While circulating among the strikers at the outer depot, the
reporter found a few of the men willing enough to tell their
grievances. One said: "When Vice President Cassatt and General
Manager Frank Thomson were at the Altoona shop, Cassatt
remonstrated with Thomson against any further reduction. 'Why,'
said Cassatt, 'the men cannot buy butter for their bread.'
'Butter,' said Thomson, 'what do they want with butter, let them
make dip.' The reduction was made," continued the complaining
striker, and whether the men have been living on dip or not, it is
very evident from the belligerent feeling displayed here to-day,
that they can fight on dip. "Yes," continued the man, in a cold,
bitter tone, which showed plainly how deeply, how plainly, the
cold-hearted insult.... "Mr. Frank Thomson drives his tandem team
and draws his big salary, whilst we must do double work at half
pay."
The officials can build palaces, the laborer can rent a hovel. The
one can roll along in the bustling splendor of a four-in-hand, the
other cannot hide the burnt and frost-bitten foot. These railroad
authorities can afford salaries that will secure the costliest
luxuries and sustain an apish aristocracy, that cannot extend the
salary to meet the commonest necessaries of life, to the beggared,
starving, crushed laborer and his family. All these magnates will
talk of the impossibility of running business without further
curtailing the wages of the poor laborer. Arrogant impudence!
Unbearable tyranny! Why, it has come to this, that labor is
servitude! That a poor man must delude himself to satisfaction at
the thought of starving, and respectfully take a pittance called
wages. The millions must stand off and die smilingly, and look
pleasurably at the outstretched arms of a few like Tom Scott
grasping, robbing, paralyzing, crushing our industries, even our
lives. Capital has raised itself on the ruins of labor.
The laboring class cannot, will not stand this longer. The war cry
has been raised, and has gone far and wide. It will not confine
itself to the narrow, nor even long stretch of the railroads. Labor
will assert itself. It must have its equality, and that it will,
sooner or later, amicably, it is desirable, forcibly, if necessary.
Certainly rebellion against lawful authority is never lawful, but
the principle that freed our nation from tyranny will free labor
from domestic aggression.
The witness: The first page there was our reporters. The head-lines I
do not know anything about. I went to bed that morning at half-past
four, and those head-lines were put in after.