St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-06-07
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM.

In his elaborate address before the Mis-
souri, State university last Wednesday even
ing, Mr. STEPHEN B. ELKINs handled the
industrial problem in a way that shows him
to be vigorous thinker, and that he had
given his subject wide range of thought.
Yet it is not quite clear that Mr.. ELKINs has
wholly grasped the situation or that he has
a proper conception of the remedies to be
applied to the evils which now affiict the la
Dor question. The mistake that Mr..
ELKINs makes is that he proposes to place
the power Of effecting cure entirely in the
hands of those who have caused the disease.
Those captains of industry who are in
charge of the many corporations are the
parties directly respOnsiblef for the depression
which now prevails, and while it maybe adj
mitted that they ought to know what
are needed, yet it will not do to trust them
to provide the remedy from the simple fact
that the same selfishness which prompted
a policy that has produced the trouble now
existing may prompt cure which will be
worse than the disease. Or, in other words,
the men who have oppressed and degraded
labor are not the men to be relied on to
put labor on a new basis, with the purpose
of effecting a permanent relief. The
methods proposed by Mr.. ELKINs to secure
the best results in solving the labor problem
are plausible enough in their way. He
suggests arbitration and Cancellation, CO.
operation and proft-sharing. The trouble,
however, in readjusting the relations be-
tween labor and capital OH this basis is
that, having already reduced labor to a
starvation state, the captains of industry, !"
as preliminary to recognizing conditions,
propose to tie the labOrers hand and foot
and hold them In abject submission. Then
the owners of capital and the controllers of
monopoly will fix the terms of arbitration,
cooperation or profit, sharing to suit them
selves, and not to benefit the workingmen.
1t will be the old story of the lion debating
terms to the weaker animals of the forest,
who took the whole carcass for his share
one-half belonging to him because of his
equitable interest in it, and the other half
going to him because he had the power to
exact it.
In portraying the dark picture of destitu-
ton which prevails, Mr.. ELKINs has I'M
consciously stated the cause which produces
it. He says: ''In this land of plenty,
there is in places the beginning of want;
$50, 900 workers are without employment,
upon whose labor more than million
women and children depend for food, shell
ter and clothing. How many are working
on half-time, fighting hunger, and in this
way supporting their own existence and the
existence of those depending upon them,
cannot be estimated. This great army of
workers stands and waits in vain for the
opportunity to earn by honest toll the neces-
saries of life. Many who have employment
are forced by competition to accept rate
of wages that yields bare subsistence.
The gap that divides the rich and the poor
grows wider and deeper daily, with unmis-
taxable signs in the larger towns of ten
dency to classes. In the cities workers are
forced into packed and crowded tenement
houses, where foul air breeds disease and
certain death. The tenement population of
New York city, amounting to 1000, live
in 10000 houses. Here is a population
nearly as large as that of Chicago, and
larger than that Of st. Louis, Boston OF
Cincinnati. In the Tenth ward there are
about one thousand tenement houses. In
200 of them from fifteen to twenty families
live in each. In the Eleventh ward the