In discussion of the misdoings at Homestead and Coeur d' Alene it is
amusing to observe all the champions of law and order gravely prating
of "principles" and declaring with all the solemnity of owls that these
sacred things have been violated. On that ground they have the argument
all their own way. Indubitably there is hardly a fundamental principle
of law and morals that the rioting laborers have not footballed out
of the field of consideration. Indubitably, too, in doing so they have
forfeited as they must have expected to forfeit, all the "moral support"
for which they did not care a tinker's imprecation. If there were any
question of their culpability this solemn insistence upon it would lack
something of the humor with which it is now invested and which saves the
observer from death by dejection.
It is not only in discussions of the "labor situation" that we hear this
eternal babble of "principles." It is never out of ear, and in politics
is especially clamant. Every success in an election is yawped of as
"a triumph of Republican (or Democratic) principles." But neither
in politics nor in the quarrels of laborers and their employers have
principles a place as "factors in the problem." Their use is to supply
to both combatants a vocabulary of accusation and appeal. All the fierce
talk of an antagonist's violation of those eternal principles upon which
organized society is founded--and the rest of it--what is it but the
cry of the dog with the chewed ear? The dog that is chewing foregoes the
advantage of song.
Human contests engaging any number of contestants are not struggles of
principles but struggles of interests; and this is no less true of those
decided by the ballot than of those in which the franker bullet gives
judgment. Nor, but from considerations of prudence and expediency, will
either party hesitate to transgress the limits of the law and outrage
the sense of right. At Homestead and Wardner the laborers committed
robbery, pillage and murder, as striking workmen invariably do when they
dare, and as cowardly newspapers and scoundrel politicians encourage
them in doing. But what would you have? They conceive it to be to their
interest to do these things. If capitalists conceive it to be to theirs
they too would do them. They do not do them for their interest lies in
the supremacy of the law--under which they can suffer loss but do not
suffer hunger.
"But they do murder," say the labor unions; "they bring in gangs of
armed mercenaries who shoot down honest workmen striving for their
rights." This is the baldest nonsense, as they know very well who utter
it. The Pinkerton men are mere mercenaries and have no right place in
our system, but there have been no instances of their attacking men not
engaged in some unlawful prank. In the fight at Homestead the workmen
were actually intrenched on premises belonging to the other side, where
they had not the ghost of a legal right to be. American working men are
not fools; they know well enough when they are rogues. But confession is
not among the military virtues, and the question. Is roguery expedient?
is not so simple that it can be determined by asking the first preacher
you meet.
It would be very nice and fine all round if idle workmen would not riot
nor idle employers meet force with force, but invoke the impossible
Sheriff. When the Dragon has been chained in the Bottomless Pit and we
are living under the rule of the saints, things will be so ordered, but
in these rascal times "revolutions are not made with rosewater," and
this is a revolution. What is being revolutionized is the relation
between our old friends. Capital and Labor. The relation has already
been altered many times, doubtless; once, we know, within the period
covered by history, at least in the countries that we call civilized.
The relation was formerly a severely simple one--the capitalist owned
the laborer. Of the difficulty and the cost of abolishing that system
it is needless to speak at length. Through centuries of time and with
an appalling sacrifice of life the effort has gone on, a continuous
war characterized by monstrous infractions of law and morals, by
incalculable cruelty and crime. Our own generation has witnessed the
culminating triumphs of this revolution, and of its three mightiest
leaders the assassination of two, the death in exile of the third. And
now, while still the clank of the falling chains is echoing through the
world, and still a mighty multitude of the world's workers is in bondage
under the old system, the others, for whose liberation was all this
"expense of spirit in a waste of shame," are sharply challenging the
advantage of the new. The new is, in troth, breaking down at every
point The relation of employer and employee is giving but little better
satisfaction than that of master and slave. The difference between the
two is, indeed, not nearly so broad as we persuade ourselves to think
it. In many of the industries there is practically no difference at all,
and the tendency is more and more to effacement of the difference where
it exists.
Labor unions, strikes and rioting are no new remedies for this insidious
disorder; they were common in ancient Rome and still more ancient Egypt.
In the twenty-ninth year of Rameses III a deputation of workmen employed
in the Theban necropolis met the superintendent and the priests with
a statement of their grievances. "Behold," said the spokesman, "we
are brought to the verge of famine. We have neither food, nor oil, nor
clothing; we have no fish; we have no vegetables. Already we have sent
up a petition to our sovereign lord the Pharaoh, praying that he will
give us these things and we are going to appeal to the Governor that we
may have the wherewithal to live." The response to this complaint was
one day's rations of corn. This appears to have been enough only while
it lasted, for a few weeks later the workmen were in open revolt.
Thrice they broke out of their quarter, rioting like mad and defying the
police. Whether they were finally shot full of arrows by the Pinkerton
men of the period the record does not state.
"Organized discontent" in the laboring population is no new thing under
the sun, but in this century and country it has a new opportunity and
Omniscience alone can forecast the outcome. Of one thing we may be very
sure, and the sooner the "capitalist" can persuade himself to discern it
the sooner will his eyes guard his neck: the relations between those who
are able to live without physical toil and those who are not are a
long way from final adjustment, but are about to undergo a profound and
essential alteration. That this is to come by peaceful evolution is a
hope which has nothing in history to sustain it. There are to be bloody
noses and cracked crowns, and the good people who suffer themselves to
be shocked by such things in others will have a chance to try them for
themselves. The working man is not troubling himself greatly about a
just allotment of these blessings; so that the greater part go to those
who do not work with their hands he will not consider too curiously any
person's claim to exemption. It would perhaps better harmonize with his
sense of the fitness of things (as it would, no doubt, with that of the
angels) if the advantages of the transitional period fell mostly to the
share of such star-spangled impostors as Andrew Carnegie; but almost any
distribution that is sufficiently objectionable as a whole to the other
side will be acceptable to the distributor. In the mean time it is to be
wished that the moralize, and homilizers who prate of "principles" may
have a little damnation dealt out to them on account. The head that
is unable to entertain a philosophical view of the situation would be
notably advantaged by removal.