New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1878-06-15
INcFYnL1R1sM IN CONGRESs.

It is q serious misfortune that Congress
could not have adjourned without devOting
the closing hours of the session to encourag-
ing the groundless hopes of the unthinking
classes, deluding them with false teachings
and inhaming those passions which make the
labor question our greatest impending danger.
Eight-hOur resolutions subsidies, apprOpria-
lions for public works. and for the Army,
are all seized upon as opportunities to
assure the wOrkingman, directly or by
implication, that the labor Of the hands
has some mysterious or sacred value /;
that the labOrer has some peculiar rights and
privileges that, nevertheless, some malignant
social forces are trying to hold him in subjec-
ton, and that, therefore, it Is the first duty
of Government to "emancipatep him. 1t is
invariably assumed by these loud orators that
the laboring man is making some demands"
that these demands must necessarily be just,
and that all his alleged wants must be graft
fed. Still worse than this, in the discussion of
the Army bill, the widest crimes of men who
rushed into riot and rapIne were justified or
palliated, because the perpetrators were poor,
and the use of organized force to suppress or
ganlzed arson, pillage and murder was depre-
Gated, because rufiians chose to call themselves
laborers.
Now the labor question is no doubt serious
one, and for that very reason its treatment by
quacks and demagOgues is the more peTnicious.
The duty of discomfort with his condition is
certainly not one which the laborer needs to
have enforced on every occasion. The
inevitable difference between his lot and
that of the great employers is sufficiently
"A -
lightencd because demagogues enlarge upon
his real or fancIed wrongs, remind hun of his
power, and urge him on to a more passionate
struggle for social equality and the ease and
leisure and luxury which wealth accumulated
by past labor of head and hand has brought
10 it's fortunate pOssessors. No doubt Govern
ment has duties in the premises, but what it
owes to the laborer is just what it owes
to everybody else. 1t can furnish him
with opportunities for education. 1t can
make him secure in the exercise of his indus
try and skill. 1t can protect his person and
the savings of his frugahty. 1t can assure
him of the liberty to help himself and be q
man among men, and not pensioner on pub
tic charity; and the freer it leaves him to
work out his own temporal salvation the more
of man it makes him. There can be moth
ing more degrading than the assumption that
he needs special nursing and all schemes for
legislating a limit to his hours of toll fixing
n standard of his earnings, or of prose-
cutting wasteful and useless public works
TO furnish him with fictitious employment, are
disguised attempts to pauperize him and make
him dependent on the forced charity of tax
payers. Every one Of these projects, however
benevolent in form, is essentially degrading
TO the high-spirited and fOrward-looking, and
only encourages the shiftless and immoral who
herd together in our large cities to persevere
in aziness and lawlessness.
Ii is not denied that the condition of the
laborer is, to-day, trying one, but it does
not help him to refrain from telling him I'M
pleasant truths. Il must be allowed, too, that
employers fail in generous and sympathetic
treatment of the employed, but an attack upon
their rights will not BIO liable to make them
more tender and considerate. Certain moral,
physical and social forces are not controlled by
acts of Congress. "The adjustment of the rela-
"tions Of capital and labor" which the platforms
accomplish so gliblv, will not be brought
about, we may be sure, by reducing the army,
or dredging the Kiskiminetas, or printing paper
promises for dollars, or voting that eight is
equal to ten. Still less will this adjustment
be achieved by the mischievOus talk Of Wright
and Ewing and their kind and the man in
public life who, for the sake of votes or
noloriefv or ouf nf sheer recl,lessnesS or igDOr-