LABORING men—this is their own title for themselves—do not work any harder than the remainder of their fellow-beings. But those who come under this title as it is generally understood have some grievances that must be removed before several million men can transverse the long distance between dissatisfaction and comfort.

The Labor party, so-called, has made an ass of itself a great many times, but its blunders cannot change the fact that many of its complaints have a great deal of ground to stand on. The farmer who shoots the man that stole his horses may be a murderer, but that does not alter the fact that his horses, upon whose work depend his crops, his family’s fate, and the ownership of his farm, have been stolen. So, when a railroad strike prevents thousands of travellers not owning any railway stock, not having any part or influence in railway management, from reaching their destination, the strikers may be absolute scoundrels in their disregard of the rights of their fellow-men;{319} nevertheless it is entirely true that their own wages may have been ground down to starvation basis, and consequently the men have a right to complain.

Labor is sure to be imposed upon just as much as the laboring class will endure the imposition. The poorer the man the more necessary is it that he shall work in order to live. This being so, he is sure sooner or later to encounter somebody who will take advantage of him. No man need be a scoundrel in order to drive a sharp bargain if he gets the chance. To drive a sharp bargain is something that all of us rather pride ourselves upon. Probably the laboring man would do it himself if he got the opportunity. Nevertheless, the purpose and aim of the laboring man should be to be so “fixed” that no one can catch him at a disadvantage.

Labor—that is, organized labor, must be in ceaseless conflict with the spirit of competition that prevails among employers. In every manufacturing industry that admits of competition, all the way from making door-mats to building houses and railroads, men try by underbidding one another to get business. The energy of a new country is always in excess of its capital and also of its demand. This is very encouraging so far as the outlook for energy goes, but it does work a great many wrongs and unpleasantnesses. In business it does not take long to reach bedrock{320} as to cost of raw material. After that, the strain of competition must come entirely upon labor, and, if labor does not resist, it must starve.

Consequently the workingman must fight, and fight continually, to keep from being reduced to slavery in one form or other. The word slavery has a dreadful sound, but there are ways of muffling it so that the slave himself does not always see himself in a true light.

It is only a short time ago that New England was thrown into a fervor of patriotic indignation by the spectacle presented in one town of a native bringing a laborer in chains to the market-place to be sold. The owner regarded himself as entirely in the right, and explained his position very distinctly. He had obtained his vassal on a contract that a certain amount of labor would be given for a specified sum of money. The sum was small; nevertheless it was paid and accepted, and the man afterward imagined that he could escape from the terms of his contract. Consequently the employer, or purchaser, as he seemed to consider himself, put chains upon the fellow, and as literally brought him for sale as any slave was ever offered in any slave-mart in the world. The beholders rose in their wrath, dragged both men before the court, the slave was freed and the owner was fined.

But the point is here: this was simply a case{321}


Image not available: U. S. MAN-OF-WAR.
U. S. MAN-OF-WAR.

in which the slave-dealer, taking advantage of an ignorant, unthinking man, was found out. How many thousands of similar cases exist in the United States at the present time of which the public know nothing? All newspaper men at the principal sea-ports know that people come to this country by the thousand on contracts to do a certain amount of labor for specified prices. The prices may be below the cost of living, nevertheless the contracts hold good in all courts of law, and the men are obliged to do their duty. We are sorry for them, but, according to the practice of all countries, man seems to be made for the law and not the law for man.

Do I really mean to say that slavery is possible in the United States? Why, such a question is behind the times, for slavery practically exists. What else but slavery can you call the condition of some of the coal-miners, tanners and factory hands of the United States? Men with their wives and families go to a small town which practically belongs to their employer. They live in houses owned by their employer, buy their household supplies at stores owned by their employer, take their pay in checks, tickets or orders signed by their employer, and get the remainder of their pay when their employer is ready. Suppose they wish to improve their condition and go away; how can they move at all unless they have saved some money, the saving of{322} which, by a peculiarity well understood in all such localities, is simply impossible?

The method is practically that of South America. In some of our sister republics the laboring men who are on a plantation are called a consistado. Men are obtained, in the first place, by a small advance of money, and are told that they can obtain additional sums at such times as they may need them, provided the money is already due them for work done. But these laborers are improvident. When they wish to spend money, the employer good-naturedly—so it is supposed—allows them to draw slightly in advance, and by the laws of the country the laborer can never leave until his indebtedness to the employer is paid.

