I.

THE time seems to have come when the two antagonistic elements of

American society should, and could afford to, throw off their disguise

and frankly declare their principles and purposes. But what, it may be

asked, are the two antagonistic elements? Dividing lines parting the

population into two camps more or less hostile may be drawn variously;

for example, one may be run between the law-abiding and the criminal

class. But the elements to which reference is here made are those

immemorable and implacable foes which the slang of modern economics

roughly and loosely distinguishes as "Capital" and "Labor." A more

accurate classification--as accurate a one as it is possible to

make--would designate them as those who do muscular labor and those who

do not. The distinction between rich and poor does not serve: to the

laborer the rich man who works with his hands is not objectionable; the

poor man who does not, is. Consciously or unconsciously, and alike by

those whose necessities compel them to perform it and those whose better

fortune enables them to avoid it, manual labor is considered the most

insufferable of human pursuits. It is a pill that the Tolstois, the

"communities" and the "Knights" of Labor can not sugarcoat. We may prate

of the dignity of labor; emblazon its praise upon banners; set apart a

day on which to stop work and celebrate it; shout our teeth loose in its

glorification--and, God help our fool souls to better sense, we think we

mean it all!

If labor is so good and great a thing let all be thankful, for all

can have as much of it as may be desired. The eight-hour law is

not mandatory to the laborer, nor does possession of leisure entail

idleness. It is permitted to the clerk, the shopman, the street

peddler--to all who live by the light employment of keeping the wolf

from the door without eating him--to abandon their ignoble callings,

seize the shovel, the axe and the sledge-hammer and lay about them right

sturdily, to the ample gratification of their desire. And those who are

engaged in more profitable vocations will find that with a part of their

incomes they can purchase from their employers the right to work as hard

as they like in even the dullest times.

Manual labor has nothing of dignity, nothing of beauty. It is a hard,

imperious and dispiriting necessity. He who is condemned to it feels

that it sets upon his brow the brand of intellectual inferiority. And

that brand of servitude never ceases to burn. In no country and at

no time has the laborer had a kindly feeling for the rest of us, for

everywhere and always has he heard in our patronising platitudes the

note of contempt. In his repression, in the denying him the opportunity

to avenge his real and imaginary wrongs, government finds its main

usefulness, activity and justification. Jefferson's dictum that

governments are instituted among men in order to secure them in "life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is luminous nonsense. Governments

are not instituted; they grow. They are evolved out of the necessity of

protecting from the handworker the life and property of the brain worker

and the idler. The first is the most dangerous because the most numerous

and the least content. Take from the science and the art of government,

and from its methods, whatever has had its origin in the consciousness

of his ill-will and the fear of his power and what have you left? A pure

republic--that is to say, no government.

I should like it understood that, if not absolutely devoid of

preferences and prejudices, I at least believe myself to be; that except

as to result I think no more of one form of government than of another;

and that with reference to results all forms seem to me bad, but bad in

different degrees. If asked my opinion as to the results of our own, I

should point to Homestead, to Wardner, to Buffalo, to Coal Creek, to the

interminable tale of unpunished murders by individuals and by mobs, to

legislatures and courts unspeakably corrupt and executives of criminal

cowardice, to the prevalence and immunity of plundering trusts and

corporations and the monstrous multiplication of millionaires. I should

invite attention to the pension roll, to the similar and incredible

extravagance of Republican and Democratic "Houses"--a plague o' them

both! If addressing Democrats only, I should mention the protective

tariff; if Republicans, the hill-tribe clamor for free coinage of

silver. I should call to mind the existence of prosperous activity of a

thousand lying secret societies having for their sole object mitigation

of republican simplicity by means of pageantry and costumes grotesquely

resembling those of kings and courtiers, and titles of address and

courtesy exalted enough to draw laughter from an ox.

In contemplation of these and a hundred other "results," no less

shameful in themselves than significant of the deeper shame beneath

and prophetic of the blacker shame to come, I should say: "Behold the

outcome of hardly more than a century of government by the people!

Behold the superstructure whose foundations our forefathers laid upon

the unstable overgrowth of popular caprice surfacing the unplummeted

abysm of human depravity! Behold the reality behind our dream of the

efficacy of forms, the saving grace of principles, the magic of words!

We have believed in the wisdom of majorities and are fooled; trusted to

the good honor of numbers, and are betrayed. Our touching faith in

the liberty of the rascal, our strange conviction that anarchy making

proselytes and bombs is less dangerous than anarchy with a shut mouth

and a watched hand--lo, this is the beginning of the aid of the dream!"

