Report to the Board of Transportation Upon the Matter of the Strike of the Brotherhoods of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Report to the Board of Transportation Upon the Matter of the Strike of the Brotherhoods of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska

It seems strange that in a free country such as ours, so much con fusion should exist in respect to the rights of employes to strike, and leave the work of their employers, and to attempt to coerce their action in respect to employing others in their places. In this country it is lawful, and it may be added, commendable, for any body of men to associate themselves together for the purpose of bettering their con dition in any respect, financially or socially. The genius of our free institutions invites them to higher levels, and better fortunes, and they may dictate their own wages, choose their own employers, and serve God or Mammon according to the dictates of their own con sciences; but while the law accords this liberty to one and all of them, it accords a like liberty to every other one, and all are bound to so use and enjoy their liberties as not to interfere with those of their neighbors.

All legislation, in England and America, has been progressively in the direction of according to laborers the enjoyment of equal rights with others. The early English statutes, beginning with the middle of the fourteenth century, are to be read in the light of the civiliza tion of that day, and their provisions, to us of the nineteenth century, harsh, illiberal, and tyrannical, were but the re?ex of the prevailing Opinions and class distinctions that shaped and guided the social and political polity of those days. From time to time, however, down to 1888, this legislation has been liberalized and christianized, and to-day in England, as here, workmen stand upon the same broad level of equality before the law with all other avocations, professions, or classes whatsoever, respecting the disposition of their labor, and the advancement of their associated interests.

At the present time, that evils exist in the relations of capit labor, and that workmen have grievances that oftentimes call fc lief, are facts that observing men cannot deny. With such quest the state and nation has to do at the present time, but the cour such, have no functions to discharge further than to say that remedy cannot be found in the boycott or the strike.

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