The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-26

themselves to agitation and argument; and
whenever they attempt it by force, as they
do in France, we hold that if war
be ever lawful for any object what
ever, it is lawful to wage war upon them,
and destroy them to any extent that may be
necessary to secure peace. OF all the perni-
cious and immoral talk of the day, none is, to
our mind, more pernicious absurd or i'm
moral than that which claims a peculiar
sanctity or reverence for the folly or violence
of workingmen, or poor men, as such and
which excuses and defends in a working
man or a poor man, crimes and absurdities
which would damn any other men to in
fanny, and convert any other men into public |
enemies. Doubtless, at the bar of Supreme |
Justice a numbering ruffian like Rigault, the |
Public Prosecutor of the Commune, who |
spent his last night on earth arranging for |
the slaughter of innocent Hostages" will |
have all proper allowances made for his trials |
and temptations and congenital imperfec-
tions; but it behooves the sober, SEN
sible, industrious members of the human
race, to whose care civilization is committed,
to remember above all things, in dealing with
such people, that it is not their duty to mea-
sure out to Rigault and the like of him ab.
stract justice, as they are not competent for
any such task, but to see that he and his fell
lows do not imperil those great foundations
on which human society rests-men's GER
tainty that they will enjoy the fruits of their
labor, their confidence in the permanence of
the leading social conditions around them
and in the gradualness and peaceableness of
all changes To introduce complete uncer-
tainty about the future into civilized life is to
take from it the feature which more than all
else distinguishes it from savage life, and to
kill useful human activity at its very roots,
The elevation of the working classes will
come from cooperation. 1t is only in this
hot &c fhrnr1 r1pl1 fhn INirot of
labor and capital in the same hands, that
whatever is now offensive in the difference in
the life of the laborer and capitalist will dis
| appear; and cooperation will only become
possible through the workingman's growth in
! intelligence and self-restraint. It is through
cooperation, and not through hate and level
| ling laws, that workingmen will finally come
to dress like capitalists, go home to comfort
able and we'll ordered homes, and refined and
rational amusements, as capitalists do, and
| get share of the enjoyments other classes
get from leisure, books, and travel. Nobody
now takes anything from the workingman
except what he surrenders through want
of thrift, foresight, self-restraint, and
mutual confidence. But there Is no doubt
that there is a long interval of time
to be bridged over before cooperation be-
comes so general as either seriously to affect
the condition of the laboring population in
any country, or to reconcile them to the con-
trast between their life and that of the capt.
talist class. We have undoubtedly many years
of envy, hatred, malice, and eart-burnings
before us, and, during that period of transit
ton, undoubtedly the larger portion of the
responsibility for it all will necessarily fall on
the capitalist. His resources are greater,
his training is better, and his crosses are
fewer and easier to bear. There is, it must
be admitted, something grotesque in the
comparison sometimes made in the labor
discussions between his ''anxieties" and
those of the laborer. 1t must be remem-
bered, too, that it is quite plain
that he cannot secure himself peace
and quiet by preaching the laws of
political economy. This has been thoroughly
tried both in France and England, and has
failed. In both these countries, the working
classes have constructed political economy
of their own, in which Adam Smith counts
for very little, and at the bottom of their
system, though less apparent in some places
than others, is the theory that capitalists are
drones living on the proceeds of other men s
labor, who ought to be either banished from
the body polite altogether or else despoiled
of large portion of their yearly gains. In
England, the latter doctrine is gaining most
ground, under the influence of the hostility
excited by the large idle and now
almost useless class of landed pro-
prietors In France, particularly in Paris
owing largely, we believe, to the ex-
tent to which that city is the resort of men
of wealth who give themselves up wholly to
sensual indulgence, under the eyes of large
body of excitable workingmen, who are also
extraordinarily eager for sensual enjoyment
themselves-the utter extirpation of the capi-
talist class, and the prevention of the accu-
mutation of wealth in the hands of indi-
, viduals, is sought with almost satanic energy.
, The Positivists, who have come to the sup
port of the Commune, have provided an hon
, ored place for the capitalists in their system,
namely, the directorship of industry,
under the superintendent or in
spiration of the Board of Sages, who are
, to form the spiritual power in the Comtist
, society, and who are to impel them to self.
, abnegation, public spirit, and good works
, This is unquestionably the nearest approach
, that has been made to a solution of the ques.
ton in what way the working-c class hostility
/ to capital can be assuaged, until such time
I as the working classes become themselves
+ owners of capital. The rich men of al
countries will have to be coerced by public
opinion into deeper sense of the RESPONSE
| bility which wealth imposes on them thar
> the mass of them as yet show. Extravagant
and ostentatious living must be discounte
= nanced by the great body of the community
more than it isl now Giving, and giving freely
? to charities, to institutions of learning,
to all sorts of enterprises which have
the moral and physical culture
of the mass of the people for their OBJ
! iect, must be insisted on more earnestly as
/; duty, and an imperative duty, and not treated
as it is now, as work of supererogation
. which an honorable man may let alone if he
pleases. In short, the facts of society-tnt
temper and condition of the working classes
: the share which they have in creating wealth
/ and which, though not recognizable legally