Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1892 — STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS. [ARTICLE]

STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS.

There was a time when strikes were very rare, indeed. It was, when capital owned labor and kept it in subjection and on the verge of starvation. Slaves can’t strike. Education and enlightenment taught labor its own power, then it struck for greater'liberty. Greater liberty caused it to strike for greater pay. With greater pay came increased opportunities for intellectual improvement, and organization folowed. Now with united front workingmen pressed on for greater and ever greater concessions from their employers, which granted, feed heir desire for more.

From the defensive they now ;ake the offensive, demanding instead of entreating. That is the way they do in this country, because here the laborer has been elevated to the plane of the capitalist, enjoying greater liberty and receiving higher wages than anywhere else on earth. -It is not so in other countries In India and China and Russia strikes are even now as seldom heard of as they were stoning the ancestors of our American workingmen five hundred years ago, when they wore the collars of their Lords. Labor is too weak and servile to /trike in those countries./ ]

As we asdend tho® scale of enlightenment and liberty, we fjmd labor organizations and labor disturbances becoming ever more and more frequent. In Spain labor strikes sometimes. In Germany it strikes more frequently. InJJFranee still more frequently. If to bette* condition of the working people, to point the way tp education, to greater liberty and independence, to foster and develop the genius for intelligent organization among them, and thus to lift them from a position of servile dependence on their m asters to a plane of equality and equal advantage with their employers—if to do these things is to cause strikes and lockouts, then does Protection cause strikes and lockouts. But on no other possibly assumption.