The Daily Gazette

The Labor Question—Comments of the Press.

Referring to the proceedings before Mr. Hewitt's congressional committee appointed to inquire into the labor question, with a view to the suggestion of measures for the relief of the existing troubles—and which began its session on Thursday, the New York Herald says:

"While all sides have a right to be heard, it is to be hoped that Mr. Hewitt will make his inquiry thorough and exhaustive, and not merely use the committee for the purpose of affecting a sympathy with the laboring classes, whose sufferings in a period of general business depression have doubtless been severe. All the interests involved should be given an opportunity to put the committee in possession of their views, so that a broad, intelligent judgment may be formed of what measures are best calculated to afford relief. Mr. Hewitt by his demand for a Committee, has virtually pledged himself to find a remedy for our labor troubles, and a failure to do so would leave him in a very unenviable position."

The New York Times says:

The necessity of reducing to something like coherent statement grievances such as were formulated yesterday by delegates of the Stonecutter's Society is a decided aid toward demonstrating their baselessness. A man who seriously maintains that the government ought not to be permitted to do its stone cutting where it can be done most cheaply, but should be compelled to do it in the manner and at the place calculated to give employment to the greatest number of hands, may be considered beyond the reach of argument. But he, nevertheless, represents a very large class of by no means ignorant voters, and unless he and his fellows can be taught to see the absurdity of such demands, there is a constant danger that the standard of public administration will be brought down to their level.

The New York Tribune says:

"If the committee does nothing more, it will be of service in providing to real workingmen the shallowness of some of their bogus advocates. There was an air of sincerity about the representatives of the stonecutters, and, however much their political economy was at fault, it was evident that they believed in their theories. But when McGregor and Schwab appeared on the scene, with their crass ignorance and their beery assumption of infinite wisdom, with their blood-curdling whispers and their palaver about 'the feeling of humanity,' it must have been apparent to the committee that it was dealing with the cheapest sort of demagogues. These men were ready to take the whole labor problem off the hands of the committee, and yet they were so deplorably ignorant that they scarcely knew of the existence of the census. At all events they did not know that the census-takers had been getting together for nearly a hundred years the very statistics the collection of which they proposed to the committee as the solution of the whole trouble. Mr. McGregor had once seen a chart of rainfall, to be sure, but he wasn't satisfied with documents of the sort!"