New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-04-28

" o - genera lunu ouo VI
which society Is 70 % supported, can ever be
charged WITH al possible impoverishment o.
The poor N the contrary, these are TIE only
condito' ), the appointed means, CT ameliorat-
ing their situation and advancing their
Welfare. 1t is what the political sharpers and
! economic scioists call commerce, which, stand
| ing between producer and consumer, and de-
irving all its gains by despoilng both, is
really open to their favorite form of ana
thema; and it is the productive or creative in
dustries, against which they habitualy use it,
that in their very nature and necessities tend
to the Improvement of the laborer's condition,
and cannot be perverted from the most benefi
cent influences upon the poor and the most
equitable distribution of the jointly earned
profits. Skilled industry is the route of eman-
cipation to the unprOpertied man and yet this
is the very direction in which the cutting edge
of the cry is constantly directed. The man
who has nothing available but his bones and
muscles, though little more expert in their
use than an OK, is not nearly so strong, nor
worth so much of any mans money in hide and
tallow. Yet whenever it is proposed to employ
the governing power of the community to
raise the raw creature out of the conditions
which hold him down to wretched cOmpeti-
ton with the quadruped, we hear the whine
and howl of the whole pack of theo-
retical resstants, that all interference is
tyranny and oppression of the poor.
The laborers of this country are as
millions to one of these declaimers and when
we, treating them as men, would reserve to
them and preserve for them that labor, and
especially those forms of labor by which alone
they can advance their welfare, we are an
swered with the interests of trade, and the
differences of prices, and farrago of natural
rights and liberties of exchange, poisoned and
sharpened with the malignant rallying cry of
the poor against the rich. In one way or an
other men have been provoked to kill the
prophets. and to stone those who are sent unto
them, and whole nations have gone mad enough
to work their own ruin but we will hope that
we have fallen on times something better.
| We would put the points of doctrine on which
our policy rests into this shape:
| The union of capital and labor vastly in
| creases the productiveness of labor. The stock
| of products is thus made more and more ade-
quate to the wants of men, These products
are cheapened in direct proportion to their IN
| crease, and 80 tend to their own better and
wider distribution. The union of capital and
labor releases the latter from the seyerer forms
of drudgery, replacing human force by artificial.
| power, and renting the laborer to those
higher forms of skilled work which brings his
| highest faculties into the service, and give en-
| ployment and its graduated wages or rewards
| to all of intellect and morals which can be
employed. Nothing in the man left vacant
| and valueess TO him which natural endowment
and education develop. The laborer is not
wasted upon his work. but hc is educated by
it, Popular liberty began in the workshops of
England and the Continent before it had an
advocate in the pulpits, the press, or the halls
of legislation. The skilled workmen learned n
little of mechanics little chemistry; mind
| took the direction of muscle, and manhood
ripened and widencd until the whole field OF
human rights and duties became study and
an aim. The mastery Of nature through her
own laws has been growing, taking higher and
| higher ranges from the workshop up to the
laboratory, until science and art have
mingled so largely with labor that we have
now no distinctive names for its most
advanced attaInments; we lump all these vic
tories under the general name, engineering
which we apply alike to the man that runs a
locomotive, and TO him that builds il, to the man
| that outlines a road through n swamp, or n
tunnel through bill, and to the construction
of bridge across the Niagara. knowledge
| has grown faster in the workshop than nomen-
clature in the schools. The inventions of labor
have outstrpped the invention of descriptive
terms. If the rich have been growing richer
all along this progress, the poor have not been
growing poorer in anything that constitutes
the wealth or welfare of man. A still better
distribution is to be effected, and will be.
Wages have put the workman in the position
to demand it, and worth will enable him at
last to command it. II will soon be the whole
business of legislation to forward the move
ment, and laisser Jdire will have to linger as n
lie until it becomes useless and nugatory as q