New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1876-06-17
CAPITAL AND LABOR.

However the flames and smoke of DO
litical conflict may obscure the true in.
terests of Louisiana, the same predominant
interests upon which the happiness of SO.
ciety always depend will stand while
ephemeral excitements pass away. Cap.
ital and labor, elsewhere in controversy,
are here at peace. Labor is content with
its compensation. 1t aspires to such COM
fort and competency as may be its lawful
due. 1t asks such opportunity of social
and political advancement as may be due
to its conceded rights. Capital is content
with the services of labor, and only de-
mands an increased supply.
The public seem approaching a conclu-
sion that those citizens whose sole occupa-
ton is the pursuit or enjoyment Of Office
have no wish that capital and labor shall
be permitted to agree. The people believe
that these politicians rely upon supposed
race prejudice against the laborer, which
will strike his name from the register and
cast his ballot out Of the box. The execu-
ton of this intolerant policy involves the
disorganization of labor and the conse-
quent reduction of profit upon capital.
There are, however, indications that
these two great interests which social
necessity has joined together may not be
put apart by the agitations of a class
which lives upon both and has no ma
terial interest in either.
Very recently the capital interests con-
cerned in the great interests of sugar and
rice were astonished to lealn that a plot
was on foot to introduce free trade in
these staples by the insidious ratification
Of treaty with an insignificant power.
The two great interests Of capital and
labor came together in council through
their representatives. Capital remon-
strated with the investment of capital in
vested in iron, cloth and provisions. II
reminded the kindred interests that only
by unity of all national interests on COM
mon principle Of protection, could they
be protected from defeat in detail. This
demand that sugar and rice should be
adopted and defended in the list Of nation
al products guarded by the tariff, was
committed to the intelligent representa-
tives Of other staple productions. Capital,
moreover, believed that it had a powerful
ally in labor.
This labor was in peculiar condition.
It owed the right to it's own earnings to
the gift of particular sentiment. The
experiment was involved whether the
change in the rights of this labor would
rebound to their happiness or to that of
the society which rewarded them. These
laborers owe their recognition to some ex-
tent to the fact of their industrial useful
ness. The alleged effect of admitting the
products cultivated by the laborers here,
duty free, from foreign countries, was the
injury, perhaps the destruction, of the
capital and labor invested here. As a
separate consequence, the laborer, de-
prived of his wages, became an encum-
brance and an outcast. Society was no
longer under the same obligation to pro-
tect and recognize him as when he had
been indisputably indispensable to its in
dustrial welfare.
These laborers have a vote in Congress
equal to about one-tenth of its whole num-
Der, and of course, very valuable to the
friends of protection. Those laborers had
the right also to ask those who were re-
'ponsible for their rights, whether it was
to abandon the experimental ca
oacity of self representation claimed for
hose emancipated laborers? The depre-
cation Of wages expected from the repeal
If their protected labor, would leave those
aborers without that protection to which
hey conceive the interests represented by
heir labor is as well entitled to as that of
my other part of the republic or of its
,eople.
The capital directly OF indirectly inter-
sted in the product of sugar and rice.
hen, find that labor has not mere physi-