Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1887 — THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND WORKINGMEN. [ARTICLE]

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND WORKINGMEN.

[lndianapolis Se tinel] It will bo well to bear in mind that the Democratic party is not a Trade’s Union of any kind. It is not a guild, a brotherhood. It has no secret signs, grips or passwords. It has no outside and inside guardians. It has no Grand Masters, no Sir Knights. There is not a man in the Democratic party who cn order any other man to stop work or £o to work. Not a man in the Democratic party, acting under any authority confessed by the party, who can fix the price of a day’s work of any other man; who can levy any assessment or tax upon him to support any other man in idleness. The D mocratic party has no power to order a boycott, or* to declare any man a “scan” or a “rat,’’ oi to apply to him any offensive sobriquet whatever, for doing anything becoming at American citizen, and no man capable of conducting a Labor organ, a workingman’s newspaper of any kind, will seek to hold the Democratic party responsible forfsuch things as belong exclusively to labor organ izations. To do anything of the kind is proof positive that they are not only totally disqualified for the position they hold, but that they are republicans in disguise, seeking by methods that an honorable man wot Id disdain to pursue, to accomplish a purpose which they have no* the courage to avow. That we are not mistaken in our estimate of pseudo labor organs, it is only required to notice with what blatant bombast they attack the Democratic party which never laid a straw in • heir way, but which, on the contrary, has always been first and foremost to advance their interests, while, with regatd to the Republican party, they co’d scarcely be more quiet and unobtrusive if they were mice instead of men. The great object of workingmen, so far as we have been able to comprehend their purposes, is to secure fair pay for a fair day’s work, and just here we desire, for the benefit of all concerned, to place the Sentinel squarely on the record, not politically, but as an industrial enterprise. The Sentinel, in carrying forward its business, must have printers. What constitutes a fair day’s work, printers determine, as a general proposition, for themselves. What constitutes fair pay the print© ’s absolutely determine for They also determine when they must receive their pay. The Sentinel accedes to these determinations and pays the price demanded. These declarations being true — absolutely true —what can be the grievance? Just here we unhesitatingly challenge the self-consti-tuted organs of workingmen to state the facts as we have stated them, and make their comments. This done in the spirit of rairness, open, frank and above board, without subterfuge or duplicity will at once put an end to the senseless effort to damage the Democratic party by falsely assailing the Sentinel.

Ourpurpose in writing this must not ba misunderstood. Workingmen have a right to be heard. — Their interests cannot be advanced bv falsehood. They are entitled to the truth, and when their chosen or self-constituted organs engage in vulgar villification, they become their worst enemies. The truth will out, and when workingmen secure for their services just what they demand, when they work or remain idle as they may elect, when Key choose their vacation, fix their own time for work, and receive their pay at the time stipulated by themselves, what more could be required eveii if the Democratic part/ controlled the situation, which it does not, never did, never can and never ought to. We invite the labor organs, and all other organs, regardless of persuasion, to wrestle with the foregoing, and let 1 their readers have the benefit of these cogitations.