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I Brickbats and Dynamite ; H The Causes Responsible Ifor The Strike Of The Philadelphia Street Car Men And The Impending Hi Result Of The Sympathetic Walkout Of Forty Thousand Fellow Workers. H ,r m With the eyes of capital and industrialism, the B latter as represented by organized and un-or-L ganized labor, fooused upon her, and the Ameri ca1 can people standing by interested and cu B, " rious spectators, Philadelphia has figuratively and B literally gone to the mat with unionism. 1 So rapid has been the development of- the ' trouble, so ambiguous the news reports of the L causes of the controversy and u rapidly has the L significance of the latter broadened to national m importance that an intelligent comprehension of H the Quaker City situation and its scope has m spread but slowly through the middle west, off ' across the river and filtered into the inter-moun-H xtain and western states in a way not calculated L to give the average reader a very clear idea of m what has happened and what is likely to happen H in Philadelphia. H The Philadelphia Rapid Transit company H ordinarily employs about seven thousand motor- H men and conductors. Of this number a little over H six thousand have for a number of years be H longed to the local street car men's union in H Philadelphia. Until last June the wage of both H motormen and conductors was nineteen cents an H hour for the first year of service and twenty-one H cents an hour for the second and subsequent H years. Late in May, 1909, the Philadelphia car H men asked for a raise in wages, and failing to H secure this from the company, struck and for H seven days the city was practically without street H car service, though the violence and usual side H issues of a big strike were reduced to a minimum. H After a week the company acceded in part to the H deman of its employes and the wages of motor- H men and conductors was raised to twenty cents H an hour for the first year of service and twenty- H two cents for the second year. The men went H back to work and there began the fight that has H culminated in the present tie-up. H Considered in the light of wage scales in ef- H feet throughout other large eastern and western H cities for motormen and conductors the Philadel- H phi a scale is low. The car men employed in Salt H Lake receive twenty-five cents an hour the first H year and thirty cents the second and subsequent H years of their service. The average of a day's H work here is nine and one-half hours. H The Philadelphia Traction company evidently H decided that unless it wished a periodical recur- H rence of wage disputes with its employes, the H backbone of the carmen's union there must be H broken. Immediately a,fter the resumption of H traffic following the strike in June, the company H launched an employes' association among its con- H ductors and motormen called the Keystone asso- H elation, which provided a sort of insurance for H its members, in that for small dues a month each H member was insured against death while in the H company's service to the amount of ?250. With H tills organiaztion well under way and many of its H employes members, the company peremptorially H and without notice discharged seven hundred of H the motormen and conductors in its employ, giv- H ing as a reason for the action, "for the good of H the service." Petitions, interviews and all other H appeals to the company to reinstate the men or H give some other reason than "the good of the H service" for their discharge were without result, H and the Philadelphia carmen's union finally faced H the issue and declared to the company that the H seven hundred men had been discharged because H they were members of the Philadelphia carmen's mm union and for no other reason. The company H replied that it didn't know or care anything about H the union, and that it had in the past and would in the future, hire, fire and pay its employes just as it thought best. Whereupon the company and the union locked horns. The union made the company this arbitration proposition that the company and the union make a joint application under the provisions of the act of 1893 to have the courts apoint a board of arbitration. President Kruger of the company refused to consider this plan, stating "that as there had never been any relationship between the company and the union, no differences could have arisen between them," in other words, that the company would not recognize the union. Then President Kruger sent word to the lead ers among the strikers that if it was arbitration they wanted, the company would meet and arbi trate with representatives of its em yes select ed on this plan that the committee be composed of nine members, three from the men who would be re employed after the strike was over, three from those employes who had remained in the com pany's service, these six men to select three others from among the whole force of employes in service after March 7. This the officials of the union refused to consider and the general strike of all union workmen in Philadelphia was ordered with the result that the members of the follow ing unions are idle in addition to the carmen: the elevator constructors, the theatre stage em ployes, the plumbers' local, the Women's Amalga mated Lace Weavers, the clothing cutters, the tile layers, the brewery workers, the cigarmakers, the wood, wire and metal lathers, the fresco "inters, the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Join ers, the United Hebrew Trades, the moulders, the machinists, the textile workers, the United Hat ters, the flint glass workers, the plasterers and the electrical workers. About forty-five thousand men are on strike. The carmen have abandoned all other grounds of their position but lecognition of their union, and the company is standing on the same plank. It is a fight between employers who insist on the right to run their business with non-union men, and labor unionism. The company and the labor leaders openly declare the issue to be country-wide. The union men who have struck in sympathy with the carmen have in every case deliberately bioken signed agreements between themselves and their employers and this fact is drawing capi tal to the support of the traction company's stand more than anything else at this writing. And now a new element has been sprung to life, two-thirds of the manufacturing and industrial establishments whose employes have struck have given notice that unless the men return to work immediately the plants will be shut down per manently, all business for the season cancelled and the plants held idle until fall. From reports coming through at a late hour the threat has struck a chill to the hearts of thousands of men, who, with no question of their own wages or hours at stake, are out on a strike that threat ens to lose to them for eight months their means of livelihood. The failure of the arbitration proposals since the beginning of the strike is due to the remark able implacability of one man, George H. Earle, president of the Real Estate Trust company, and one of the city's three representatives on the board of directors of the traction company. Sev oral times when the majority of the company's directors weakened and swung around toward ar bitration, it was Mr. Earle who stiffened their backbones. Mr. Earle's own explanatioi of his attitude is set forth briefly. He does not believe that the results of arbitration could possibly be perma nent. He believes that the company would have to make the same fight all over again with a set of men who have no respect for agreements. "As to the threat that this community is to be coerced by the persuasion of a great number of men to break their contracts and throw up their means of livelihood, I do not think any self respecting man will pay any attention to that. This community must be governed either by the law or by threats, and if the power of intimida tion be greater than that of the law we ought to know it as soon as possible. The only way to know it is to refuse to abandon the law until its inadequacy has been established' by actual test. "Speaking for myself and my own position it has not and will not change. I am in favor of any settlement that gives reasonable hope of per manence and that is not an invitation and re ward for lawlessness or threats of lawlessness. If that position has not the support of my fellow citizens it will be a cau3e of deep regret to me. I "Nevertheless it will not be so deep a cause U of regret as would be the knowledge that my own I supine weakness or cowardice had led me to a i settlement which like the last would keep this ! city in disorder and unrest until it again broke ' out in violence or threats, as has been the case I following the last adjustment. "You may depend on it that as soon as there is any arrangement in sight that will mean per- i manent peace it will have my hearty support. But, as I have repeatedly said, I am not in favor j of temporary makeshifts suggested largely by a ' timidity that endangers the essential principles of American liberty." But whether this stand of the company is right or wrong, radical or conservative, not one word of valid excuse can be offered by the labor lead ers of Philadelphia for the rioting, bloodshed, and like-taking that has resulted from the ef forts of the strikers to prevent the traction com pany from running its cars and the boycott that has been announced agains every tradesman and firm who have attempted to sell their wares to the traction company and its subsidiary organi zations since the strike. The union officials have issued statement af ter statement that they would not permit a sin gle striker to participate in the rioting and that rowdies and professional thugs were responsible for the injury and damage. They made these statements knowing that they were empty boasts, and that there has never yet been found or created the authority by which the leaders of a strike can control forty or fifty thousand men who, with their pay checks in their pockets, are congregating on the streets, frequenting saloons, and in an ugly frame of mind over being drawn into a fight that is theirs only in the sense that they are called upon to fight for the principals of organized labor and in the meantime using the savings of years, if they happen to be so fortu nate, to keep their families in the bare necessities of life, or depending on strike benefits for suste nance. The spineless and cowardly police of Philadelphia are as much to b'ame, however, for the violence that has been done there as the leaders of the strike. A company of government troops or even of the state troops that were called too late to prevent the deaths of a dozen people, could have stopped the Philadelphia riotin in ten hours' time and they could probably uave done it with less loss of life than has already oq-