Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

It was hard for them to see not only their wages cut down, but also to see an order issued, which, if carried out, would result in the discharge of one half of their number, at a time when work was not to be had, but this does not justify, and cannot excuse their interference with the right of a corporation to take such measures as it may think most beneficial for its own interest, so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others, and especially can it be no excuse for one man, or set of men, who do not wish to work under certain regulations, to interfere with those who are willing to do so. The property of all citizens must be protected, and the laws must be enforced, and those who undertake to interfere with the one, or stand in the way of the enforcement of the other, must learn, however severe the lesson, that these things cannot be tolerated in a land of liberty and of law, and that however much trouble and expense they may succeed in inflicting on the subjects of their spite, in the end law and order will triumph, and those who stand in the way are those who suffer the most.

Every violation of law, if suppressed or punished, is done so at the expense of the community where the violation occurs, and the greater the violation the greater the expense. This expense must be met by taxation, and as taxation is so arranged as to reach every member of the community, the result of this, therefore, is that the person who creates a disturbance or commits a crime which requires the intervention of the officers of the law, is forced to pay from his own pocket a portion of the expense incurred in its vindication.

The practice of a little arithmetic ought to convince any one that violating the law is a very expensive luxury, besides bringing him into disgrace and subjecting him to a penalty. This argument is not intended for the professional criminal, as it is not expected that he can be reached by any argument, but it is hoped that it may reach those who usually intend to be law-abiding citizens, and whose fortunes are affected by the good or evil fortune of the community in which they reside, and that this class may be induced to pause and consider before they attempt to use unlawful means to redress any grievances, however great it may seem to them. The destruction of property, although it may belong to a corporation, results in a direct loss to the labor of the country. It is conceded that all property and capital is created or produced by labor, and, therefore, any absolute loss, by the destruction of either, must, in the end, fall upon the laborer. The argument sometimes used, that if property is destroyed its replacement gives employment to the laborer, and that, therefore, it is a benefit to him, is fallacious, for the reason that the capital necessary to pay for the reproduction of the property destroyed must be originally created by labor. The capitalist who loses his property by fire is much less able to furnish employment than he was before, and if this destruction overtakes the property of a whole community, capital to replace what is lost must be drawn from some other locality by borrowing, and while times may seem prosperous during the time the re-building is being done, yet there has been an actual loss to the community, which, sooner or later, must be felt. The draining of capital from one place, to any great extent, causes its loss to be felt there, and there is no way in which the destruction of property, in one place, can be made good there, without the loss being felt somewhere, and in the end most fully and completely realized at the locality where it occurred.

The effects of such destruction of property may be temporarily prevented by bringing capital from other localities, as before suggested, and business affairs may, for a time, seem even more prosperous than ever; but when the capital thus brought is to be repaid, comes the re-action, and the loss is felt even worse than it would have been had no such borrowing have taken place. Witness the city of Chicago, as a notable instance in the recent history of the country. The buildings destroyed by the great fire at that place were speedily rebuilt, a good portion being done by borrowed capital, and it was really surprising to see with what amazing rapidity the losses seemed to be replaced, and the city rise, as the phrase goes, "Phoenix like from its ashes." Business went on, seemingly, as brisk as ever, and it was boastingly proclaimed that Chicago beat any city on the continent in recuperating power, and that it was a greater city than before the fire. But pay day must come. The property destroyed had been replaced, but not by the creation of capital by labor. The seeming wealth had no substantial foundation, the re-growth having been too rapid to come from this source, and how stands that city to-day?

The city treasury bankrupt, with a very serious question arising whether the municipal government can be maintained much longer, and private bankruptcy on every hand, for the pay day has come to considerable of the indebtedness, and the shift of borrowing cannot be resorted to forever. The lesson to be drawn by the striking laborers of Pittsburgh, from this illustration is obvious, and it should be taken to heart and pondered on by all labor organizations throughout the country, lest, by their unwise and hasty action, they may strike a blow which will re-act on themselves with treble the force with which it is aimed at some corporation or capitalist. It may be expected that an opinion will be given as to whether or not the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were justified in making the reduction in wages of ten per cent. on June 11, 1877, and, ordinarily, the question might be answered that this, or any other, corporation or individual has the right to pay such wages as it or he pleases, and to require such services for the money paid as it or he may choose. This rule must be received with considerable modification, in the case of a great corporation, receiving special privileges from the State, and employing thousands of men, scattered from one end of the State to another.

