CHAIRMAN FRICK SHOT

Henry Clay Frick.

Cortland Standard and Journal, Tuesday, July 26, 1892.

CHAIRMAN FRICK SHOT.

A YOUNG RUSSIAN FIRES SIX SHOTS AT HIM.

The Assailant and Accomplice Are Arrested.—The City in a Fever of Excitement.—Frick Thought to be Dying.

   PITTSBURG, Pa., July 23, 2:30 P. M.—H. C. Frick, chairman of the Carnegie Steel Co., has just been shot in the neck. The young man who shot him has just been arrested.

   Three shots were fired. All took effect, one in the neck and two in the back near the right side just above the hip. The assailant is badly used up and it is evident that a hard fight occurred before the man was placed under arrest. He is now in the central police station. He is young, smooth faced, tall and slender. His name has not yet been ascertained. One of the clerks in Frick’s office says that Frick is very badly shot, but it cannot now be ascertained whether his injuries are necessarily fatal.

   Dr. Litchfield, the attending physician, says he cannot as yet tell what the result of Frick’s wounds will be. The man who shot Frick refuses to give his name. He is a Russian, is about 21 years old, six feet six inches high, has been in this country about six years and this city two days. The last place in which he worked was in the Singer Sewing Machine Works in New York. The revolver used was a 36 calibre.

   Another man has just been arrested as an accomplice of the assailant of Frick. The city is in a fever of excitement such as was never before known. The entire block in which is located the Carnegie Steel Co.’s general offices is crowded with excited citizens.

Situation at Homestead.

   PITTSBURG, July 23.—The indications last night were that the armed truce of the past few days may be broken to-day and that another chapter or possibly two chapters will be added to the story of the Homestead strike so far as it has been written. According to information from a reliable source the Carnegie company does not propose to allow O’Donnell to secure his liberty if it can be avoided, and hence unless there is a change of plans before court opens in the morning, a strong effort will be made to demonstrate to the courts that he was one of the principals in the attack upon the Pinkerton barges, in order that it may be held that information and warrants charging him with murder in the first degree were well based. It was to this end that the eight Pinkertons were taken to the county jail yesterday to identify the leader of the strikers, while fifty residents of Homestead were subpoenaed last night on behalf of the commonwealth to testify regarding O’Donnell’s control of the strikers.

Increased Activity at Homestead.

   HOMESTEAD, Pa., July 22.—Increased activity is noticeable inside the big mill fence to-day. Non-union workmen are coming by squads of from 10 to 20 at a time by boat from Pittsburg and a few have got in unobserved through the town of Homestead. The number of excursionists and sightseers who come here every day and the presence of Gen. Snowden's guards makes this possible.

Hiring Men in Philadelphia.

   PHILADELPHIA, July 22.—J. Ogden Hoffman, agent of the Carnegie Steel Co. in this city, employed about thirty steel workers yesterday and dispatched them to Homestead last night. The hiring was conducted with great secrecy. The advertisements in the morning papers asked those in search of work to call at an address on Arch-st., whence they were sent to the company’s office, and if satisfactory, promptly engaged.

The Shooting of Mr. Frick.

   The shooting of Mr. Henry C. Frick in his office in Pittsburg Saturday, says the New York Recorder, was a brutal and cowardly attempt at assassination which every American must regard with horror. The spirit which prompted this foul deed has no place in our social system, and is as abhorrent to the laboring man as it is to the capitalist. It is a crime which will receive no sympathy from any citizen of the United States, no matter what his condition may be. Americans rejoice in the knowledge that they live under a government whose constitution guarantees equal rights and like protection to all, and their sincerest endeavor is to uphold that constitution.

   The shooting of Mr. Frick is the direct outcome of the effect of inflammatory utterances of certain newspapers, blinded by the vision of temporary gain, upon the excitable temperament of that vicious anarchistic element which finds its way into this country through comparatively unrestricted immigration. If an object lesson were needed of the evils which must result from a combination of these two dangerous causes, it is here afforded. If evidence were needed that the teaching of anarchy in any form should be prohibited in America and that immigration should be restricted, it is here furnished.

