The New York Herald

THE PENNSYLVANIA COAL MINERS' STRIKE.
Companion Pictures Taken from Life--Opposition, Views and Purposes of Operators and Strikers-Full Details of the Strike in Pottsville-Rumors of Reaction Elsewhere.
POTTSVILLE, July 18, 1868.
Modelled after the capital of the State, the streets wide, well paved and running at right angles, the houses built mostly of brick and neat and compact in appearance. and in the suburbs many very fine dwellings of the tasteful villa style of architecture, abounding in large stores with showy fronts and showy displays of brilliant fabrics. a comfortable complement of hotels, banks, insurance offices. schools and churches, the beautiful Schuylkill river sweeping by with its gracefully meandering curves and encompassed within the sheltering embrace of glorious mountain heights. the city of Pottsville, with its immense machine shops and rolling mills and collieries adjacent, the chief sources of its enterprise, industry, prosperity and wealth, is certainly one of the most thriving as well as one of the most beautiful inland cities in the State. A temporary pall, however, now overshadows the town- the result of the present strike movement. All the collieries in the neighborhood and those at Wadesville and St. Clair are closed. In knots at the street corners may at all hours be seen the strikers- and those who through their instrumentality have been thrown out of work. In smaller groups on the shaded porticos of the hotels are the mining operators. Shall we persist in our strike is the ceaseless topic of discussion among the strikers. Shall we persist in our refusal to comply with the demands of the strikers the operators are as busily discussing among themselves. A marked difference shows itself in these approximate groupings. Stern and rough-visaged, with coarse woollen shirts. dilapidated felt hats. worn with a peculiarly reckless air upon their shaggy heads, the broadest of brogans on their feet, and great broad hands, the most smoking short clay pipes, and very many odious with the fumes of villanous whiskey, and abounding in ine oaths and finer ges. ticulations-such are the strikers. Sleek and evidently well fed, and wearing good clothes and smoking good cigars are the operators. But there is a good, clean, honest, intelligible look about them— the look of sharp business men, but such as are disposed to be just and not mean-men who know their own business and interest best and are not given to submitting to dictation, and withal men who know how to joke and be jolly among themselves, whatever pressing outer cares may weigh upon them.
Among these operators are some of very large wealth, whose net incomes are to be counted by tens of thousands.
"How are you operators regarding this strike?"I asked one of them, with a view to draw him out on the subject, and with no view on his part that in letting his opinions be known to me he was paving the way for their wider utterance in type.
"We have got used to this sort of thing and don't regard it much," he quietly answered, knocking the ashes off the end of his cigar. "Strikes are chronic with the miners, only the disease assumes a virulent type at times. It is now in one of its virulent stages. The eight hour labor law passed by the Legislature, like the presence of ozone in the air. which develops cholera. has induced a renewed development of the disease."
"Knowing what would be the effect upon the industrial interests of the State, and particularly upon you coal men, why were not measures taken to prevent the passage of such a law," I ventured mildly to suggest.
"It would have done no good," he answered; "a democratic member proposed the law, and. though the Legislature had a republican majority, they all voted. It was simply a vote to get votes--so many bids for re-election."
"Is the law constitutional ?" I asked.
"I don't think the Legislature had any right to pass any such law," he replied; "though I doubt very much the possibility of proving its unconstitutionality."
"On what basis , then, can you assume to contest the law "
"On the broad basis of justice to ourselves and equity to those we employ," he responded. It will not do to have such a law become universal throughout the State. Large manufacturing establishments, employing extensive machinery. cannot work advantageously under the eight hour system. All furnaces would have their labor expenses increased one-third, as the men now work twelve hours and twelve hours off. It is only about one-fourth of our men, the outside laborers, that work ten hours; but we cannot afford to have them work less, and with coal at its present prices we certainly cannot afford to raise the wages of these laborers twenty per cent."
"If coal goes up in price so that you can afford to give the additional pay demanded, it is possible you may comply then with the terms of the strikers ?"I interrupted.
"The general disposition now is." he continued. "not to accede to their demands under any circumstances, for we consider the law as unjust and an unwarrantable interference with our rights and business."
"But suppose you find you are going to be heavy losers by persisting in keeping the old ten hour system at the old wages?"
"Well, that's a subject of after consideration," he answered. "It would be foolish to be blind to our own interests and particularly. if the Scranton region don't strike, to remain idle for a principle when we might be making money and give them all the coal trade."