If such corporation should execute a written contract with all of its employés on taking them into its service, specifying fully and particularly the hours and service required from them, the length of time for which each was hired, and the causes for which he could be discharged, no one would claim that they could vary the terms of that contract, without the assent of the employé. From the manner of the employment of the railroad employés in this country, and especially of the trainmen, there is in good faith an implied contract that the employé shall continue to receive the wages the company is at that time paying for the particular duty which he discharges, until the price is changed by mutual consent, and that his term of service shall continue as long as he behaves himself well and performs the services required of men in his position. This ought to be, and is in equity the implied contract between the parties, although not legally enforceable. But the railroad employé has a right to expect such treatment by the company into whose employ he enters. He is required to be on hand whenever called for, to give his entire attention to the business of the corporation, and he settles down with his family in such place as will make it most convenient for him to attend to the business of the company. His whole services are theirs, his arrangements are all made with reference to their business, and when he is discharged, without any reasonable cause, without any prior notice, or his wages reduced while his labor is not reduced, and, as is sometimes the case, increased without his consent, and the order for that purpose made without consulting him in any manner, he has a right to find fault. He is like a soldier, whose whole time has been spent in the service. His occupation is more dangerous than that followed by others, and the kind of services he has to perform unfits him for other duties, and railroad officers should always take these facts into consideration in dealing with him.

The wages of the trainmen, after the reduction in June, 1877, were as follows, to wit; Freight conductors: first class, two dollars and twelve cents per day; second class, one dollar and ninety-one cents per day; brakemen, one dollar and forty-five cents per day, and the day's work averaged from seven hours and twenty-five minutes, the shortest time, to eight hours and thirty-five minutes, the longest time. These wages were good wages for the amount of labor performed per day, and if the men could make full time, would amount to thirty-eight dollars and seventy cents per month for brakemen, and fifty-five dollars and twelve cents for first class conductors. This was higher wages than the same class of men could get in other employments and seemed to be, as stated by the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, some twenty per cent. higher than the wages paid in other lines of business, the company intending to keep the wages of its men about so much more than is paid in other occupations on account of the risk taken by the trainmen. It is claimed by the railroad officials that the depression in freight traffic on the railroads, both in amount and in price, required a consequent reduction in the expenses of the railroads, and the reduction of June, 1877, they asserted to be justifiable, under all the circumstances, and it is the opinion of your committee that, if before it had gone into effect, the men had been made fully acquainted with the reasons for the step taken, and the necessity of it, in short, treated as if they were reasonable men and entitled to consideration, very much of the dissatisfaction would not have existed, and the country might possibly have been spared the troublous scenes through which it passed at that time. No doubt the fact that a strike of the trainmen of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad had taken place at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on the 16th of July, and was gaining strength and headway, had its influence in determining the trainmen of the Pennsylvania railroad, at Pittsburgh, to commence their strike at that place, and, in consequence thereof, a much less grievance was needed than would otherwise have sufficed, as an excuse for their action. The fact, also, that the trainmen on other railroads were rapidly following suit, and stopping the running of freight trains on such roads, encouraged the men to persist in their course to stand out and prevent, by force, trains from being run on the Pennsylvania railroad.

There seemed at this time to be an epidemic of strikes running through the country, not only among the railroad men, but among all classes of laborers, and this helped to precipitate and bring about strikes at all the places about which this report will treat. The general feeling of uneasiness existing among the laboring classes of the country before mentioned, and the sympathy felt by these classes for each other made them very susceptible to anything which affected their fellow laborers, and, to use a medical phrase, the labor system was in a good condition to receive the epidemic which was spreading over the country, and in a very poor condition to resist and throw off the disease. The strike once inaugurated at Pittsburgh, was strengthened and encouraged by the sympathy the strikers received from nearly all classes of the citizens, and more especially by the sympathy shown by the city officials. Had the community frowned on the attempt of the strikers to prevent, by force, the running of freight trains, as it should have been done, and had the civil authorities shown a firm determination to enforce the law at the outset, as it was their sworn duty to do, there can be no doubt but the mob would have been dispersed without bloodshed and riot, as it was in Philadelphia, Scranton, and other places. Philadelphia and Scranton are particularly mentioned, for at these places there is a much larger proportion of the turbulent class than at Pittsburgh, and consequently a great deal more of the material of which riotous mobs are composed. When any community winks at a small violation of the law, by any person, and more especially by a combination of persons, it is laying the foundation for trouble and difficulty. A crowd of people assembled for the purpose of accomplishing, however worthy, a purpose in a questionable manner, is very easily converted into a riot, and when a crowd proposed to carry out an unlawful object by violence it soon becomes an uncontrollable mob, if encouraged in its purposes by the sympathy, either expressed or passive, of the community and the civil authorities. The small show of force made by the police in the spasmodic manner, it was on July 19th and 20th, was worse than if no police force had ever appeared on the ground, for the strikers knew they had nothing to fear from them, and the lawless characters, who had begun to gather around, construed this action as a sort of license to do what they chose as long as they interfered with nothing but railroad interests.

