CAPITAL AND LABOR.

"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so

to them."--MATT. vii: 12.

The greatest war the world has ever seen is between capital and labor.

The strife is not like that which in history is called the Thirty

Years' War, for it is a war of centuries, it is a war of the five

continents, it is a war hemispheric. The middle classes in this

country, upon whom the nation has depended for holding the balance of

power and for acting as mediators between the two extremes, are

diminishing; and if things go on at the same ratio as they are now

going, it will not be very long before there will be no middle class

in this country, but all will be very rich or very poor, princes or

paupers, and the country will be given up to palaces and hovels.

The antagonistic forces are closing in upon each other. The

telegraphic operators' strikes, the railroad employés' strikes, the

Pennsylvania miners' strikes, the movements of the Boycotters and the

dynamiters are only skirmishes before a general engagement, or, if you

prefer it, escapes through the safety-valves of an imprisoned force

which promises the explosion of society. You may pooh-pooh it; you may

say that this trouble, like an angry child, will cry itself to sleep;

you may belittle it by calling it Fourierism, or Socialism, or St.

Simonism, or Nihilism, or Communism; but that will not hinder the fact

that it is the mightiest, the darkest, the most terrific threat of

this century. All attempts at pacification have been dead failures,

and monopoly is more arrogant, and the trades unions more bitter.

"Give us more wages," cry the employés. "You shall have less," say the

capitalists. "Compel us to do fewer hours of toil in a day." "You

shall toil more hours," say the others. "Then, under certain

conditions, we will not work at all," say these. "Then you shall

starve," say those, and the workmen gradually using up that which they

accumulated in better times, unless there be some radical change, we

shall have soon in this country three million hungry men and women.

Now, three million hungry people can not be kept quiet. All the

enactments of legislatures and all the constabularies of the cities,

and all the army and navy of the United States can not keep three

million hungry people quiet. What then? Will this war between capital

and labor be settled by human wisdom? Never. The brow of the one

becomes more rigid, the fist of the other more clinched.

But that which human wisdom can not achieve will be accomplished by

Christianity if it be given full sway. You have heard of medicines so

powerful that one drop would stop a disease and restore a patient; and

I have to tell you that one drop of my text properly administered will

stop all those woes of society and give convalescence and complete

health to all classes. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,

do ye even so to them."

I shall first show you this morning how this quarrel between monopoly

and hard work can not be stopped, and then I will show you how this

controversy will be settled.

Futile remedies. In the first place, there will come no pacification

to this trouble through an outcry against rich men merely because they

are rich. There is no member of a trades-union on earth that would not

be rich if he could be. Sometimes through a fortunate invention, or

through some accident of prosperity, a man who had nothing comes to

large estate, and we see him arrogant and supercilious, and taking

people by the throat just as other people took him by the throat.

There is something very mean about human nature when it comes to the

top. But it is no more a sin to be rich than it is a sin to be poor.

There are those who have gathered a great estate through fraud, and

then there are millionaires who have gathered their fortune through

foresight in regard to changes in the markets, and through brilliant

business faculty, and every dollar of their estate is as honest as the

dollar which the plumber gets for mending a pipe, or the mason gets

for building a wall. There are those who keep in poverty because of

their own fault. They might have been well-off, but they smoked or

chewed up their earnings, or they lived beyond their means, while

others on the same wages and on the same salaries went on to

competency. I know a man who is all the time complaining of his

poverty and crying out against rich men, while he himself keeps two

dogs, and chews and smokes, and is filled to the chin with whisky and

beer!

Micawber said to David Copperfield: "Copperfield, my boy, one pound

income, twenty shillings and sixpence expenses: result misery. But,

Copperfield, my boy, one pound income, expenses nineteen shillings and

sixpence; result, happiness." And there are vast multitudes of people

who are kept poor because they are the victims of their own

improvidence. It is no sin to be rich, and it is no sin to be poor. I

protest against this outcry which I hear against those who, through

economy and self-denial and assiduity, have come to large fortune.

This bombardment of commercial success will never stop this quarrel

between capital and labor.

Neither will the contest be settled by cynical and unsympathetic

treatment of the laboring classes. There are those who speak of them

as though they were only cattle or draught horses. Their nerves are

nothing, their domestic comfort is nothing, their happiness is

nothing. They have no more sympathy for them than a hound has for a

hare, or a hawk for a hen, or a tiger for a calf. When Jean Valjean,

the greatest hero of Victor Hugo's writings, after a life of suffering

and brave endurance, goes into incarceration and death, they clap the

book shut and say, "Good for him!" They stamp their feet with

indignation and say just the opposite of "Save the working-classes."

