People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1895 — Twenty-Seven Cents a Day. [ARTICLE]

Twenty-Seven Cents a Day.

A commission composed of Murray Shipley, chairman, Cincinnati chamber of commerce; W. J. Akins, for Cleveland chamber of commerce; J. F. Oglevie, for Columbus chamber of commerce; W. H. Porter, for Toledo chamber of commerce, has been investigating the condition of the coad miners in the Hocking Valley (Ohio) district and in a recent report to Gov. McKinley declare that the average wages of these coal miners is 27 cents a day! Mind you, this does not come from calamity-howling Populists, but from representatives sent out by the chambers of commerce in the leading cities of Ohio. It is not likely that this commission has reported the condition of the miners any worse than really exists and, therefore must conclude that the report is true. Think of it! Twenty-seven cents a day! The magnificent sum of $1.62 a week! A princely income of $84.24 a year! Support a family on this! Think of the luxuries a family can indulge on an income of such magnitude! Seriously, friends, what do you think of of such conditions being imposed upon workingmen in free America? We say imposed, for it is the avarice and greed of the coal operators that force these men to work for worse than starvation wages. If this was an isolated case some excuse might be found for it, but labor all over this country is gradually being pressed to that point. The cupidity of the capitalistic classes on the one hand and the stupidity of the masses on the other are making such conditions possible. Oh,why will not laboring men arouse from their lethargy and shake off this incubus of capitalism? Why be slaves when they can so easily be freemen? Why do millions drink the bitter dregs of poverty, misery, sorrow, and woe when they only to be men—brave, courageous men—to throw it all off? Such conditions are the results “of wrong voting and in no other way can they be removed except by right voting. So long as laboring men vote for candidates and measures suggested by capitalists so long will labor be in the toils, as now. We have been voted into these anomalous conditions and the ballot is the only peaceful remedy to lead the people out.