The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1885-11-15
IDEAS FOR woRKINGnEN.


Every workingman in the country
should read a paper in the November
number of The Century. by DR.. Lyman
Abbott. Ii they would read and heed
the article, it would be hundreds Of
thousands or even millions of dollars in
their pockets every year. The doctor
takes ground opposed to labor unions,
not as to their ostensible purpose, but
as 20 their management and operations
not as to their legitimate use, but their
actual abuse. He opposes them wherein
they command strikes, but would favor
them if they could be made to help the
workingman. He clearly shows that
the strike is, in most instances, the evi,
dence of lack of intelligence, in that it is
an injury to the working classes; that
it does not and cannot accomplish what
it is intended to. Capital is the more
powerful, and can resist longer than
labor; but if it were otherwise, and the
strike should succeed. the strikers would
still be the losers of all they would have
earned and saved had they not gone out
to fight. In striking, the workingman
accepts great risks and involves himself
in foolish expenditure.
But the point which DR.. Abbott makes
most clearly is that what are called labor
organizations are in reality anti-labor
organizations. Instead of combining
to work. the men combine not to work,
or to strike; and instead of applying the
machinery of their organizations to the
furtherance of their interests as labor
ers they apply it to help idlers. SAYS DR..
Abbott: I'm one summers Geographic
strike you spent $4OO, 900 for the right to
be idle. Why did you not expend it for
the right to be independent? Half a
million dollars, plus all the best tele-
graphic talent IN the United States.
with the sympathies of the nation as
reserve, combined to establish postal
telegraphy, might have given you sue
cess instead of failure. Strike. not for
better wages in 'servitude, but for indie
pendence. Organize. not to be idle but
to be busy"
1t IS fact proven by the history of
ninety-nine OF every hundred strikes
that strikes rarely even pay the strikers.
even when the object for which they
were inaugurated is attained, which lat
ter is seldom the case. In the very
large majority of cases the striker
is compelled by his necessities to yield
to the superior resources of capital. As
2 matter of fact the revolt among work
ing men amounts to nothing more than
paying heavy tax for the privilege OF
being idle. Thus the man who is re-
ceiving $3.50 a day and strikes for s..
does not get the extra so cents, but he
pays $3.50 FOR the fun Of doing nothing.
il petition signed BY the employers OF
any business concern fails to receive
the increase of privileges or wages de-
sired, il Is, as a rule, hopeless to try 10
bully the employer into yielding; and
an attempt to injure him only hardens
his heart. and induces him to hold ont
as long rs possible. spartly fer his own
protection. and partly to punish those
who defy him.
DIR. Abbott advises laborers 10 "orgau-
re not 10 be idle. but to be busy. ami
that should be the creed of working
men. Their labor Is their capi-
tai. and if they viii but emplo,
t inteiIigenuy they viii be de-