People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — Danger. [ARTICLE]

Danger.

The wage-worker, through intimidation by his employer and manipulation by the politicians has been led to believe that his interest and welfare is separate from, and independent of that of the farmer. His employer has been able, largely, to prevent his attendance at People’s party meetings, while the political demagogue has stuffed him full of the idea that protection or free trade is the panacea for all his ills. Hence we find that eighty-five per cent. of the People’s party vote was cast by the farmers, leaving fifteen per cent, to be cast by all other classes. It is noticeable that in the great manufacturing districts where our vote should have been heavy, it is very light. One instance that in Homestead where the wage-workers have been wronged, robbed and murdered there was only 137 men out of 4,000 who voted for Weaver. The powerful appeals of such men as Beaumont, men in close relationship with them, fell without effect on their dull ears. The fruitless attempt of the reform leaders to enlist the wage-working class in this industrial movement, is the dark cloud that is seen on the horizon. Each year their condition grows worse. Each year bad men seem to get more control over them. Finding their condition so desperate they will readily

go on a strike, hopeless as that always seems. We think and fear that a strike is about the only means ever discussed by them as a remedy for their ills. We are opposed to all strikes, there never was, nor never will be one by our consent and the only consoling feature of this desperate measure is found in the fact that the men are still possessed of courage enough to go on a strike. Well to do men of Rensselear and Jasper county, have any or all of you, that have hired men, tenants or debtors, controled or tried to control the political action of those whom misfortune has placed under you? If you have can’t you see danger in so doing? Can’t you see the farmers are the great conservative force of the nation? Can’t you see danger in forcing the wage-working class to isolation where a strike, to them seems the only way out? Cities are the roosting places of capitalists and they are also the local points where the wage-workers do congregate, and where the turbulent will immediately repair upon the first outbreak. Now can’t the capitalist, employer and demagogue see the very great danger they incur by herding the wage-workers away from the conserving forces of the farm? Capitalists, employer and demagogue would in the event of an outbreak, be immediately swept away by the cyclone their own folly had generated? Let all men know that national safety can only be secured by establishing justice, righteousness and truth.