In some of the South American republics there are consistados, from which no man can escape to work elsewhere without being claimed and returned by forms very similar to those which prevailed in the United States under the old fugitive slave law in slavery times. If a workman on the plantation of Don Tomas recovers from a feast-day celebration in a state of mind which leads him to run away and go to the plantation of Don Jorge, he is missed at roll-call, his absence is reported to his employer, and straightway a lot of notes are sent out to the owners of surrounding estates notifying them of the runaway and requesting them to return him{323} to his employer, who will pay the expenses incurred by the return. The request is always honored, because what neighbor knows when some member of his own consistado may disappear in the same manner, and be, of course, slightly in debt to his employer?

The same state of affairs prevails practically in a number of our mining and manufacturing regions. Men who are paid only once a month or once in two months get advances from their employers in the shape of orders for family supplies upon stores in the vicinity, stores probably owned by the employer. So long as the purchaser is in debt he may be stopped if he attempts to leave the country, and if he goes alone, as usually he must, his family is unable to follow him, and, still more, unable to retain a home and get food, for the roof which shelters them belongs also to the employer, as does the only store which gives credit. Only a few years ago I met in the State of New York a tanner, who was said to be one of the ablest men in his business, who told me that he had been seven years in the town and house in which I found him, trying to work out his indebtedness to his employer, so as to take his family somewhere else where they could have better society and where his children could have better facilities for education, but in spite of all efforts at economy he was still in debt to his employer. As the said{324} employer fixed the rate of wages, the tanner could not possibly see how his condition would ever be otherwise.

This apparently anomalous feature of our civilization may appear to the reader to be accidental and exceptional, but it is not. In the larger cities the same conditions prevail under different forms. There are a great many shops in New York and other cities where men and women, principally the latter, work at starvation wages, and are so assisted by the pretended kindness of their employers that they always are in debt and cannot possibly leave without fear of suit and possibly arrest. The so-called slave marts of certain districts of the city of New York on Sundays are not overdrawn pictures, as the reading public may imagine them. There are hundreds of thousands of people so absolutely bound to their present employers that their only method of escape seems to be death.

Public sentiment does not countenance slavery, though, and public sentiment is all-powerful? The will of the people is the law of the land? Yes, yes; that sounds very well. There is a good deal of truth in it, too, but the truth is all on one side. Public sentiment does not concern itself with anything which is not brought closely to its attention. Public sentiment in the United States did not countenance African slavery long after the Constitution was adopted, nevertheless{325} the institution grew and flourished until it almost destroyed the nation. Public sentiment did not approve of any of the abuses of the colored race which individual overseers and owners might be mean enough to indulge in. Nevertheless, as in everything else, the public acted upon the old-fashioned principle of not interfering in other people’s business. The general public does not handle the slaves, still less does the general public manage the employers. It hears once in a while of abuses and cruelties, and thinks these are outrageous, but they are not its affair. Each man must look out for himself, Heaven helps those who help themselves, etcetera, etcetera. There are a good many ways of getting rid of moral responsibility in this world, and nearly everybody is mean enough to take advantage of them when the moral responsibility does not affect any one of his own family, much less his own pocket-book.

But can the condition of labor be improved? Yes, if labor is entirely in earnest about it. Labor’s principal need is brains. I don’t mean they must increase their own brains; but in their conflicts with employers the laboring men should be led, or their interests should be managed, by men who know both sides of the question. Are there such men in the ranks of the laborers? It appears not; if there were, such men would not be laborers at all. How many{326} men there are whose hearts have been strongly stirred up by the wrongs endured by labor in the United States, who have longed for an opportunity to assist the working classes with their sympathy and counsel, but who have been repelled again and again by the utterly unbusinesslike and senseless methods of the very men whom they desired to help! During the strikes in the cotton mills of New England, a few years ago, it was remarked by a millionaire, a man of leisure, who desired to assist the operatives with his time, his money and his legal ability, that could he have such a faculty of working as the laboring class had of blundering he would be the greatest man who ever lived.

There is no objection, on the part of Americans, to workingmen enjoying all proper rights and protection under the law; the only trouble is in unwise methods of procedure. President Cleveland puts the whole matter in a nutshell as follows:

“Under our form of government the value of labor as an element of national prosperity should be distinctly recognized, and the welfare of the laboring man should be regarded as especially entitled to legislative care. In a country which offers to all its citizens the highest attainment of social and political distinction, its workingmen cannot justly or safely be considered as irrevocably consigned to the limits of a class and{327} entitled to no attention and allowed no protest against neglect. The laboring man, bearing in his hand an indispensable contribution to our growth and progress, may well insist, with manly courage and as a right, upon the............