The refusal of the mayor to go to the scene of the disturbance himself, when specially requested to do so, and to raise a special police to meet the emergency, is inexplicable on any theory of a wish on his part to do his duty and enforce the law, and when contrasted with the vigorous measures taken by the mayor of the sister city of Allegheny, and of nearly every other place in which riots occurred, must be most humiliating to the people who elected such a man as their chief magistrate. Had he shown a proper appreciation of his duty by going to the grounds of the railroad company when requested, he would have known better the extent of the troubles threatened, and if determined to enforce the law, could have prepared to do so by swearing in special policemen, as was done in all other places. If he chose to rely on a subordinate to do what was manifestly his duty, and that subordinate failed from any cause, either incapacity or sympathy with the mob, to appreciate the danger, and take measures to prepare for it, the responsibility must still rest on him. His evidence, that he received reports from his officers through the night of the 19th and 20th, that all was quiet, is belied by all the testimony in the case. When a call was first made by the railroad officials for ten policemen, and for his personal presence, followed in a short time by a call for fifty policemen, and that by a call for one hundred and fifty, most men would have concluded that all was not quiet, even if the police should report to the contrary. This taken in connection with the fact that the morning papers of the 20th, contained the call of the sheriff on the Governor for troops, and the orders for the troops to assemble, and that this was done only after an appeal, soon after midnight, by the sheriff in person to the crowd to disperse, and their answer to him by blasphemy, and hooting, and yelling, and other indignities would leave the people generally to believe that the mayor had willfully shut his eyes to what was transpiring on the premises of the railroad company.

Very blind or confiding policemen they must have been that night of the 19th and 20th, and very confiding was the mayor to go to Castle Shannon, a distance of six miles, and let matters take care of themselves. The mayor, to excuse himself for doing nothing after the sheriff made a call for the troops, says that he considered himself superseded by the sheriff and by the military. It has usually been considered that the military was subordinate to the civil authority, and that the clause of the Constitution, which reads: "The military shall, in all cases, and at all times, be in strict subordination to the civil power," means something, and was placed in the Constitution for a purpose. If the construction of the law, given by the mayor, is to prevail, people have been very much mistaken in their understanding of what is the law, and that all the military need do, under the mayor's dispensation, is to get some authority to call them out, and then, as they supersede the civil authority, they have full control, and can decide for themselves, when the necessity for their services has ceased, and can, therefore, take charge of the affairs of the community as long as any ambitious officer may elect. It is a new doctrine, this of the mayor's, in this country, and he must excuse this committee if they fail to take any stock in it. The other excuse given by the mayor for his inaction, to wit: That the men (meaning the sheriff and military officers,) who had charge of matters after the 19th, were narrow gauge men, and he could not coöperate with them in their views, and the measures necessary to be taken in the emergency, is also untenable. It does not appear that he ever consulted with these men, or any one of them, in regard to what should be done, while it does appear that he was sought after, and frequent attempts made to consult with him by the railroad officials, until they learned that nothing could be expected of him. If his excuse for neglecting his duty in the matters within his immediate jurisdiction, (to wit: Keeping the peace, dispersing a mob, and enforcing the law in the city of which he was chief executive officer,) is a valid one, the others might, with the same propriety, claim that his gauge did not suit them, and, therefore, they could not coöperate with him, to keep the peace in his bailiwick, and refuse to do anything, and the mob allowed to have its own way.

If the officers referred to were superior to the mayor, he should have done what he could to coöperate with them, in dispersing the mob, and suppressing the riot, and on them would rest the responsibility for the measures they adopted; if they were not superior to him, then even he will not claim that he had a right to do nothing. All peace officers (and the military when called out to suppress a riot, is only a posse for the peace officers) are expected, and it is their duty, to coöperate for the purpose of keeping the peace. An officer, willing and anxious to do his duty, will never object to do what he can to enforce the law because some other officer or officers are trying to assist in the same object, even if they do not consult him, while one who is looking for some excuse for evading his duty is very apt to find one that will satisfy himself, although it may be satisfy no one else. Mayor McCarthy, at any time on the 19th day of July, at the head of a determined posse of fifty men, could have dispersed the strikers, and allowed trains to go out, and the trains once running, the strikers would have given up the contest. On the 20th of July, the mayor, with one hundred men, could have dispersed the crowd, and by the arrest of a few ringleaders broken the strength of the strike.

