, as a forfeit against employees violating "iron-clad" contracts, operateswhether in all cases intended so to do or not-to cut down wages to an extent of from ten to twenty-five per cent., according to circumstances and localities.

On this subject the recent testimony of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, an employer of thousands of workingmen, in a recent open letter published in many of our daily newspapers, is directly in point. He said that in an interview with a large body of his employees they declared that a reduction of the period of paying wages from four weeks to two weeks would be equivalent to an increase of more than five per cent. on their wages. It is needless to say that a reduction to one week would more than duplicate that percentage

of advantage to wage-workers. What gives all the more force to this testimony is that these employees are not compelled to purchase at "company stores," and are in a region where there is free competition among those from whom they procure their supplies.

The "company store" custom is a natural adjunct of this system of holding back wages. At the start of new mining operations in a secluded region there was a seeming justification for it. It was necessary that a store, or depot of supplies for the miners, convenient to the place where they worked, should be established. The individuals, or the company, operating the mines, it was argued, might as well establish the store and reap the profit from it as any one else. And the argument would be a sound one were it not for the temptations to abuse power and to exercise extortion, which experience shows the system involves. How great that abuse is, and the consequent extortion, is abundantly proved by the testimony which induced (compelled would, perhaps, more correctly express the truth) the Legislature of Pennsylvania to enact a prohibitory law against “company stores," as well as by the emphatic condemnation of them by the Secretary of Internal Affairs. But partly owing to defects in the law itself, and partly owing to its ineffective administration, growing out of the unwillingness of the officials whose duty it is to report and bring to justice the influential parties who disregard its provisions, it is evaded and defied to an extent that makes it virtually inoperative and dead.

Where stores are not publicly and avowedly established and maintained by " companies," or individual operators, they are virtually so, and have the same oppressive effect through operators being interested in them and receiving a percentage of the sales made to their employees. It is well understood, too, by the latter that unless they purchase their supplies at those stores they will be dismissed from employment, or, on one or another pretext, will have the most unremunerative work crowded over upon them.

Moreover, owing to the long periods that the scanty wages paid the operatives are kept back, the operatives must buy their supplies on credit. As they have no visible property which they can pledge as security, and as their wages are both scanty and precarious, the merchant, even if he have no understanding or connection with the operators, and even if he is a competitor of the company's store, puts a much higher price upon everything he sells to these miners, in order to cover the risk of losses which he incurs.

Thus wage-workers are crushed and ground beneath the upper and the lower millstone. On the one hand, they have to struggle against the tendency of employers to reduce their wages, and pay them just as little as will secure their services. On the other hand,

they have to pay higher prices for all their purchases than others who buy for cash in the open market.

These facts are perfectly well known to the writers for our newspapers and periodicals, yet few and faint are the censures pronounced upon the capitalists and companies who, for their own profit or convenience, impose these disadvantages and inflict these losses upon their employees. There are legislative enactments professedly framed to protect wage-workers from some of these abuses and methods of extortion, but they are lame and ineffective, and the controlling influence exerted by capitalists and corporations over those whose duty it is to enforce these legislative enactments practically nullifies even the little prohibitory force they have. Under these circumstances it is not at all surprising that widespread dissatisfaction and discontent prevail among wage-workers. They feel that they are imposed on, cheated, and defrauded. They know that when trade becomes brisk and business profitable, they receive a tardy and scanty increase of wages, but when the profits of their employers are lessened, their wages are swiftly reduced.

As for the lawlessness and acts of violence of wage-workers, there are several things to be said in explanation—in explanation, but not in excuse or defence. For we can frame no apology for lawlessness.

The first of these remarks is that these acts are most frequently committed not by the wage-workers themselves, but by the "roughs and toughs and hoodlums" who, on every occasion of excitement or disturbance, are ready to take advantage of it and make it an opportunity for indulging their criminal propensities.

The second point we make is that it is not surprising if the wageworkers themselves are sometimes carried away by excitement and indignation into disregard of the requirements of the law. In the action of their employers whose exactions they are resisting and striking against, they have an example of successful evasion and defiance of law. They see that they disregard and defy numerous emphatic prohibitions of State Constitutions; that they openly evade and defy legislative enactments; that they resort to legal action when it is to their interest to do it, and that, at other times, they resist its action by employing the potent influences of wealth to bribe legislators, to control State and municipal officers, and to lame and paralyze the arm of the law when raised against corporations and capitalists in our courts of justice.

