In discussion of such murderous misdoings as those 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 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 do not care. 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 struggles, not
of principles but 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 politicians encourage them
in doing. But what would you have? They conceive it to be to their
interest to do these things. If capitalists conceived 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 shadow 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 that you meet.
It would be fair and fine all around 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 evil 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 now, while still the
clank of the falling chains is echoing through the world, and still a
diminishing 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 truth, 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 industries there is virtually no difference, and the
tendency is more and more to effacement of the difference where it
exists.