These statements are made on the supposition that the mayor had been in earnest, and acted with the vigor that characterized several of the mayors who were called upon for the same duty in their respective cities at nearly the same time.

The mob knows instinctively the feelings of the bystanders and officers, and a little encouragement makes it very bold, while a determination to enforce the law by a few brave officers will cause the same mob to disperse, for it is an old and true saying that mobs are cowardly. This report has already stated, as a matter of fact, proved by the evidence before the committee, that all classes of the citizens of Pittsburgh sympathized with the trainmen in their strike. Some of the citizens claim this is hardly true, but most of them admit it, but deny that any of them sympathized with the riotous conduct of the mob and the destruction of property by it. The best description of the feeling of that community was given by Sheriff Fife, who testified that there was a general sympathy with the strikers; the entire laboring class sympathized with them; the merchants sympathized with them to a certain extent; that the responsible portion of the people of Pittsburgh were not in sympathy with the riot, but that it took a certain amount of riot to bring them to their senses. That this sympathy with the strikers pervaded the whole community does not admit of a reasonable doubt. There may have been, and no doubt were persons who did not sympathize, but they were isolated cases, and so few as to be of no use in controlling or directing public sentiment. There are a great many evidences of this aside from the direct testimony of most of the witnesses who were asked the question. The fact that Sheriff Fife testifies to that he did not undertake to raise a posse to disperse the mob before calling on the Governor for troops, as it would have been folly to have tried it in the city for he knew the feeling of the people, he might possibly have raised a posse in the country, if he had had time, is one evidence. On Saturday, the 21st, he sent out twenty deputies to raise a posse to assist in arresting the ringleaders, and they did not raise an average of one each, after, as they testify, making a vigorous effort. The action of the Pittsburgh troops, also shows that the same feeling of sympathy pervaded them, and the actions of the mayor and police show conclusively the same thing, so far as they were concerned. The editorials in the newspapers of the city show as strongly as any evidence can, where the sympathy of the community was, these being the best exponents of public sentiment when not repudiated by the people. The prejudice among the shippers over the Pennsylvania railroad against that company on account of the alleged discrimination in freight against them, caused them also to sympathize with the trainmen, and the general feeling was, after the commencement of the strike, to let the company take care of itself. No one can doubt that the existence of this feeling in the community was well known to the strikers, and that it encouraged them to hold out in their purposes and make them more bold in their adoption of measures to resist the company, and prevent by force any freight trains from leaving Pittsburgh.

This feeling of boldness and confidence in disregarding the law communicated itself to the new comers in the crowd, many of them being the worst criminals and tramps, until the mob became so confident that they could do as they pleased, that they did not believe any serious attempt would be made to disperse them, until the railroad company had yielded to the demand of the strikers, and that if such an attempt should be made they could easily repel it. None of the citizens had the remotest idea that the strike would culminate in any serious riot or destruction of property, neither did the strikers themselves expect this would be the result, but the resistance to law once started, the original movers soon lost all control of the movement, and the consequences were such as to astonish the most reckless among them. No one could have foreseen the result, and the experience of the people of Pittsburgh, with strikes prior to that time, had not been such as to lead them to anticipate anything serious in this case. There being many manufacturing establishments in and around that place, employing a large number of men, strikes were quite familiar to them, but as they were usually confined to the men of one establishment, or one branch of trade, they were arranged without serious disturbance of the public peace, and no one realized the danger in winking at the course of the strikers in this case. No strike had ever before taken place under such favorable circumstances to make trouble. Never before were so many of the resident laborers out of work, never before was the country so filled with tramps to flock to such a scene of disturbance, never before was the laboring class of the whole country so ready to join in a move of that kind, and never before were the civil authorities of the city so utterly incompetent to deal with such an outbreak, or if not incompetent, then criminally negligent, in not making an earnest effort to enforce the law. The railroad riots of 1877, have by some been called an insurrection, for the reason that strikes occurred at nearly the same time on several of the main trunk lines of the country, that several Governors of States issued proclamations warning the rioters to disperse, &c., some of them calling on the President of the United States for troops to assist the civil authorities in dispersing the mobs and enforcing the law, and the large number of men engaged in these troubles in the different parts of the county. Insurrection is defined to be "a rising against civil or political authority; the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution of law in a city or State; a rebellion; a revolt."

