The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-11
THE LABOR QUESTION.

LIE LADOh QOEO llON'
From EUery Saturday.
= The vast subject of the true and healthy
relations of labor to capital is now debated
in Europe and the United States with know
ledge, intelligence, and zeal, but also with
ferocily on both sides which occasionally
seems to threaten a social war. In the last
analysis every cool thinker sees that the mat
ter is regulated by laws as inexorable as the
law of gravitation-by laws which human
beings cannot constrain, but which austerely
constrain Men1-by laws which, existing as
they do in the very nature of things, are
beyond the control either of philanthropy or
greed. But passion and self-interest intrude
so inevitably into the discussion, that it is
difficult to make the 'still low voice" of SIM
pie sense and reason audible amidst the
fierce cries and vehement arguments of either
party. 1t is a contest for power as well as
for justice, and the demagogues of capital
and the demagogues of labor have more than
their rightful share of influence in the great
debate, in which thinkers and phianthro-
pists, as well as demagogues, are earnestly
engaged.
In the United States we have a palpable
advantage over Europe, in being able to dis
cuss the whole question fairly. There is here
no pressure of population on subsistence"
to embitter and envenom the discussion
We have more than three millions of square
of population. The land can easily support
ten times that population, without calling
for any extra effort on the part of the people
to subsist. To all European thinkers that
fact alone ad ourns the real problem to be
solved, in this country, a couple of centu-
ries. But we have also had within the
lifetime of our present population, system
OF labor In which the capitalist owned the
laborer. That fact enables US to go to the
root of the whole controversy-for it repre-
sents a condition of things from which
civilized Europe has been free for many hun
dreds of years.
The popularity of American slavery, as far
as it affected the remuneration of labor, was
this, that the increased value of the slaves
work, springing from the increased demand for
the products of his work, made no addition
to his necessities, much less to his comforts.
He was weaith-producing animal, to be fed,
clothed, and lodged with the least possible
expense consistent with the preservation of
animal existence. The cost of his support
was, we believe, about seventy dollars year.
The vast impulse given to the cotton trade
quadrupled the value of his work, but its only
effect on him was to raise his price in the
slave-market. He was not better fed,
clothed, or lodged than before; but instead of
being ''a two hundred-and-ffty- dollar Mig
| ger" he became "a thousand-dollar Mig
ger" Had he been a free laborer he
would, by the natural operation of
the law of supply and demand, have
received himself the additional value
of his work expressed in the rise of his mar
ket price as a chattel In other words, his
wages would have been the wages given to
other unskilled laborers. He would have ex-
pended three hundred dollars year on his
! own subsistence instead of having seventy
dollars year expended on his subsistence
by his master. The difference found its way
into the masters pocket-that is, capital
absorbed over three quarters of the laborer's
earnings after the legitimate remuneration
of capital had been fully paid.
This condition of things represented the
dominion of violence over everything worthy
to be called law. 1t was simply state of
war, in which the laborer was held to his
work under the iron hand of force. Phe two
fundamental rights of the laborer were vio-
lated-frst, his liberty, and second, his
right to partici pate with capital in the profits
of their joint production.
Now, of those two, we consider the first as
the most important. The laborer should be
free. The mistake of the Organizers" of
labor is in insisting that he should be free
only to Join an association theoretically
| devoted to an assertion of the rights of
labor. For the slave master is substituted
the trades union. If you don't join the
union you lose caste-aud the system of
India, repudiated by modern civilization, is
practically adopted in the United States.
The laborer who sells his labor in open mar
ket for the most he can get, obedient to Geo.
nomic laws, but disobedient to the purely
despotic commands of the labor association,
is Pariah. In this free Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, there are men who can only
exercise the mechanic art in which
they have been bred, by exercising also some
OF the exceptional virtues of martyrs. With
out denying the good which the various
unions have done in watching the mutations
of the labor market, in order that instant as
we'll as remote justice shall be done to the
laborer, we think that their coercive policy is
a revival of the most detestable element in
the system of slavery Let every laborer
join them, if he chooses; but don't ostracize
the laborer who don't choose to join them
Everybody knows that the freedom of the
laborer is practically annulled through the
despotism exercised over him by the dema
gogues who profess to be the guardians of his
interests.
The interference of the Labor Associations
with the law of supply and demand in its
operation on the liberty of the laborer is bad
enough; but it extends also to wild attemp
to keep up wages by limiting production
The theory of these opponents of natural Law
is that if obstacles be placed in the way OF
learning trades, the price of the articles made
can be kept high, and the wages of their pro
ducers can also be kept lat what is called ,
Giving point. This simply means that un
skilled laborers should be made to bear tI,
burden which the skilled laborers shift from
their own shoulders, and that to do this tn,
werkmen without skill should be deprived O
! the right to improve their condition by putting