   That the strikers at Homestead had anything whatever to do with the attempted murder of Mr. Frick we do not believe. The American workingman does not resort to the methods of the coward and the assassin to redress his wrongs, however grievous they may appear to him. He knows that he is a citizen of the republic, and as such is the equal, under the constitution, of every other citizen. That is the lesson in which he is cradled; that is the proudest boast of his manhood. It is his birthright to fight for his own, but he fights openly and fairly. Moreover, nothing could more seriously injure the cause of the Homestead strikers than the tragedy of Saturday. The deed is so abhorrent to the people of this country that it must cost those in whose interest it was intended some sympathy, no matter how innocent they themselves may be of the crime.

   The very fact that the incentive for the attempted assassination grew out of the Homestead troubles, and that the victim of the assassin was the acknowledged head of the opposition to the Homestead strikers, will tell against the latter and in favor of the former. The leaders of the Homestead workmen knew all this before the shooting occurred, and they would have been sheer imbeciles to have encouraged or even countenanced the action of the would-be murderer. There is no line of reason consistent with self-interest, to say nothing of American manhood, whereby the Homestead strikers can be connected directly with this affair. The whole trouble arises, as we have said, from the license taught to immigrant anarchists, chiefly by unprincipled public prints.

Congressman William McKinley.

PAGE FOUR/EDITORIALS.

   The Democrats in congress opposed the McKinley bill because it “would increase the cost of the necessaries of life,” and now the [Cortland] Democrat declares that “potatoes never brought such starvation prices until after the McKinley bill went into effect.” The Democratic opponents of the McKinley bill also fought the tariff on wool because, as they insisted, it would increase the cost of carpets, clothing and all other articles manufactured from wool. “Free wool” was one of their loudest demands, and now the Democrat declares that, notwithstanding the McKinley bill became a law, the price of wool is “lower than it has been for years.” If butter is a “drug in the market,” as the Democrat declares, and the tariff is a tax, where would butter be if the tariff of 6 cents per lb., fixed by the McKinley law, were removed?

   How the tariff on tin-plate can make the price of butter lower is a problem before which the ablest political economist might turn pale, but the Democrat boldly declares that the “farmer sells his butter for less money in order to protect and foster the alleged American tin industry.”

   The statement that “the farmer is continually buying in a protected market and selling in a free trade market” is perhaps the rankest and grossest misstatement in the entire paragraph. The products of the farm are protected by the McKinley law as they never were before. The tariff on butter and cheese, for example, was raised 50 per cent by it, the tariff on potatoes increased from 15 to 25 cents per bushel, and, in fact, duties upon nearly the entire line of farm products, vegetable and animal, largely advanced. On the other hand sugar was placed on the free list where it stands with tea and coffee. The American farmer is to-day selling in a strongly protected market. If farm products are low it is because of the competition of the great West and the enormous crops with which this country has been favored while people in other lands have been starving.

   When the Democrat talks of the farmers “buying in a protected market,” will it kindly specify a time in the history of this or any other country when a dollar would buy as many of the necessaries of life as it will to-day, or when, in proportion to the cost of living, a man received as much for a day’s work? Will the Democrat also come out squarely and say whether it believes that the tariff is or is not a tax, and whether it makes articles on which it is levied higher or lower in price? Or is it simply a scapegoat upon which Democratic newspaper may load high prices and low prices alike, as the political and industrial situation may seem to suggest, for the purpose of deceiving voters who have not the time or facilities for running down the false statements so brazenly made?

   The only thing clearly comprehensible from the Democrat’s statements is that it regards the success of its party as of a great deal more importance than any principles that were ever thought of, and that if it can make every class of workers believe that all they have to complain of is due to the tariff, its mission will be accomplished.