The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer

OUR NEW YORK LETTER
New York, August 3.
Correspondence Wheeling Intelligencer.

The feeling on the great strike has entirely passed away in this section. The roads are all running, or preparing to run again. Passenger cars are running on all the roads, but freight trains are not regular yet. The great difference in the business of transportation is seen and felt in this city. Along the piers of North and East rivers, where I go daily in the line of my business, I see places which before the strike employed hundreds of laborers, but few men are now at work, and a truck wagon is scarcely to be seen. It will take some time before the great business of railroads will be on its feet again.

Mr. Vanderbilt, the millionaire President of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroads, has directed the distribution of $100,000 among those laborers employed on his roads who did not engage in the strike. This looks like a magnificent donation, and it is; yet when you consider the fact that there are about 8,000 employees on these roads, and only 500 of them struck, the net gain to each one of the men will only average $13.33. The question, however, is not mainly one of dollars and cents. It is one of principle and justice. It proves that it pays to do right under all circumstances, and that good conduct will always meet a proper reward.

Now that the strike is over and past, it looks to me like the true inwardness of the case demands that each one of the railroad companies have a full understanding with its men and with each other. Let the process of cutting under each be stopped. There is no use for one railroad to try to do all the business of the country. It cannot do it. Neither could it afford to do it, if it were at its disposal. In the outset of this contest I made the observation that it was unjust and unfair for the different trunk line railroads, in order to monopolize all the business, to put freight and passenger rates down so low that the wages of the day laborers must be continuously cut down so as to make the stock in the roads pay a dividend. The business men who use the railroads in freighting their merchandise, and those who travel on business, and especially those who summer at the "sea-sides," are the ones best able to pay such prices for their freight and passage as will enable the railroad companies to declare respectable dividends, and at the same time pay their trainmen respectable, living wages. The indirect cause of the strike was the cutting under process indulged in by all our great trunk lines for a year or more past. It is a clear case that if they carry freight and passengers for half what they used to charge, that they must cut down all expenses in that same proportion, otherwise their dividends would only be half what they formerly were. The point I wish to make is, that things should be equalized on an equitable basis. Stop the process of cutting under in prices for freight and passage, and I am very sure that there will never again be a strike by the trainmen.

The New York papers are crowing quite lustily over the fact that this State alone proved itself able to put the strikers down without Federal aid. There is no denying the fact that its militia is in a thoroughly organized condition, and can be put in the field by a few hours warning. This should be true of all the states. The Sun, a few days ago, went for the governors of the different states who called on the President for aid almost at the very outset of strikes within their borders. It says that a Governor who called for military assistance from the Government, before first calling out all of the able-bodied militiamen in his State, and trying them, is and should be termed an idiot. That is rather plain talk; and what is stranger still, it hits two simon-pure Democratic Governors squarely between the eyes. It is true that opposition to Federal aid is a cardinal principle of the modern Democracy; but modern Democracy as a rule is not sound or in any way reliable. It is my opinion that Governor Mathews, of West Virginia, did right in calling for Federal interference, and I commend him for it, and so should all good citizens, regardless of the imputations and slurs of the Sun or any other paper.

As might have been expected, the New York people don't like the Republican platform adopted at Cleveland last Wednesday. They are down on the "double standard," and on everything that squints like liberating the people from the grasp of the bond-holders. Nothing but hard money gold and bonds suits New York, She has no patience with any other class of men or money, and nothing else could carry here. But in Ohio it is different, Ohio is a "soft money" State by 10,000. The Democrats have the soft platform square out, without squirming or trimming; and with a figure-head for a gubernatorial candidate, and no fixed principles in their minds, and but little honest sentiment in the hearts of the leaders, they will nevertheless make a big run in that State, as the vote in October will reveal.
G. W. A.