The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Saturday, September 6, 1890. STARVE THEM INTO IT.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 503, 6 September 1890, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Saturday, September 6, 1890. STARVE THEM INTO IT.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou airn’st at be thy country's, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

A London Tory organ a few days ago held out the threat that if the laborers in the colonies did not submit to the capitalists, coolies and that class of cheap labor wouldjbe imported to undersell them in the labor market. The writer did not seem to know, or pretended that he did not, that such a move would lead to such an upheaval as would hasten the consummation of advanced Socialistic theories, and soon prove that the right to live decently could not be wrenched from men in these colonies, as it has been from the thousands of wretches who “ sweat" for the bare means of sustenance in miserable hovels in the East End of London. Capitalists know better than to force on such a conflict when they would be so greatly outnumbered. But some of those by whom capitalists are represented, fail not to goad on the Unionists at a time when every effort should be made to settle the difficulty. The H.B. Herald says that no reasonable man can expect the Union Company to ’give way unless there are corresponding concessions on the side of the Maritime Council, and then adds—- “ If something of the kind is not done, the strike must go on until the men are starved into a more reasonable attitude.” Let us admit this to be justifiable, and then note the point with which the article concludes—“ The present request of the strikers for mediation, shows that they know their position to be untenable, and in that there is a gleam of hope." That is the way in which oil is thrown on the flames, ostensibly to quench the blaze. Because the workmen show a little more intelligence than the capitalists by expressing their willingness to have mediation in an affair which they know is ruinous to both sides, the capitalists turn round and say that the Unions would not do this unless they believed their position to be weak. Because the knives have been unsheathed, the fray must continue until one or the other of the combatants is killed, and at best both dangerously wounded. We venture to say that no intelligent person will uphold this contention made on behalf of capitalists. It may be ranked among those, productions that are due to pigheadedness. In another column we publish the manifesto issued by the Maritime Council, and ask any reader to say whether it contains anything that can be objected to. It must be clear to any honest man that the Unionists would be acting most wickedly if they were to be traitorous to their fellowmen at this juncture.