If, therefore, there is danger of wage-workers accepting the satanic gospel of disregard for law, it is because wealthy capitalists and corporations are teaching them that bad lesson, not by precept, but in the more effective and potent form of example.

The occurrences of the last few weeks or months furnish abun

dant proof of this. Take, for example, the street passenger railways of Philadelphia. They were created for public convenience and benefit. For that reason, and that reason alone, special and extraordinary privileges were granted to them. They were permitted. to occupy public streets, to the obstruction and disadvantage of other modes of travel and methods of transit and transportation. Certain specific conditions and restrictions were enacted which they were expected in good faith to perform and observe. Yet, it is a notorious fact that each and all of these corporations disregard and violate those conditions and limitations. They have taken possession of the public highways of the city, and they use them as though they were their own property, and in open disregard of the rights of all property owners along them. They were expected to supply and run a sufficient number of cars to comfortably transport the citizens who desired to use them. Instead of this, they run only such a number as will enable them to transport their passengers by crowding them together in solid masses in the passage way and on the platforms with the utmost discomfort, and often to the serious injury of health. Then, too, the conditions of their charters respecting the repairing of the streets through which their rails are laid, and respecting other matters, are notoriously violated as regards the intention and purpose of those conditions.

These plain evasions or defiant violations of law are systematically practised by the presidents and directors of these corporations; and are tacitly approved of by the stockholders-men who are leaders of society, influential citizens, and in many cases are members of Congress, of our State Legislature, of our Municipal Councils and occupants of other offices of high responsibility.

The second and last special instance we shall cite is that of the strike upon the Gould system of railroads in our Southwestern States. The particular grievances which caused this strike have not been specifically nor clearly placed before the public. Its immediate occasion was the discharge of one of the foremen of one of the repair shops of the Texas Pacific Railroad, which act was regarded by the Knights of Labor of that region as a blow struck at their whole society. But this was only the occasion of the strike. The underlying cause is alleged by the strikers to consist of arbitrary abuse of power on the part of the railroad officials and of unreasonable and oppressive conditions imposed by them upon the employees. The employees from the outset of the strike profess to be entirely willing to submit their alleged grievances to investigation and arbitration, but the railroad authorities stubbornly refuse to accede to this proposal.

The strike quickly extended to the Missouri Pacific Railroad and its branches (which connect with the Texas Pacific and furnish to it a large part of its traffic). The Governors of the four States

of Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Texas (the business of which States was most seriously and injuriously affected) intervened and proposed arbitration. But the proposal was unheeded by the

officials of the railroads mentioned.

Then the "switchmen" of the East St. Louis railroad yards (which are the meeting point of all the railroads coming to St. Louis from the entire region of the United States east of the Mississippi River) also struck. The effect of this was to cut off St. Louis from its traffic with the East as well as with the Southwest. Yet still the railroad officials refused to listen to any terms of adjustment of the contention, save that of absolute and unconditional submission on the part of their employees.

The question has resolved itself into a question of power, viz., whether Jay Gould and his associates shall prescribe unconditionally, and without regard to the requirements of law or of justice, the terms on which their employees shall work, or whether the latter by their associated, united, strength shall be able to compel him to submit the questions at issue to fair and impartial arbitration.

We have excluded from this statement reference to the few instances of violence to property and persons which have occurred up to the time of our putting these thoughts on paper. The instances have been few, and it is alleged that the perpetrators of them were not strikers, but members of a disorderly mob of professed sympathizers, consisting of persons who are always ready to take advantage of occasions of public excitement to commit criminal acts.

In this respect the strike, up to the time of our writing these lines, is in marked contrast with the great railroad strike which some years ago extended over the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Then bridges, railroad cars and depots, and warehouses were burned, the civil and military power was set at defiance, and countless acts of violence to property and persons were perpetrated. But in this strike, up to the time of our writing, but one solitary instance of violent resistance of the civil power has been committed, resulting in the murder of several persons at Fort Worth, Texas. And in this instance, it is asserted by the strikers that the guilty persons were not strikers or Knights of Labor, but were men who were entirely independent of them and who acted upon their own personal lawless impulses.

Whether this be the truth, or not, it is certain that the leading officers of the Knights of Labor have earnestly and persistently counselled the members of the society to abstain from lawlessness and acts of violence. They have exhorted them to maintain patience under all circumstances and to employ only passive resistance to the obstinacy of their employers.