The Iowa plain dealer. [volume] (New Oregon, Howard County, Iowa) 1867-1895, 1883-05-24

day, for year after year. In the whole
great establishment there will not be a
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 salable article. Tho
lad learns in little while how to attend
his particular machine. Then his prog
ress stops. He may become grav-head-
ell without learning more. As his chill
dren grow, the only way he has Of ang.
menting his income is by setting them
to work. As for aspiring to become
master Of such an establishment, with
its millions OF capital in machinery and
stock, he might as well aspire to be
King OF England or Pope of Rome. He
has no more control over the conditions
which give him employment than has a
passenger in railroad car over the mo-
tion Of the train. Causes which he can
neither prevent nor foresee may at any
tirae stop his machine and throw him
upon the world, an utterly unskilled la
borer, nnaccustomed even to swing q
pick or handle q spade. When times
are good, and his employer is coming
money, he can only get an advance by q
strike or a threatened strike. At the
least symptoms of hard times his wages
are scaled down, and he can only resist
by strike, which means, for longer
or shorter time, no wages.
have spoken Of but one trade; but
the tendency is the same in all others.
This is the form that industrial organ
ization 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 any
thing 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 quickened; when the
old forces Of conservatism are giving
way; when the idea of human equality
is growing and spreading.
When between those who work aeld
want and those who live in idle luxury
there is SO great gulf fixed that in
popular imagination they seem to be-
long to distinct orders of beings; when,
in the name Of religion, it is persistently
instilled into the masses that oil things
in this world are ordered by Divine
Providence, which appoints to each
his place; when children are taught
from the earliest infancy that it is, to
use the words of the Episcopal cate
chism, their duty toward God and man
to "honor and obey the civil authority
to "order themselves lowly and rev.
crcntlv toward their betters, and to do
their duty in that state of life in which
it has pleased God to call them;' when
these counsels of humility, Of content
ment and self-abasem are enforced
by the terrible threat of an eternity Of
torture. while on the other hand the
poor are taught to believe that if they
patiently bear their lot here God will
after death translate them to happy
world where there is no private prop
crts a-a no poverty, the most glnring
inequalities in condition excite neither
envy nor Indignation.
But the ideas that are stirring in the
world are different from these.
Near 1900 years ago, when another
civilization was developing monstrous
inequalities, when the masses every
where We're being ground into hopeless
slavery, there arose in Jewish village
an unlearned carpenter, who, scorning
the orthodoxies and ritualisms of the
day, preached to laborers and fisher
men the gospel of the fatherhood of
God, the equality and brotherhood of
men, who taught His disciples to pray
for the coming of the kingdom of
heaven on earth. The college profes-
sors 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
crucitied between two thieves. But the
word went forth, and, spread by fugi-
tives and slaves, made its way against
power and against persecution till it
revolutionized the world, and out of the
rotting old civilization brought the
germ of the new. Then the privileged
classes rallied again, carved the effigy
of the man of the people i'll the courts
and on the tombs of Kings, in His name
consecrated inequality, and wrested His
gospel to the defense of social injustice.
But again tho same great IDEAS of
common fatherhood. of common
brotherhood. of social state in which
none shall he overworked and none
shall want, begin to quicken in COM
mon thought.
When a mighty wind meets strong
current it does not portend smooth
sea. And whoever will think OF the
opposing tendencies beginning to de-
velop will appreciate the gravity of the
social problems the civilized world
must soon meet. He will also under
stand the meaning of Christ's words
when He said:
"Think not / am come to send
peace on earth. Icome not to send
peace, b,tt q sr0rd."