W. F. Burns

“ It is time that every intelligent workingman would think and act for himself. All semblance to aristocracy in labor must be eliminated, the skillful artisan has no more guarantee of just treatment than has the common laborer.
Every workingman should endorse the Peoples party. They must unite as one, in one common cause and strike for their rights with the only effective weapon left to them, "the ballot." ”

“ I appeal to every workingman to entirely keep away from places where trouble would be likely to occur. What, under normal conditions, would probably be a peaceable gathering may now become a demonstrative mob. All good citizens deprecate the loss of life and the destruction of property. Grave as these complications are, our civilization is far enough advanced to find and apply a remedy without resort to violence. We are merely contending for justice for our fellow workingmen, who have been reduced to want by a power that now defies public opinion. ”

“ To the public:—So many misleading reports have been given currency in reference to the great railroad strike now in progress that I am prompted, in the interest of justice and fair play, to give the public an honest, impartial statement of the issues involved and the facts as they actually exist. My purpose in this is to have the great American public—the plain people—in every avenue of life conversant with the situation as it really is, that they who constitute the highest tribunal we know, may pass judgment upon our acts, condemn us if we are wrong, and uphold us if we are right. ”

“ Labor must stand by labor. The corporations have now forced a fight upon us by combining to help the Pullman company; they have forced us to combine and use the only weapon which the workingman possesses, the strike and the boycott. The railroads have never done anything for labor that the latter should hesitate to use these weapons. ”

“ But the grievances of the employes, men and women, had become so aggravated, so galling, that patience deserted them, and they abandoned their employment rather than to submit longer to conditions against which their very souls revolted. Whether they were right or not, let only those judge who comprehend the conditions under which these faithful employes toiled and groaned. Let us avoid sentiment. The bare facts will suffice, and they are haggard enough to excite the sympathy of every good citizen, rich or poor, employer or employed. ”

“ Commissioner Kernan: "It is charged that there is a minority in all labor organizations who are practically enslaved by the will of the majority and that a man for that reason loses his independence when he joins a union?"
Mr. Howard: "Well, I think the reverse is the rule. The hot heads and agitators in the labor movement are in the minority; the quiet, thinking men are always in the majority. It often happens that the man who is really most anxious to strike assumes an air of indifference or positive objection to such a move. ”

“ Mr. Worthington: "Now, Mr. Pullman, when you see the present unrest of labor, and the possible consequences, what objection had you to distributing a portion of the profits or increasing wages a little?"
Mr. Pullman: "The reason is embodied in my statement, it is a matter of opinion, and then there is the principle involved. It is impossible under the circumstances."
Mr. Worthington: "Impossible, what is impossible? Could not arbitration determine the principle involved?"
Mr. Pullman: "As president of the company I do not care to give any other." ”

“ It is not dishonorable men we ask to investigate your affairs. Think of the sickness, starvation, want, disaster and bloodshed which is coming if the strike assumes larger proportions. The climax is fast approaching and who will be to blame. I am here for the common weal, and I hope and beg of you not to refuse."
Mr. Wickes: "There is a principle involved. Every business should have the right to dictate to its own labor, we will brook no interference, national, state, county or municipal."
Ald. McGillen: "Compulsory arbitration is not a law but it will be if this strike does not stop." ”

“ The present railway strike was precipitated by the uneasy desire of the railway corporations to destroy the organizations of their employes and make the working people more subservient [Pg 90] to the will of their employers; and as all students of government agree that free institutions depend for their perpetuity upon the freedom and prosperity of the common people, it would seem more in consonance with the spirit of democratic government if federal authority was exercised in deference of the rights of the toiling masses to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ You call on the police, on the county, on the state, and on the nation for protection. Your only valued assets are the patents which the nation gives you in recognition of the genius which built the Pullman car. ”

“ By your acts, insofar as you have supplanted civil and state authorities with the federal military power, the spirit of unrest and distrust has so far been augmented that a deep seated conviction is fast becoming prevalent that this government is soon to become a military despotism. The transmission of the United States mails is not interrupted by the striking employes of any railway company, but by the railway companies themselves, who refused to haul the mail on trains to which Pullman cars were not attached. ”

“ Labor, in unifying its forces, simply follows their example. [Pg 78] The corporations established a precedent. If the proceeding is vicious and indefensible let them first abolish it.
"In this contest labor will stand by labor. Other organizations of workingmen have themselves felt the oppressive hand of corporate capital. They will not be called out, but will go out. And the spectacle of Mr. Pullman, fanned by the breezes of the seashore while his employes are starving, is not calculated to prevent their fellow wageworkers from going to their rescue by their only means at their command. ”

“ But on the contrary there is not an instance on record where in any conflict between corporations and the people the strong arm of the military power has been employed to protect the working people and the industrial masses from the ravage and persecution of corporate greed. But the measure of character has been in the line of declaring the corporations always good and in the right, and the working people always bad and in the wrong. ”

“ The governor replied that he had sent troops to restore order, enforce law, and protect lives of law abiding citizens. Lawlessness and rioting must be suppressed. Citizens obeying law had nothing to fear.
Was ever military despotism more thoroughly demonstrated? What further proof was necessary than the reply of the chief executive of the state, to the citizens, that they were at the mercy of, and subject to the arrogant brutality of military despotism? The governor in his reply said: "Citizens obeying law have nothing to fear, that lawlessness must be suppressed." ”

“ Debs, fearing the bad effect his arrest would have on the working people, sent out the following appeal for order:
"To all striking employes and sympathizers:
"In view of the serious phases which the strike has assumed, I deem it my duty to again admonish you to not only refrain from acts of violence but to aid in every way in your power to maintain law and order. We have everything to lose and nothing to gain by participating, even by our presence in demonstrative gatherings. Almost universal unrest prevails. Men are excitable and inflammable. ”

