The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-24

justified the Judgment of the Congress by
proving themselves wise counsellors as well
faithful and deferential associates. The Con-
gress strengthened the interest represented by
il in treating labor as labor, regardless of the
color of those who perform it.
So with regard to woman That it is not
merely Just but benefcent that woman should
be welcomed and encouraged to do whatever
she can do well, may seem a threadbare
truth; yet it is hardly ten years since the
writer hereof was Missed while arguing, before
a gathering of printers, that women should bp
welcomed to participate in type-settinB
wherever they should evince desire a1d
capacity to do so. This congress took reason
able care not to be too far in advance of
public sentiment; wherefore we hail its over
turning of the barriers imposed by sex and
color as proving not merely it's own recogni-
ton of the rights of humanity, but decided
progress toward ideal justice in the average
opinion at least of our countrymen.
The best word of their gathering was that
so emphatically spoken in favor of co-opera-
ton. We fully agree in the averment of its
appropriate committee, unanimously adopted
by the Congress, that ''Of all the plans de-
vised for the amelioration of the condition of
the working classes, none has proved effective
to solve the problem of human happiness to
so great an extent as that of cooperation" 4"
This is in truth the Maalzoff of the whole
position. When the working class shall have
become the employer Of its own labor, buying
by wholesale whatever of stock or materials
it does not produce and selling (for cash only
directly to consumers-that is, in the main
to its own members-questions of hours of
labor, wages etc. ETC., will have sunk into
their proper insignifcance. The true and
only way to secure to labor the full
recompense of its efforts lies through
elf-employment-that is, cooperation.
And this is no impracticable theory. More
than half the labor of our country, so far as
| it now renders a service for wages, might
employ itself within year from this date if
| it only would. 1t has money enough on de-
posit in savings banks and elsewhere to set at
least one million of its members at work on OF
| before the first of January next; and it might
| save, by one years abstinence from alcoholic
and narcotic poisons, enough to set an equal
| number in addition at work as co-operators
within the ensuing year. The change should
begin with tailors, shoemakers, and other
| trades wherein 500 per man Cor woman,
would serve as a working capital for each
| company of one thousand persons or over,
and should go on till every laborer who chose
| to become a co-Operator shall have been
made welcome to that industrial partner
| ship in which he shall be best fitted for use
| fulness. The laboring class may speedily
employ and direct its own labor, receiving
all the profits accruing therefrom, if it only
will If it chooses the status andsrecompense
of hirelings, its right to that choice is equally
| clear.
We think the Congress evinced good sense
in steering as clear as may be of questions
which have become the subjects of partisan
contention and disregarding all appeals tc
form a new political party If it should ever
become necessary for labor to form a party
of its own, that necessity must be, not courted
but forced upon it and accepted as a necessity
We judge that no suchnecessity has yet beer
| demonstrated.