People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1892 — IN BEHALF OF LABOR. [ARTICLE]

IN BEHALF OF LABOR.

The mining' industry of Colorado is reported to have never been more active than at present No private citizen ever lived in any age or country of the world who gave remunerative employment to as many persons as Jay Gould did. Chicago is agitating the question of Increasing the annual saloon license to •1,000. This increase is proposed for two reasons; ffirst, to increase the city’s revenue, and second, to improve the character of the saloons. Alvin za Hayward, one of the earliest of the gold millionaires off California, is very old and feeble now. He is worth probably 120,000,000 or more, but has dropped completely out if sight behind the newer bonanzaists. The German health officials have issued the official statement that of 19,647 cases of cholera reported this fear, .§,576, or nearly 45 per cent., proved fatal The Boston Herald wonders if this includes the 23,000 cases and 11,000 deaths which ' occurred in Hamburg alone. Every president of the United State# 40 f&r 'has either been a lawyer, a solftier, or both. Washington, William H. •Harrison, Taylor and Grant were soldiers: Monroe, Jackson, Pierce, Hayes, Garfield and Benjamin Harrison were soldiers and lawyers, while all the rest were lawyers. Senator Proctor, of Vermont, contemplates erecting in Washington an elegant mansion, built of marble from his own state and town, and designed in a Romanesque style. The walls of the dining-room will be of Mexican onyx. The cost of the residence is estimated at 1200,000. A periodical issued in the interest of the Chicago World’s fair contains an article by Prince Bismarck, in which he says: “International exhibitions I regard as a necessary evil. Large bodies congregate not so much for purposes of assiduous and profitable study as to indulge in indiscriminate curiosity and trivial sight-seeing.” In making a great blast of rock near Rocheport, Mo., it was noted that a large fragment struck a sandbar in the Missouri and vanished out of sight Investigation revdtfled that the rock had sunk through the saud into the wreck of the government supply steamer Buffington, sunk by Bill Anderson and his gang in 1864. The hull and many relics have been found. President-elect Cleveland had a brother who many years ago lived at New Albany, Ind. He was a house and sign painter. He enlisted in the war <and came out with the rank of lieutenant fn 1864 he took passage an the -steamer at New Orleans for NevwYork. "The vessel reached port in safety, but if Siieut Cleveland was among the passengers that landed it was never known to his friends. It is believed that he was lost overboard. Some one with patience .for investigation has discovered that among the great men of the world blue eyes have always predominated. Socnates, Shakespeare, Locke, Bacon, Milton, Goethe, Franklin, Napoleon and Renan all had blue eyes. The eyes of Bismarck, Gladstone, Huxley, Virchow and Buchneif are also of this color, and all the presidents of the United States, except Gen. Harrison, enjoyed the same cerulean >color as to their optics. The experiments with the new Mannlicher rifle by government experts have proved satisfactory. It fires 120 rounds a minute, and is sighted at 2,700 yards, and is of smaller bore than previous Mannlichers. The bullets have an increased velocity, the weight of the cartridges is lessened, and the recoil is reduced to the minimum. Shots can be fired in rapid succession, or at any desired interval. Though it pours out a hail-storm of bullets, it does not become too hot to handle. In Cochin, a town on the coast of Travancore, a state! in India, there is a ■small body of Jews who are called white Jews, because their skin is fair And their hair light They were once very numerous along this coast, but in Cochin, where they have a quarter all to themselves, there are now only some ■2OO of them. They have dwelt here for hundreds of years as a distinct race and claim to be descendants of the Jews who fled from Jerusalem after its destruction by the Romans (A. D. 70). The latest scheme for Negro emigration is to send thousands of colored people to Brazil. John M. Brown, the colored county clerk of Shawnee county, Has., is president of the association. Eleven years ago he headed the exodus of seventy thousand Negroes to Kansas. He claims that the climate is most favorable, and that there is now a large colored population in a country which .will support millions. The government of Brazil favors the scheme. Brown I>elieves that tens and even hundreds of thousands will go from the cotton .states. ' The officers of the Watertown (U. S.) Arsenal have just been making some tests to demonstrate the holding power of cut and wire nails of the same size. The nails were driven into a seasoned spruce plank and a machine arranged jby which the holding power could be Abown in pounds It was found that the six-inch wire nail driven into the plank four inches required 733 pounds to puli it out, while the cut nail held until the indicator showed 836 pounds, jin all the teste made the holding power of the cut exceeded that of the wire anils by a number of pounds greater