The above is a fair sample of the general views entertained by the operators and their mode of expressing them. It will be seen that if the Scranton region strikes, thus shutting off any supplies of coal to the market, the strike may continue for an indefinite period, like a former strike that lasted nine months: but on the other hand. if the Scranton region does not strike. it is likely to be of short duration. As a fitting companion picture to the above I will give you a brief dialogue with one of the leading strikers.
"Ain't you boys getting tired of your strike?" was my preliminary interrogatory.
"Not a d--n bit of it," he quickly answered: "the law of the land is on our side, and by the holy jabers we'll have justice or die. It says eight hours is a day's work and how are they going to get over it."
"But the operators say the law is unjust" I replied.
"Of course they says that," he continued; they want to rule. they want to be aristocrats and ride in their carriages and all that. and they don't want to give the poor man his honest earnings. but they'll have to come to it and they can't help themselves."
"So you are bound to stick?"
"Stick! We'll stick till we dies; we dies of old age fust afore we gives up."
"The operators say they'll stick, too"
"They stick and be d--d! We can stick the longest."
"So you'll starve before you give up?"
"Starve without a cent in our pockets or a cent to bury us with;" and he looked very determined when he said this, and his gesticulations were sufficiently vehement to give convincing proof that he meant every word he said—at least while he was saying it.
Reaching this climax I concluded that I had pursued the conversation far enough and elicited about as much light as was possible on this side of the question. Subsequently I was told that the man with whom I had been conversing was one of the leading spirits here in resisting the draft during the war, and who when the Lehigh valley was placed under martial law was with some three hundred others arrested by the Tenth New Jersey regiment, Colonel Ryerson, sent down here by General Sigel. in command of the Army of the Cumberland, and after arrest taken to Forts Mifflin and Delaware. This man, however, escaped from durance as he expects now to escape from ten hours labor. A large number of the strikers belong to the same three hundred. It remains to be seen whether they will show the same persistence in standing their ground as the famed three hundred at Thermopylae.
No late news of special interest has reached here from other quarters of the coal regions. The party going to Dauphin county, where they are reported as having been wholly unsuccessful in their efforts to get the laborers there to join them in the strike, are said to be on their return with a big disgust on the whole party. Other gangs, particularly those headed for the Scranton region, are also said to have about-faced with a like feeling of disgust. At Packerton, where the machinists lately stopped working, they have gone to work again, and all the repair men have also resumed labor. It is thought to be likely that in other machine shops. furnaces and rolling mills throughout the coal region where work has been stopped the men will speedily resume employment. They allowed themselves to be made the too willing tools of the gangs of strikers visiting their places. It is very comfortable not to have any work to do, but not very comfortable to be out of money. The reaction is showing itself.
It has already been mentioned that all the collieries about here are stopped. My account of the strike by some of the workmen in the machine shops, given in a previous letter and based on rumor, I now find was somewhat imperfect as well as incomplete. A gang of about fifty colliers, with fife and drum and a banner inscribed "Eight hours' labor and no reduction of wages," entered on a tour of the workshops, but they soon got disgusted, for the result was not as brilliantly successful as they anticipated. They first visited the machine shop of George N. Snyder, who now has employed only some thirty men instead of the one hundred and fifty employed in brisk times. Mr. Snyder told the men it was immaterial to him whether the men stopped or not. The men considered that it was material to themselves and did not stop. They next went to John Derr's foundry. He shut the door on them, told them they had no business interfering with his business or that of his men and ordered them away. They obeyed the order, as likewise they did a similar order given them by Simon Derr, a brother of the latter, having a foundry near by, which place they next visited. From here they went to Pomeroy & Sons, machinists, and the men refused to stop work. At Wren's machine shop the machinists joined them, but the moulders remained. At Pott & Vostine's machine shop, Mr. Pott undertook to put them out the front door. but some of them got in a back way and rung the bell, when all the men, as by preconcerted understanding, dropped their tools and stopped work. They started for the Palo Alto rolling mills, across the Schuylkill, but met the men, who had given up work on account of the heat,and thereupon they returned to town. This happened three days ago and comprises the whole history of the strike among the machine shops and rolling mills. It is believed that the attempt to induce others to strike will not be renewed, and the probability is that the few who have foolishly allowed themselves to be drawn into the movement will soon go to work again.