The railroad riots in Pennsylvania were not a rising against civil or political authority; in their origin were not intended by their movers as an open and active opposition to the execution of the law. Most of the riots were the result of the strikes by a portion of the railroad men, the strikes being intended to bring the railroad officers to a compromise with the strikers, of the differences between them. In some places the men merely proposed to quit work, and not interfere with the running of trains by any men the railroad authorities could get; in other places they would not allow other men to work in their places, nor railroad officials to send out freight trains, if in their power to prevent. It was in no case an uprising against the law as such, but a combination of men to assert an illegal right as between them and the railroad company. There was no organized movement throughout the country, no pre-arranged plan of the trainmen to prevent the running of freight trains by violence or combination, understanding or agreement between the men on any one railroad and the men on another. Each strike was independent of those on other roads, each having a local cause particularly its own. As before stated, there was a sort of an epidemic of strikes running through the laboring classes of the country, more particularly those in the employ of large corporations, caused by the great depression of business, which followed the panic of 1873, by means whereof many men were thrown out of work, and the wages of those who could get work were reduced to correspond with the reduction in the prices of all commodities and the reduced amount of business to be done. Each strike, except at Reading, although commenced originally by men then at work for a railroad or some other corporation, to carry out their own purposes, was soon joined by all the idlers and vagabonds in the vicinity, and these being by far the largest in number, soon took the movement out of the hands of the originators and carried it clear beyond anything they ever anticipated. The vagabonds having no object but plunder, and having no particular interest in anything else, were ready to resort to violent measures to accomplish their object.

The immediate cause of the strike at Pittsburgh was not similar to any other that has come to the knowledge of this committee, it being the order to run double-headers. No such cause existed anywhere else, and, therefore, the troubles there could not be considered as a part of any general understanding between trainmen. At Reading, the railroad men were not engaged in any strike, nor did they take any part in the riots there. The troubles there were caused solely by idle men, who had some time previously been discharged from the employ of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and for the purpose of venting their spite on the company. At Scranton, although there had been a strike of the railroad men, this had been adjusted, and the men were at work again, when the riots occurred, the riots being engaged in by the idle men and striking miners and mill men. If a riot, growing out of any of these isolated movements, is to be called an insurrection, or if these movements, altogether, are to rise to the dignity of an insurrection, then the word must be given a new definition, for as it now stands, there must have been some pre-concerted arrangement between the men at the different points, to resist the laws of the country, or the move at some point must have been for the purpose of resisting constituted authority, and not the mere purpose of forcing railroad companies, or any other corporations, to come to terms with the strikers, by obstructing the business of the railroad or other corporation. No pre-concerted arrangement of any kind has been proved before your committee, although such persons as might be supposed to know the fact, if it existed at all, were subpoenaed and testified before us, and all of them positively deny that there was any concert of action whatever, among the trainmen, for a strike after the 27th of June, and a local cause for the different strikes in Pennsylvania is given by them all. It has been asserted by many that no rioting or destruction of property would have taken place at Pittsburgh, if the troops had not been called out, and had not fired on the mob. The trifling with the mob, at this place, by the civil authorities, and the sympathy shown by the citizens, with the original strikers, had emboldened and encouraged it to such an extent, that when the Philadelphia troops arrived on the ground, it had, no doubt, got beyond the control of the civil power, as then constituted, and there can be no doubt of the necessity for the presence of those troops. Such mobs as that at the Twenty-eighth street crossing, on Saturday evening, July 21st, at the time the Philadelphia troops were marched out there, would never have dispersed without making serious trouble, troops or no troops.

How long it would take a mob to disperse and melt away of its own accord, which on Thursday numbered from fifty to two hundred men, on Friday from five hundred to fifteen hundred, and on Saturday from two thousand in the morning to seven or eight thousand in the afternoon, and which was growing all the time more turbulent and excited, we leave for the advocates of the do nothing policy to determine if they can. The firing on the mob by the troops, and the subsequent inaction precipitated and aggravated its action, but did not create the riots. When a great line of public travel and traffic like the Pennsylvania railroad is blockaded by a mob, the public interests suffer more than the railroad interests, and every day that it is allowed to continue, damages the community to the extent of thousands of dollars, and it was the duty of the local civil authorities to adopt the most vigorous measures to break the blockade, but if instead of doing this, they temporize with the mob until, in consequence thereof, it becomes too strong to be suppressed by them, and the troops of the State are called on for assistance, the latter cannot be said to have caused the riots, or held responsible for the consequences of an honest effort to enforce the law. If the rioting was caused by the calling out of the troops, and their subsequent actions, then the claim that that was an insurrection falls to the ground, and if there was an insurrection, then the troops cannot have been the cause of the rioting, as the two positions are inconsistent, although held and advocated by a number of prominent men.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

JOHN E. REYBURN,
_Chairman_.

E. D. YUTZY,
W. L. TORBERT,
_Committee of the Senate_.

W. M. LINDSEY,
_Chairman Joint Committee_.