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Declaration Excerpted
from An Address to the Public, issued by the
Advisory Committee, the Knights of Labor and the Amalgamated Association
of
Iron & Steel Workers, Homestead, Pa. July 22-23, 1892.
The
most evident characteristic of our time and country is the phenomenon
of industrial centralization, which is putting the control of each
of our great national industries into the hands of one or a few men
and giving these men an enormous and despotic power over the lives
and the fortunes of their employees and subordinatesthe great mass
of the people;.... The
employees in the mill of Messrs. Carnegie, Phipps & Co., at Homestead,
Pa., have built there a town with its homes, its schools and its
churches; have for many years been faithful co-workers with the company
in the business of the mill....
...Therefore,
the committee desires to express to the public as its firm belief
that both the public and the employees aforesaid have equitable rights
and interests in the said mill which cannot be modified or diverted
without due process of law;...
that
it is against the public policy and subversive of the fundamental
principles of American liberty that a whole community of workers
should be denied employment or suffer any other social detriment
on account of membership in a church, a political party or a trade
union.... |
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