The Labor enquirer., 1883-08-04
hour, for day after day, for year after

year. LII tut WuOIe gTcdG GeStdDilSuincuI1
there will be not man, save here and
there one who got his training under
the simpler system now passing away,
who can do more than some minute
part of what goes to the making Of a |
salable article. The lad learns in a little
while how to attend his particular ma
chine. Then his progress stops. He may
become gray-headed without learning
more AS his children grow, the onlv
way he has of augmenting his income is
by setting them to work. AS for aspiring
to become master of such an establish
ment, with its millions of capital in ma
chinery and stock, he might as we'll as
plre to be king of England or pope of
Rome. He has no more control, over
the conditions which give him employ,
ment than has passenger in railroad
car over the motion of the train.
Causes which he can neither prevent or
foresee may at any time stophis machine
and throw him upon the world, an ut
terly unskilled laborer, unaccustomed
even to swing pick or handle a spade.
When times are good and his employer
is coming money, he can only get all ad-
vance bv strike or threatened strike.
At the least symptoms Of harder times
his wages are scaled down and he can
only resist by strike, which means, for
a longer or a shorter time, no wages.
l have spoken of but one trade, but
the tendency is the same in all others.
This is the form that industrial organiz-
alton is everywhere assuming, even in
agriculture. Great corporations are now
stocking immense ranges with cattle, and
"bonanza farms" are cultivated by gangs
of nomads destitute of anything that can
be called home. In all occupations the
workman is steadily becoming divorced
from the tools and opportunities of labor;
everywhere the inequalities of fortune
are becoming more glaring. And this
at time when thought is being quick
ened when the old forces of conserva-
tiSm are giving way; when the idea OF
human equality is growing and spreading.
When between those who work and
want and those who live in idle luxury
there is SO great a gulf fixed that in
popular Imagination they seem to belong
to distinct orders Of beings when in the
name of religion, it is persistently in
stilled into the masses that all things in
this world are ordered by Divine Provl-
dence, which appoints to each his place,
when children are taught from the earli-
est infancy that it is, to use8he words of
the Episcopal catechism, their duty
toward God and man to "hOnOr and obey
the civil authority" to "Order themselves
lowly and reverentiallv toward their
betters, and to do their duty iE that state
of life in which it las pleased God to
call them ;" when these cOunSeIS Of hu-
militv, Of cOntentment and self-abaSe-
ment are enforced by the terrible threat
of an eternity of torture, while ON the
other hand the poor are taught to be-
lieve that if they patiently bear their
lot here God will after death translate
them to a happy world where there is no
private property and no poverty, the
most glaring inequalities in condition
may excite neither envy nor Indignation.
But the ideas that are stirring in the
world are different from these.
L Near nineteen hundred years ago,
when another civilization was develop
ing monstrous inequalities, when the
masses everywhere were being ground
into hopeless slavery, there arose in a
Jewish village an unlearned carpenter,
who, scorning the orthodoxies and rit-
ualisms of the day, preached to laborers
and fishermen the gospel of the father
hood of God, the equality and brother
hood of men, who taught his disciples
to pray for the coming Of the kingdom Of
heaven on earth. The college professors
sneered at him, the orthodox preachers
denounced him. He was reviled as
dreamer as disturber, as
Communist" and finally, organized
society took the alarm, and he was cru
cited between two thieves. But the
word went forth and, spread by fugitives
and slaves, made its way against power
and against persecution until it revOlu-
tionized the world, and out Of the rot
ting old civilization brought the germ Of
the new. Then the privileged classes