The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1879-02-20

man, white or black, copper colored or
whatever, as you would be done by your
self in like circumstances and then any
evil you may suffer is greatly better to
be borne than the evil which you infict
by not administering that rule. 1t is
simply to apply in politics, in our social
economy, in our personal intercourse, in
the institutions of society wherever hu-
man action is called into being, the
Christian rule, the law Of divine benevo-
lence and of human brotherhood, and all
the difficulties of caste and creed, and all
the conflicts which spring up from the
apparently irreconcilable and adverse
interests of men disappear, vanish away
like the mist and the morning dew in the
presence of warm and bright health
giving influences Of the rising sun.
But it is said that it is not SO much
conflict of race. of religion, OF color, of
caste, as it is a degradation of labor. Mr..
President, trust and l believe that l
take to heart the suffering condition of
labor in this country and elsewhere as
much as does any other Senator or any
other man. If l cannot agree in any
remedies that may be proposed for the
evil of that condition, it Is not because
do not recognize the fact OF the evil or
the necessity of the remedy, but because
| believe there is remedy and that it
lies elsewhere and in another direction.
do not at all believe with my distin-
guished and respected friend the Senator
from California who sits nearest to me
Mr. Booth that the antagonism with
labor and the sufferings in its condition,
the privations and distress to which it is
subjected, are proh'a:a5 that are insolu-
BILE. They are diff alt, admit they are
not solved, know; but think that if
the time is wasted by public men of all
Nations upon comparatively trivial and
unimportant things were directed to the
solution of the labor problem we should
! find some Edison to arise in the world
! of moral politics who would invent some
! principle or some scheme of political in
! stitution which would remedy their evils
Why Mr.. President, the evil of our Ia
! Dor system is not the cheapness of pro-
duction. On the contrary, the thing
that we strive for, the thing to which we
are directing our energies, the thing to
which the inventive genius of our race is
constantly applied, is to find out from
day to day by what economies, by what
contrivances, the products of labor can
be furnished to the world at the least
cost. Why is it that to-day the metallic
treasures of Europe and the world, in ad-
dition to the flow from our own mines,
are turning their currents into our Treass
sury here? Why2 Nothing more and
nothing less than that owing to the
cheapness Of our productions we are send
ing the products of our labor into the
markets of the world at prices less than
they can be afforded there by any other
people.
What, then, is the real difficulty? 1t
lies not in the administration of the laws
of production at all, but in the law of the
distribution of wealth; and if every man
had the due share which upon a just sys-
tenn would come to him by reason of his
| industry and his eXertions there would
be no starving man on this continent or
elsewhere.
Why, Mr.. President, they tell US that
the presence of forty thousand China
men in San Francisco is beggaring the
laboring population of this country
What is it that to-day beggars the opera
tives in Liverpool, in Glasgow, in the iron
districts of Wales2 What causes the suf-
fering in Germany, in Austria, and here?
Is it the forty thousand Cinnamon that
are working at under wages in San Fran
cisco, or is it not rather more attribute.
bic to the vile demagogism of another
product OF California politics, Dennis
Kearney and his associates? If we have
no Otnef ana greater evils mere than eX-
ist across the Atlantic in Europe why is
it necessary to recount this idle tale
about the misery and the injury Of Chi
nese immigration? The Chinaman is a
laborer wherever he is, in America or in
his own country; and why should he
whose sympathy runs out to labor as
such, to necessity, because it is the God
given way to work out the destiny of
men, because it is our destiny and our
birthright and our way to improvement,
stop short at the Chinaman, and not let
it go out through the length and breadth
OF the whole world of labor and say that
here, there, everywhere where there is a
man and laborer, there you are to SYM
pathize with and help him?
The principle OF competition, which it
is said in some schools of social and po-
litical economy lies at the root of the
unequal and unjust distribution of the
world goods, shows itself in this attack
wherein the laboring man, delivered up
only to the selfish consideration of mere
ly an individual interest, turns and rends
his brother laborer because the common
Father Of them all has dressed him in a
different color and endowed him with a
strange speech. Is that the way this
heaven high problem of labor is to be
solved or is it not in a different and
more reverent spirit recognizing the
great fundamental underlying principles
of justice, of right of equality, which,
although abstract and invisible, are as
real and as everlasting as the throne of
| God?