Monday, June 6th, a mass meeting of carpenters was held to receive P. J.
McGuire, of Philadelphia, grand secretary of the Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners of America. Mr. McGuire made an inflammatory
speech, in which he said he came to Chicago to throw down the gauntlet
to the master builders and was ready to make Chicago the battle ground
for the fight on the nine-hour question. He came to stand by the
carpenters. J. Milton Blair, of Cincinnati; William H. Sayward, of
Boston; George C. Prussing, of Chicago, and other leaders in the
Carpenters' and Builders' association were attempting to stamp out the
carpenters' organizations, but they would find they had a bigger job on
hand than any contractor in this country ever undertook. The master
builders combined for mutual protection, and yet they denied the
carpenters the same right. The speaker then took occasion to abuse the
master builders for assuming the title of "masters." The contractors, he
asserted, had not brains enough to carry out their work without the
assistance of the foreman, who did the actual work, and yet the master
builders assumed to dictate to their employes in such a manner as to
place them on the same level with the slaves who were freed by Abraham
Lincoln. Workingmen in 1887 ought to receive some of the benefits which
machinery had brought. They did not believe in socialistic theories, or
that the property of railroad companies, for instance, should be divided
up and each man given a tie; but workingmen wanted to be given some of
the benefits which they produced but which were appropriated entirely by
the employers. Every carpenter who applied for work in Chicago after
Monday, June 13th, should ask for 35 cents an hour and an eight-hour
day, and if that was refused he ought not to go to work.