Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1885-02-23

and claims, they can become on their part
channels of Cancellation and compromise;
then by their good fruits they will be justih-
ed But if they become instruments in the
hands of designing men; if they shall be used
as means of terrorism and tyranny among
any class of men, if they seek to create labor
in any trade, then the great pub
lie, looking on, will have little patience with
them. The report of the British Commission
ers for 1867, contains an account OF certain
restrictions which had been placed upon Ia
Dor by different Trades Unions; rules prohib
itine for instance, a workman from working
out of his trade; prohibiting man from
walking fast to his place of work when on his
employers time, and forbidding that man
should be known as an exceptionally good
workman OF that bricks should be brought
to Manchester from any place over four miles
distance from the city. Individuals have
perfect right to submit to meddlesome re-
strictions, if they conceive it to be their in
terest to do so; but if they attempt to impose
those restrictions upon other workmen, then
we all of us are at once interested in prevent
ing the sacrifice of great principle of per-
sonal liberty to the interest of any class or
faction of class. I understand that such
restrictions as those just mentioned belonged
rather to the infancy of Trades Unions In
England SO far as labor organizations in this
country, whatever their name, help working
men in discovering and maintaining their real
sistent with the liberty of others, they have
right to be, and they may yet have a useful
function to fulfil in the economic complex
ties of our industrial system: but against all
sacrifices to class interests of Individual
rights; against all tyrannies of men towards
others, whether through jobbery on large
scale and cut throat combinations, or through
petty interferences and boycotting, I trust
that all good citizens will be outspoken, and
that the Christian pulpit will assert with no
uncertain sound the first principles of indi-
vidal liberty and universal fair play.
The expectations which have been cherish
ed of the benefit to be derived for the labor
ing class from self-help in productive eo-ope-
ration hardly seem to be justified by the linn
tied degree of success which has attended the
experiment. 1t is an instructive fact that
those few cooperative societies which have
been successful prod lcers in England are said
to have found it necessary to pay high sala-
ries for management. No men are more de-
pendent upon good management in business
than are the laborers whose homes cluster
around our factories. Bad management Is
for them dear at any price. The mon who
gather workmen in shop, and cannot make
the business pay, not only are their own
worst enemies, but they inhict an in jury by
their incompetency upon labor. Steadlness
of work is one of mans first needs, but the
power to insure it to men has also its price,
pass directly to a second answer to our
question. Self-help is the first answer to the
social problem; the second is help up and
down the lines of common industrial inter
ests. The lines of industrial cleavage ought
not to run horizontally between capitalists
employers and employed; they should run
perpendicularly, as Prof. Jevons would say,
up and down common interests in any bust
ness or factory. So sober an economist as
Mr. Jevons affirms that ''the soundest posi-
BILE solution of the labor question will eyentu-
Why be found in such modification OF the
terms of partnership shall bind the inter
ests of the employer and workman more
closely together" (The State in Relation to
Labor, p. 1879 He is my authority for the
statement that in France the system of indus
trial partnership ''has advanced surely, and
of late rapidly" Whatever concessions or
experiments may be tried, certainly anything
which tends to combine the capital and the
labor of particular industry in a common
interest and competition against the world,
is movement in the right direction.
The Willimantic Thread company, for in
stance, have carried out to an unusual degree
the idea of striving after community ofinterest
in their mills, and certain experimental pro-
visions for the physical well-being of some of
their operatives the superintendent reports
are found to be not benevolence on the part
of the company, for, he says, sit pays"
Here certainly stretches before us an inter
esting field of social experiment for any cap
italist or employer who has opportunity or
desire to contribute towards the happier So
luton of great industrial problem. There
is no fa;rer, broader, whittier field to-day for
philanthropic sagacity and Christian service
than that just indicated. But it is not for the
clergy to judge how that field may be best en-
tered or reaped.
The help which may legitimately be de-
rived from the State for the benefit of the
weak or the restraint of the strong and the
proper limits of State interference along in
dustrial lines, I pass by for the present with
the single remark that factory legislation has
on the whole been justified by its fruits, and
that Industrial legislation which shall do
more good than harm must follow
cautiously plain indications of practical utili-
ty. hasten on, however, to consider, thirdly,
the help in the solution of these social prob
lens which men may render one another out
side of or beyond their industrial relations
the human help which is needed. For eight
or ten or fourteen hours each week day men
hold to each other economic relations as
wage givers and wage receivers, as employers
add employed. For the remainder of each
twenty four hours men stand related to each
other simply and solely as human beings.
For the working parts of six days men can
be tied to each, other by the laws of econom-
les: for one whole day of the seven men in
general have no industrial claims upon each
other. Upon the Sabbath day the law pro-
tects with its power the weakest factory girl
from the clatter of the machinery; Mammon
loosens its grasp upon the pulses OF human
life, and men stand related to each other
under God their Father simply and purely as
men. This larger human relation was before,
and is after, and circumscribes all lesser and
economic relations of man. Human beings
are not created as so many prime numbers
towards each other; there are common dlvl-
sors among all men. And that which
is best and of the greatest
not that which is his own, but
that which he shares with others-mind, in
telligence, heart, conscience, truth, love
such are the common divisors of humanity
and the greatest of these is love!
There are two men in the commu-
nitv whose calling it is to trace
through mems lives these common factors of
humanitv-the physician, who follows the
same course of human weakness and suffer
ing among the rich and the poor, and who is
familiar with the dread powers before which
we all are mortal; and the pastor, who traces
the same elements of humanity from. house
to house; who reads the same old, human
story of love and troth in the VOWS spoken
under the eostliest wedding bell, OF taken by
the light of the humblest hearth, where q
strong arm and true heart begin once more
to make together hopeful home; who prays
before the same human mourning and sor-
row in the heart of the poor woman who
must give her first born to the death-angel
of God, while her husband can hardly stop
long enough from his work to
brush with his sleeve the tear
from his eye; and also in the silent mansion
where father and mother would sell all that
they have, could they see again between them
the little child whose angel-spirit now be-
holds the face of its Father in heaven.
And to one who has thus followed
these strong, elastic, all-embracing lines of
humanity, in which the Creator has
bound together the lives of men and of
women, the artificial distinctions of life APP
pear but glitter and gauze; and even the
hum of our Industries and the din of our
market-place become distant sounds
echoes of a passing strife-te him whose
heart is filed with these sweet and
solemn and most human voices, in whose
song and supplication all mems joys and sor-
rows seem to be blended in one prayer of
humanity to the Father.
With such humanities the economists an
economist-may have nothing to do. 1t is his
business to figure out in terms of money the
ratios of production to consumption or to fix
the f1uctuating point, if he can, where the
claims of capital and labor shall be balanced
in interest and wages. But with these hu-
manities every man at his work, whether he
be master or servant, has much to do. No
man in his accidental relations of service to
other men can escape wholly the obligations
of these essential human relations. What
ever be the accidental relations of business,
men are still men, and should respect and
treat each other as men. Let the discipline
r L. Lat he