They have all their sympathies with Shylock, and not with Antonio and

Portia. They are plutocrats, and their feelings are infernal. They are

filled with irritation and irascibility on this subject. To stop this

awful imbroglio between capital and labor they will lift not so much

as the tip end of the little finger.

Neither will there be any pacification of this angry controversy

through violence. God never blessed murder.

The poorest use you can put a man to is to kill him. Blow up to-morrow

all the country-seats on the banks of the Hudson, and all the fine

houses on Madison Square, and Brooklyn Heights, and Bunker Hill, and

Rittenhouse Square, and Beacon Street, and all the bricks and timber

and stone will just fall back on the bare head of American labor. The

worst enemies of the working-classes in the United States and Ireland

are their demented coadjutors. Assassination--the assassination of

Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin,

Ireland, in the attempt to avenge the wrongs of Ireland, only turned

away from that afflicted people millions of sympathizers. The recent

attempt to blow up the House of Commons, in London, had only this

effect: to throw out of employment tens of thousands of innocent Irish

people in England.

In this country the torch put to the factories that have discharged

hands for good or bad reason; obstructions on the rail-track in front

of midnight express trains because the offenders do not like the

president of the company; strikes on shipboard the hour they were

going to sail, or in printing-offices the hour the paper was to go to

press, or in mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or on house

scaffoldings so the builder fails in keeping his contract--all these

are only a hard blow on the head of American labor, and cripple its

arms, and lame its feet, and pierce its heart. Take the last great

strike in America--the telegraph operators' strike--and you have to

find that the operators lost four hundred thousand dollars' worth of

wages, and have had poorer wages ever since. Traps sprung suddenly

upon employers, and violence, never took one knot out of the knuckle

of toil, or put one farthing of wages into a callous palm. Barbarism

will never cure the wrongs of civilization. Mark that!

Frederick the Great admired some land near his palace at Potsdam, and

he resolved to get it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the miller

three times the value of the property. The miller would not take it,

because it was the old homestead, and he felt about as Naboth felt

about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. Frederick the Great was a

rough and terrible man, and he ordered the miller into his presence;

and the king, with a stick, in his hand--a stick with which he

sometimes struck his officers of state--said to this miller: "Now, I

have offered you three times the value of that property, and if you

won't sell it I'll take it anyhow." The miller said, "Your majesty,

you won't." "Yes," said the king, "I will take it." "Then," said the

miller, "if your majesty does take it, I will sue you in the Chancery

Court." At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his infamous

demand. And the most imperious outrage against the working-classes

will yet cower before the law. Violence and contrary to the law will

never accomplish anything, but righteousness and according to law will

accomplish it.

Well, if this controversy between Capital and Labor can not be settled

by human wisdom, if to-day Capital and Labor stand with their thumbs

on each other's throat--as they do--it is time for us to look

somewhere else for relief, and it points from my text roseate and

jubilant, and puts one hand on the broadcloth shoulder of Capital, and

puts the other hand on the homespun-covered shoulder of Toil, and

says, with a voice that will grandly and gloriously settle this, and

settle everything, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do

ye even so to them." That is, the lady of the household will say: "I

must treat the maid in the kitchen just as I would like to be treated

if I were down-stairs, and it were my work to wash, and cook, and

sweep, and it were the duty of the maid in the kitchen to preside in

this parlor." The maid in the kitchen must say: "If my employer seems

to be more prosperous than I, that is no fault of hers; I shall not

treat her as an enemy. I will have the same industry and fidelity

down-stairs as I would expect from my subordinates, if I happened to

be the wife of a silk importer."

The owner of an iron mill, having taken a dose of my text before

leaving home in the morning, will go into his foundry, and, passing

into what is called the puddling-room, he will see a man there

stripped to the waist, and besweated and exhausted with the labor and

the toil, and he will say to him: "Why, it seems to be very hot in

here. You look very much exhausted. I hear your child is sick with

scarlet fever. If you want your wages a little earlier this week, so

as to pay the nurse and get the medicines, just come into my office

any time."

After awhile, crash goes the money market, and there is no more demand

for the articles manufactured in that iron mill, and the owner does

not know what to do. He says, "Shall I stop the mill, or shall I run

it on half time, or shall I cut down the men's wages?" He walks the

floor of his counting-room all day, hardly knowing what to do. Toward

evening he calls all the laborers together. They stand all around,

some with arms akimbo, some with folded arms, wondering what the boss

is going to do now. The manufacturer says: "Men, times are very hard;

I don't make twenty dollars where I used to make one hundred. Somehow,

there is no demand now for what we manufacture, or but very little

demand. You see I am at vast expense, and I have called you together

this afternoon to see what you would advise. I don't want to shut up

the mill, because that would force you out of work, and you have

always been very faithful, and I like you, and you seem to like me,

and the bairns must be looked after, and your wife will after awhile

want a new dress. I don't know what to do."