“ Dear Sir:—Through a long period of depression, enforced idleness and low wages, resulting in wide spread poverty, and in many cases actual starvation, the working people have been patient, patriotic and law abiding, and not until the iron heel of corporate tyranny was applied with the intention to subjugate the working people to the will of arrogant monopolies, did they make any effort to stay their oppressors. ”

“ To absolutely ignore a local government in matters of this kind, when the local government is ready to furnish assistance needed and is amply able to enforce the law, not only insults the people of this state by imputing to them an inability to govern themselves or an unwillingness to enforce the law, but is in violation of a basic principle of our institutions. ”

“ If there are those who discover in this statement a 'weakening' on the part of the employes, as has been so often charged when an exposition of the true attitude of our order was attempted, we have only to say that they are welcome to such solace as such a perverted conclusion affords them. We have been deliberately and maliciously misrepresented, but we have borne it all with an unwavering faith that the truth will finally and powerfully prevail. We firmly believe our cause is just, and while we hold that belief, we will not recede. If we are wrong we are ready to be convinced. ”

“ The American people are a peace-loving people—they want neither anarchy or revolution. They have faith in their institutions, they believe in law and order, they believe in good government, but they also believe in fair play. Once aroused they will not tolerate arbitrary and dictatorial defiance, even on the part of an alliance of rich and powerful corporations. ”

“ The federal courts and federal government (owned and controlled by the corporations) decided that the constitutional rights of free speech and trial by jury, equal rights to all and special privileges to none, was a farce. In their narrow money-loving minds there could be no rights for [Pg 122] honest labor, and determined there should be no rights for a workingman. After this decision of the general managers the American Railway Union could do nothing but fight out the battle to the bitter end. ”

“ H. E. Taubeneck, chairman National Committee, Peoples Party:
"Through the gloom of civil war the enemies of human liberty laid the foundation upon which the giant monopolies of to-day have been built. On public lands, with public funds they built the railroads which they now use to plunder the producers of this nation, and with the wealth and power thus obtained they now usurp the power and functions of government to reduce the people of this country to a condition of serfdom. ”

“ An extract from the Chicago Times.
"People who read an Editorial from the Chicago Times of Eugene V. Debs before the strike commission, as printed in the Times yesterday, cannot, if they be fair-minded, fail to be convinced of the justice of the cause in which he is working and of the sincerity and ability of the man himself.
"In a struggle for the rights of humanity individuals are nothing. He will be but a poor champion of the cause of the people who will pause to eulogize certain champions when he should be fighting for principles. ”

“ The state of Illinois has not the least desire to meddle in the affairs of your company, but it cannot allow a whole community within its borders to perish of hunger. The local overseer of the poor has been appealed to, but there is a limit to what he can do. I cannot help them very much at present, so unless relief comes from some other source I shall either have to call an extra session of the legislature to make special appropriation or else issue an appeal to the humane people of the state to give bread to your recent employes. ”

“ Corporate power, drunk with its own excesses, has presumed too far upon the forbearance of the American people, and, notwithstanding a subsidized press (to which there are many notable and noble exceptions) , public sympathy is with the striking employes, who are merely contending for the right of their fellow toilers to receive living wages for their work. ”

“ To-day I received a formal appeal as governor from a committee of the Pullman people for aid. They state that 1,600 families, including women and children, are starving; that they cannot get work and have not the means to go elsewhere; that your company has brought men from all over the United States to fill their places. Now, these people live in your town and were your employes. ”

“ With hypocritical pretensions to sympathy for the workingman, the organs of the two great political parties have begun to knife each other, and unite in denouncing the People's party, all for the benefit of the poor farmer, railroader, mechanic and laborer. They are loud in their denunciation of trusts, combines and corporations of [Pg 318] all kinds that have a tendency to crush the poor working people. Their great and generous hearts are overflowing with sympathy for the poor oppressed toiler. ”

“ The working people can no longer afford to be deluded by these old parties. They must unite and arise in one grand body and assert their independence as freemen and intelligent American citizens, and by their ballot take possession [Pg 316] of this government of the capitalist, by the capitalist, and for the capitalist, and again make it a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
President Debs struck the keynote when he said that it was better for the government to own the railroads than for the railroads to own the government. ”

“ The injunction is becoming a menace to liberty, it is a weapon ever ready for the capitalist, and there should be more careful federal legislation limiting its use.
Certainly if the restraining order of Judges Wood and Grosscup be good law there is no sense in maintaining organized labor. Childlike trust in the benevolence and fairness of the employer must be the workingman's future policy if this injunction be made a precedent. ”

“ In many instances the general managers obey orders to reduce wages with regret for they are humane men, many of them. Soon after the Great Northern strike, the president of a railroad told me that I now had the opportunity to make myself a most enviable reputation, both among railroad employers and employes by advising the men themselves to propose a reduction of say 10 per cent in their wages during these dull times, thus putting the road under obligation to increase wages when business improved. ”

“ Excitement invited the presence of the tough and lawless element, which was exactly what the railroad magnates were striving for, as the strikers had no intention of interfering with their trains, and they knew that it was necessary to incite rioting in order to have an excuse for not operating their roads.
Their devilish schemes succeeded only too well. A mob composed of the tough and hoodlum element congregated at the Rock Island yards and from Nineteenth to Fortieth Street, overturned box cars and destroyed everything that came in their way. ”

“ Erwin sounded the slogan yesterday when he declared that there is a higher power than the courts, a power greater than the aggregated combinations of capital and railroads. That is the inherent rights of workingmen to strike at the polls. ”