The American Federation Begin* It* Aaanal Convention In Philadelphia—President Gompers’ Address.’ Philadelphia, Dec. 13. President Samuel Gompers opened the twelfth annual session of the American federation of labor in Independence hall at 10 a. m. Monday. An address of welcome in behalf of the Union Labor league of this city was delivered by George Chance, of Typographical union No. 8. President Gompers replied briefly for the federation, thanking the laboring men of Philadelphia for their welcome and for the admonitions that had been given. “It is lamentable,” he declared, “that judges should stoop so low to arrive at snch despicable ends, as has been witnessed recently in Pennsylvania” He ascribed these wrongs to two causes: The comparative lack of organization among the laboring men of the state; and the devotion of wage workers to partisans first and to their class interests last. After the appointment of a commitee on credentials a recess was taken until afternoon. Treasurer J. B. Lennon’s financial •eport for the fiscal year ending November 1 gives the total receipts as $25,990.87; the total expenditures $lB,824.69, and balance in treasury $7,666.15. In the afternoon-Presldent Gompers delivered his address. Perhaps the most interesting part of the document is the review of the labor troubles of the past year. Mr. Gompers scores the authorities and employers and declares that in each of these labor struggles the employers—the corporations—have simply made a request and tha armed forces of the state and of the United States were at their bidding. Of the Home stead trouble he says: ‘At Homestead, where the Iron and steelworkers were offered s wholesale reduction In their wages, an armed band of marauders, sailing under no flag, owing allegiance to no state or country (and, consequently, by the law of all nations, considered pirates], was brought by the corporations to invade that peaceful town, to aid In the effort to supplant their labor by a poorer and demoralized set of human beings. The men of Homestead, seeing their liberties’ endangered, took up arms against the invaders and lepelled them.” Mr. Gompers also devoted considerable space to the troubles lu Tennessee and at Buffalo and Caeur d’Alene, and says: “These cases certainly call for the serious consideration of the delegates to this convention. They are fraught with pregnant and horning questions of the hour. War has praotlcallv been declared against the labor organizations, and war measures resorted to in the efforts to crush them- But will they be crushed? We answer no. The labor movement is the manifestation of that unrest born of the conviction that injustice prevails which needs remedying and supplanting by justice and right The labor movement voices the aspirations of toiling masses as well as lays hare their wrongs. It Is the means through which tyranny is held In check; ft lives In their minds and hearts, and will net and cannot be crushed.” Referring to the Knights of Labor, Mi Gompers said that in obedience to the instructions of the Birmingham convention last year, the general officers of the knights had been Invited to a conference with the federation. A discourteous and insolent answer was returned and nothfhg further had been done. The knights were re'erred to as manifesting petty and great antagonism. The speaker declared in favor of political action by organized labor and on the •'tght-hour question said it was their dut<y to keep up the fight until a substantial reduction in the day’s labor of the masses bad been attained. Ho urged that the alien contract labor law should be made more stringent, that all immigrants should be subjeot to return until two years after their arrival in this country, and that the employirg contractor should be held liable for five year* after the arrival of the coo tract laborer. Regarding the world’s fair flunday-closlng question the president Insists that congress should have refrained from legislating upon a subject entirely foreign to it* sphere, and urges ar appeal to that body to repeal the Sun-day-closing clause. Secretary Evans, hi his annual report, said that during the year ending October 31 277 charters liad been issued to local unions and state federations, and eight charters to national unions. The receipts were *25,990, and the expenses *18,324. Resolutions were introduced sit the request of Typograpical union No. 16 of Chicago denouncing the proposed awarding of the contract for the world’s fair catalogue to a non-union publishing house and demanding that the work he given to a union concern. The resolutions, after some discussion, were adopted.