Progress of the Strike

This article from the July 24, 1877 edition of the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat commends the actions of the Missouri railroads, which have done their best to support the workers and have "removed the last excuse for disorder or violence." The editors condemn Communists, but support the striking workers in their quest for higher wages—a request the newspaper hopes the company will consider.

Progress of the Strike

It was not to be expected that the strike could attain its full dimensions before Monday, but it is to be hoped that on yesterday it reached its climax; at least there is every reason to hope that any new developments that may be brought out will lack the painful interest which has been excited by past scenes of violence. In St. Louis we have been happily less exposed to danger, for the reasons we have already pointed out, and if all the railroads of the United States had been managed with the fairness of our Missouri roads, it is probably that the strike would not have happened. Not one of the railroads in Missouri is paying a dividend to its stockholders; very few of them can pay the interest which has been guaranteed on the money borrowed on the bonds; their receipts have fallen off; they are victims of their Eastern competitors in rates, but they have struggled through all things to pay a decent living wage to their workmen, and they have removed the last excuse for disorder or violence.

But there is no security against the strikers preventing other railroad men from working, nor is there any security against the movement being taken out of the hands of the railroad strikers altogether. The Communists, who have no property themselves, and no interest in the welfare of the country, but who have kindly come forward with a proposition to divide up everybody else's property, are making artful and determined efforts to utilize the movement so as to bring themselves on top, and among the most fluent speakers at the meetings all over the country are to be found orators who never did a day's work in their lives. We need hardly remind the real workingmen, the men who have always given an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, that if they were to hand the management of affairs over to these gentlemen, the only strike they would ever have a chance of making afterwards would be to strike at the soup-house door.

The strikers owe it to themselves to keep their movement clear from an entanglement which would alienate that moral support on which their chief reliance must be placed. They have nothing to do with propositions to divide up other people's property or to mob anybody, or in any way to make themselves public enemies, and we trust they have too much good sense to be used as tools by the Communists. They must know that their sufferings are chiefly due to the hard condition of business everywhere, and this should be proof positive to them that they have a greater interest in the general prosperity than any other class. They can not injure the prosperity of the country without injuring themselves, and it is their interest to see that no wanton damage is done.

Those railroads which are still holding out against the strike must recognize that they are powerless to put down the movement by violence. There is no other alternative but negotiation, and they must meet their men frankly, and treat with them as people who can be reasoned with, and who are ready to listen to reason. We believe that any road which can show that it is not earning wages for its men will be met with such allowance as it deserves; but, even at the worst, it would be worth all it would cost to strain a point in so good a cause as the pay of poor and hard working men. The crops have been good all over the country, and if we can tide over a single hard winter, our normal prosperity may begin to shine on us, and then all reason alike for cuts and strikes will have passed away. We know that the times are hard with the railroads, but one reason why sympathy with the strikers has been so general has been the conviction that wisdom and humanity alike dictated the policy of concession in the hope of better times.