There is a dead halt for a minute or two, and then one of the workmen

steps out from the ranks of his fellows, and says: "Boss, you have

been very good to us, and when you prospered we prospered, and now you

are in a tight place and I am sorry, and we have got to sympathize

with you. I don't know how the others feel, but I propose that we take

off twenty per cent. from our wages, and that when the times get good

you will remember us and raise them again." The workman looks around

to his comrades, and says: "Boys, what do you say to this? all in

favor of my proposition will say ay." "Ay! ay! ay!" shout two hundred

voices.

But the mill-owner, getting in some new machinery, exposes himself

very much, and takes cold, and it settles into pneumonia, and he dies.

In the procession to the tomb are all the workmen, tears rolling down

their cheeks, and off upon the ground; but an hour before the

procession gets to the cemetery the wives and the children of those

workmen are at the grave waiting for the arrival of the funeral

pageant. The minister of religion may have delivered an eloquent

eulogium before they started from the house, but the most impressive

things are said that day by the working-classes standing around the

tomb.

That night in all the cabins of the working-people where they have

family prayers the widowhood and the orphanage in the mansion are

remembered. No glaring populations look over the iron fence of the

cemetery; but, hovering over the scene, the benediction of God and man

is coming for the fulfillment of the Christlike injunction,

"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to

them."

"Oh," says some man here, "that is all Utopian, that is apocryphal,

that is impossible." No. Yesterday, I cut out of a paper this: "One of

the pleasantest incidents recorded in a long time is reported from

Sheffield, England. The wages of the men in the iron works at

Sheffield are regulated by a board of arbitration, by whose decision

both masters and men are bound. For some time past the iron and steel

trade has been extremely unprofitable, and the employers can not,

without much loss, pay the wages fixed by the board, which neither

employers nor employed have the power to change. To avoid this

difficulty, the workmen in one of the largest steel works in Sheffield

hit upon a device as rare as it was generous. They offered to work for

their employers one week without any pay whatever. How much better

that plan is than a strike would be."

But you go with me and I will show you--not so far off as Sheffield,

England--factories, banking-houses, storehouses, and costly

enterprises where this Christ-like injunction of my text is fully

kept, and you could no more get the employer to practice an injustice

upon his men, or the men to conspire against the employer, than you

could get your right hand and your left hand, your right eye and your

left eye, your right ear and your left ear, into physiological

antagonism. Now, where is this to begin? In our homes, in our stores,

on our farms--not waiting for other people to do their duty. Is there

a divergence now between the parlor and the kitchen? Then there is

something wrong, either in the parlor or the kitchen, perhaps in both.

Are the clerks in your store irate against the firm? Then there is

something wrong, either behind the counter, or in the private office,

or perhaps in both.

The great want of the world to-day is the fulfillment of this

Christ-like injunction, that which He promulgated in His sermon

Olivetic. All the political economists under the arch or vault of the

heavens in convention for a thousand years can not settle this

controversy between monopoly and hard work, between capital and labor.

During the Revolutionary War there was a heavy piece of timber to be

lifted, perhaps for some fortress, and a corporal was overseeing the

work, and he was giving commands to some soldiers as they lifted:

"Heave away, there! yo heave!" Well, the timber was too heavy; they

could not get it up. There was a gentleman riding by on a horse, and

he stopped and said to this corporal, "Why don't you help them lift?

That timber is too heavy for them to lift." "No," he said, "I won't;

I am a corporal." The gentleman got off his horse and came up to the

place. "Now," he said to the soldiers, "all together--yo heave!" and

the timber went to its place. "Now," said the gentleman to the

corporal, "when you have a piece of timber too heavy for the men to

lift, and you want help, you send to your commander-in-chief." It was

Washington. Now, that is about all the Gospel I know--the Gospel of

giving somebody a lift, a lift out of darkness, a lift out of earth

into heaven. That is all the Gospel I know--the Gospel of helping

somebody else to lift.

"Oh," says some wiseacre, "talk as you will, the law of demand and

supply will regulate these things until the end of time." No, they

will not, unless God dies and the batteries of the Judgment Day are

spiked, and Pluto and Proserpine, king and queen of the infernal

regions, take full possession of this world. Do you know who Supply

and Demand are? They have gone into partnership, and they propose to

swindle this earth and are swindling it. You are drowning. Supply and

Demand stand on the shore, one on one side, the other on the other

side, of the life-boat, and they cry out to you, "Now, you pay us what

we ask you for getting you to shore, or go to the bottom!" If you can

borrow $5000 you can keep from failing in business. Supply and Demand

say, "Now, you pay us exorbitant usury, or you go into bankruptcy."

