Litchfield enquirer., 1867-08-01
''The Labor Crisis ;

Under the foregoing title we find an ex- cellent article in the last North American Review, on one of the great issues which is agitating Europe and America. We regret that we have only space for a brief synopsis of the argument and for few quotations from this most honest and most thorough exposition of the question that we have ever seen. It divides labor into three classes: Slave, or Serf labor: labor for wages merely; labor for participation in the profits.
 Of the first species, prevalent in Europe under the Roman Empire and in the Dark Ages, it is unnecessary now to speak.
 The second-labor for wages, or "ser- vile" labor as the North American some what harshly terms it-prevails to-day throughout Europe, and, owing to the spread of manufactures, and immigration. is on the increase in America. The con- dition of the European laborer is thus DOT trayed:-
 "He has, as far back as can trace his history been drunken, improvident, ignorant of every thing but hls trade; living i'll wretched dens, and working in foul shops, for what economists call natural wages;" that is the wages necessary to keep him and his family alive; breeding with a brutes indifference to the future of his Offspring and always pressing with so many mouths on his means of subsistence, that weeks idleness meant starvation for himself and his wife and children. ''He has been kind of retainer or vassal, who was favored by being allowed to work and from whom the employer was entitled to exact not simply the service agreed upon, but deference and obedience with regard to the conduct of his whole life.
 Nor are much better things expected from the present system of mechanical la- Dor in America:
 Larger and larger masses of the population must every year be reduced to the condition of day laborers living from hand to mouth on fixed wages, catching through dependence for their bread on the good will of employers and through long subjection to factory discipline and long ex- emption from the higher and more ennobling anx- ieties of lifethe servile tone and servile way of thinking, and what is worse than all, learning to consider themselves class apart, with rights and interests opposed to or different from those of the rest of the community.
 Not only is the laborer, it is maintained, in dependant position socially, but polit- ically also; among other badges of his seryi- tude the employer claims control of his vote and in most cases obtains it.
 The remedy for this evil is indicated in the following extracts:
 Now to say that this is part of the fixed order of things the result of the working of the laws of political economy, that 1t has been ordained that the laborer should receive barely enough to live on though the man who employs him is making one hundred per cent per annum, and that he should always be paid in fixed wages is to beg the oues- tion. This is the theory which nearly all socalo- gists have until now accepted, but the very object of the present agitation is to try it's correctness For several hundred years it has been accepted as one of the ultimate facts of polit ica economy, that the laborer must be the servant Tn all senses of the term. of the capitalist but we maintain thatsthat relation was as little determir- ed by natural law as the relation of master and slave What we have to see is, whether the f1- ture he may not be the partner of the capitalist, and whether the will of the working classes, em- boded in custom may not assume the appearance and force of an economical law, and make after a while, their participation in profits and not daily or weekly wages seem, the natural mode of paying
 The political advantages, and indeed ne- cessity, of this third species of labor, in a democracy are admirably depicted. It is now the prevailing system out of our cit ies; in fact, native-born tiller of the soil. who is mere laborer for wages is a rarity; while many even of our foreign-born az ricultural laborers are attaining an indepen- dent position.
 The increased effectiveness of this spe- cies of labor is universally admitted. Just as the slave managed to accomplish far less work than the hired laborer; he, on the other hand, accomplishes far less than the laborer who is interested in the results of his labor:-
 "There is really very little in the present indus trial regime to stimulate the intelligence excite the ambition, and sweeten the toll of ordinary mor- tals. The work is after all. another mans work the gain is to be his, and the honor of is to be his too; ; and tho nominal result is, that the great object of the laborer in nearly all trades, IS getting to be every day more and more, not how to display most skill or diligence but how to give least labor in return for fixed wages This is to- day the great problem of the working mans life.
 "Of the loss of productive power caused by this state of things, little need be said. It scarcely be estimated, although of course it would be impossible to form any estimate of it whatever. There is no such force in industry as the zeal, the eagerness, of workers. Its presence or absence often makes all the difference between national decline and prosperity, between national greatness and national weakness. "-216. 2l1- "We ought never to be content with our rate of production es long as the condition of the great body of the people is such that not only the com IOrCS put a 1alr snare or the luXufleS OI He, or books, leisure and means of culture are beyond their reach. But this state of things neither this country nor any other country will ever reach un- til the whole energies of the working population are enlisted in their work-until, in short. it is made their work, by their sharing in the prof. it's of it."
 The fallacy of the Eight Hour Law is held therefore to lie in the fact that it does not reach the real difficulty. The trouble is not that the laborer does too much work, but that he has too little inter est in his work.
 Our large employers have modelled theil system on the aristocratic European plan and the foreign working-man, on his arri val in this country, finds his condition scarcely less servile than the one he had hoped to escape. The evil results are thus set forth:-
 'eThe lessons which have made America great nation, their newcomers, fear will be very Ions in learning in the streets of factory towns in whicI they now swarm, and in which no intelligent mar can deny that they are rapidly reproducing the so cial diseases which threatening the life of more than one Euronean State and notably the worst n