Our Government has broken down at every point, and the two

irreconcilable elements whose suspensions of hostilities are mistaken for

peace are about to try their hands at each other's tempting display of

throats. There is no longer so much as a pretense of amity; apparently

there will not much longer be a pretense of regard for mercy and morals.

Already "industrial discontent" has attained to the magnitude of war.

It is important, then, that there be an understanding of principles and

purposes. As the combatants will not define their positions truthfully

by words, let us see if it can be inferred from the actions which

are said to speak more plainly. If one of the really able men who now

"direct the destinies" of the labor organizations in this country,

could be enticed into the Palace of Truth and "examined" by a skilful

catechist he would indubitably say something like this:

"Our ultimate purpose is abolition of the distinction between employer

and employee, which is but a modification of that between master and

slave.

"We propose that the laborer shall be chief owner of all the property

and profits of the enterprise in which he is engaged, and have through

his union a controlling voice in all its affairs.

"We propose to overthrow the system under which a man can grow richer by

working with his head than with his hands, and prevent the man who works

with neither from having anything at all.

"In the attainment of these ends any means is to be judged, as to its

fitness for our use, with sole regard to its efficacy. We shall punish

the innocent for the sins of the guilty. We shall destroy property and

life under such circumstances and to such an extent as may seem to us

expedient. Falsehood, treachery, arson, assassination, all these we look

upon as legitimate if effective.

"The rules of 'civilized warfare' we shall not observe, but shall put

prisoners to death or torture them, as we please.

"We do not recognize a non-union man's right to labor, nor to live. The

right to strike includes the right to strike _him_."

Doubtless all that (and "the half is not told") sounds to the

unobservant like a harsh exaggeration, an imaginative travesty of the

principles of labor organizations. It is not a travesty; it has no

element of exaggeration. Not in the last twenty-five years has a great

strike or lockout occurred in this country without supplying facts,

notorious and undisputed, upon which some of these confessions of faith

are founded. The war is practically a servile insurrection, and

servile insurrections are today what they ever were: the most cruel and

ferocious of all manifestations of human hate. Emancipation is rough

work; when he who would be free, himself strikes the blow, he can not

consider too curiously with what he strikes it nor upon whom it falls.

It will profit you to understand, my fine gentleman with the soft hands,

the character of that which is confronting you. You are not threatened

with a bombardment of roses.

Let us look into the other camp, where General Hardhead is so engrossed

with his own greatness and power as not clearly to hear the shots on his

picket line. Suppose we hypnotize him and make him open his "shut soul"

to our searching. He will say something like this:

"In the first place, I claim the right to own and enclose for my own use

or disuse as much of the earth's surface as I am desirous and able to

procure. I and my kind have made laws confirming us in the occupancy of

the entire habitable and arable area as fast as we can get it. To

the objection that this must eventually here, as it has actually done

elsewhere, deprive the rest of you places upon which legally to be born,

and exclude you after surreptitious birth as trespassers from all chance

to procure directly the fruits of the earth, I reply that you can be

born at sea and eat fish.

"I claim the right to induce you, by offer of employment, to colonize

yourselves and families about my factories, and then arbitrarily, by

withdrawing the employment, break up in a day the homes that you have

been years in acquiring where it is no longer possible for you to

procure work.

"In determining your rate of wages when I employ you, I claim the right

to make your necessities a factor in the problem, thus making your

misfortunes cumulative. By the law of supply and demand (God bless its

expounder!) the less you have and the less chance to get more, the more

I have the right to take from you in labor and the less I am bound to

give you in wages.

"I claim the right to ignore the officers of the peace and maintain a

private army to subdue you when you rise.

"I claim the right to make you suffer, by creating for my advantage an

artificial scarcity of the necessaries of life.

"I claim the right to employ the large powers of the government in

advancing my private welfare.

"As to falsehood, treachery and the other military virtues with which

you threaten me, I shall go, in them, as far as you; but from arson

and assassination I recoil with horror. You see you have very little to

burn, and you are not more than half alive anyhow."

That, I submit, is a pretty fair definition of the position of the

wealthy man who works with his head. It seems worth while to put it on

record while he is extant to challenge or verify; for the probability is

that unless he mend his ways he will not much longer be wealthy, work,

nor have a head.