This robber firm of Supply and Demand say to you: "The crops are

short. We bought up all the wheat and it is in our bin. Now, you pay

our price or starve." That is your magnificent law of supply and

demand.

Supply and Demand own the largest mill on earth, and all the rivers

roll over their wheel, and into their hopper they put all the men,

women, and children they can shovel out of the centuries, and the

blood and the bones redden the valley while the mill grinds. That

diabolic law of supply and demand will yet have to stand aside, and

instead thereof will come the law of love, the law of cooperation, the

law of kindness, the law of sympathy, the law of Christ.

Have you no idea of the coming of such a time? Then you do not believe

the Bible. All the Bible is full of promises on this subject, and as

the ages roll on the time will come when men or fortune will be giving

larger sums to humanitarian and evangelistic purposes, and there will

be more James Lenoxes and Peter Coopers and William E. Dodges and

George Peabodys. As that time comes there will be more parks, more

picture-galleries, more gardens thrown open for the holiday people and

the working-classes.

I was reading only this morning in regard to a charge that had been

made in England against Lambeth Palace, that it was exclusive; and

that charge demonstrated the sublime fact that to the grounds of that

wealthy estate eight hundred poor families have free passes, and forty

croquet companies, and on the hall-day holidays four thousand poor

people recline on the grass, walk through the paths, and sit under the

trees. That is Gospel--Gospel on the wing, Gospel out-of-doors worth

just as much as in-doors. That time is going to come.

That is only a hint of what is going to be. The time is going to come

when, if you have anything in your house worth looking at--pictures,

pieces of sculpture--you are going to invite me to come and see it,

you are going to invite my friends to come and see it, and you will

say, "See what I have been blessed with. God has given me this, and so

far as enjoying it, it is yours also." That is Gospel.

In crossing the Alleghany Mountains, many years ago, the stage halted,

and Henry Clay dismounted from the stage, and went out on a rock at

the very verge of the cliff, and he stood there with his cloak wrapped

about him, and he seemed to be listening for something. Some one said

to him, "What are you listening for?" Standing there, on the top of

the mountain, he said: "I am listening to the tramp of the footsteps

of the coming millions of this continent." A sublime posture for an

American statesman! You and I to-day stand on the mountain-top of

privilege, and on the Rock of Ages, and we look off, and we hear

coming from the future the happy industries, and smiling populations,

and the consecrated fortunes, and the innumerable prosperities of the

closing nineteenth and the opening twentieth century.

While I speak this morning, there lies in state the dead author and

patriot of France, Victor Hugo. The ten thousand dollars in his will

he has given to the poor of the city are only a hint of the work he

has done for all nations and for all times. I wonder not that they

allow eleven days to pass between his death and his burial, his body

meantime kept under triumphal arch, for the world can hardly afford to

let go this man who for more than eight decades has by his

unparalleled genius blessed it. His name shall be a terror to all

despots, and an encouragement to all the struggling. He has made the

world's burden lighter, and its darkness less dense, and its chain

less galling, and its thrones of iniquity less secure. Farewell,

patriot, genius of the century, Victor Hugo! But he was not the

overtowering friend of mankind.

The greatest friend of capitalist and toiler, and the one who will yet

bring them together in complete accord, was born one Christmas night

while the curtains of heaven swung, stirred by the wings angelic.

Owner of all things--all the continents, all worlds, and all the

islands of light. Capitalist of immensity, crossing over to our

condition. Coming into our world, not by gate of palace, but by door

of barn. Spending His first night amid the shepherds. Gathering after

around Him the fishermen to be His chief attendants. With adze, and

saw, and chisel, and ax, and in a carpenter-shop showing himself

brother with the tradesmen. Owner of all things, and yet on a hillock

back of Jerusalem one day resigning everything for others, keeping not

so much as a shekel to pay for His obsequies, by charity buried in the

suburbs of a city that had cast Him out. Before the cross of such a

capitalist, and such a carpenter, all men can afford to shake hands

and worship. Here is the every man's Christ. None so high, but He was

higher. None so poor, but He was poorer. At His feet the hostile

extremes will yet renounce their animosities, and countenances which

have glowered with the prejudices and revenge of centuries shall

brighten with the smile of heaven as He commands: "Whatsoever ye would

that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."