Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-06-26
FIST VERSUS BRAIN.
The Great Contest Between Labor
and Capital.
DR.. Talmage on the Only Cure for the Evil
-''Whatsoever Ye Would That Men
Should Do to You, Do We
Even So to Them."

VhstV Y cASuAo wv " SOu3 az WYNN 81
to them" DR.. Talmage said:
LABOR VS.. CAPITAL.
The greatest war the world has ever
seen is that going on between labor and
capital. Not a strife like the thirty years
war Of which history tells us, for this is a
war of centuries. 1t is a war of five
continents, a war hemisphere. In this
country the middle classes, who have held
the balance of power and upon whom the
Nation has depended as mediators be-
tween the two extremes, are diminishing,
and at the same ratio we will soon ave
no middle class, for all the people will be
very rich or very poor, and the country
be divided between Princes and paupers,
between palaces and novels. The two
great antagonistic forces are closing in
upon each other. Telegraph operators
Strikes" RAILROAD employees Strikes"
pennsylvania Miners Strikes" the move
ments on the part of boycotters and dyn-
amiters, are only skirmishes before the
general engagement, or, if you prefer,
they are escapes through the safety valve
of an imprisoned force that promises the
explosion of society.
You may pooh-pooh it, and prophesy that
this trouble, like an angry child, will cry
itself to sleep, and think you have b%elittled
it Unto insignificance by calling it Socialism,
Fourierism, st. Simonism, Nihilism or
Communism, but that can not hinder the
fact that it is the mightiest, darkest, most
terrific threat of his century. Moreover,
all the attempts at pacification nave been
a dead failure. Monopoiists are more ar
rogant, Trades Unions more bitter. "Give
us more wages" cry the employes; 1--WE
will give you less" respond the capitalists.
"Give us less hours of work." say these;
"You shall have more" say those. eve
won't work under such conditions" cry
these; "Then you shall starve," respond
those. Soon the laboring classes will lave
exhausted what little property they had
accumulated under a better state of things,
and, unless there be something done, there
will be in this country three million hun-
cry men and women. Well, three million
hungry people can not be kept
quiet. All the enactments of legislatures,
and all the constabularies of the cities, and
all the army and navy of the United States,
can not keep them quiet. What then? Will
capital and labor ever settle their quarrel
by their own wisdom? No. The brow Of
the one will be more rigid and the fist of
the other tighter clenched. But what Sec
ular wisdom can not do Christianity can
accomplish if it be given full swing. You
have heard OF medicines so powerful that
one drop would stop a disease and restore
the patient, and one drop of my text will
Kill all this trouble and give convalescence
and health to all classes: "Whatsoever
ye would that men should do to you, do we
even so to them"
HONEST RICHEs.
The pulpit must be heard on this subject.
When Benjamin Franklin made his dis
coveries in electricity John Wesley put
electrical machines i'll several neighbour
hoods that people might by them be healed
OF their nervous disorders. Our Gospel is
u Gospel for the body as well as the soul.
First, l will show you how this capitalistic
war won't be stopped, and then how it
will be stopped.
First, it will not be stopped by an out
cry against rich men because thew are
rich. There is not a member of a Trades
Union in the United States who would not
be rich if he could. Sometimes, through
fortunate inventions or some accident of
property, a man with nothing rises to
affluence, and he Immediately becomes
supercilious and overbearing, and takes
people by the throat with as tight a grip as
he himself was taken by the throat. HUI
man nature is a mean thing when it comes
to the supremacy. 1t is no more a sin to
be rich than to be poor. While there are
men who have got their property by fraud,
there are millionaires who by foresight of
changes to take place in markets or BUSH
ness brllliancy won their property as hon
estly as the plumber ever earned his money
for mending a pipe, or a mason for build
ing a wall. With vast multitudes of peo-
pie the poverty is their own fault.
They might have been we'll off, but
they smoked or drank up their earnings.
or they lived beyond their means. Men on
the same wages OF salaries as they had
went on to competency. know men who
complain of their poverty who keep two
dogs and smoke and chew, and go loaded
to the chin with whisky and beer. Micaw-
ber, in prison for debt, is reported as say
ing to David Copperfield: "My boy: in
come, Ell; expenses, Dos. 3d.; result, mis-
cry. Income, Ell; expenses, 19s. 3D.; re-
suit, happiness" A vast multitude of the
poor are the victims of their own improve
dence. l protest against the assault of
men, who, through economy and self-de-
NAL and a%ssiduity, have amassed great
fortunes. Thank God for honest rich men.
They build art-galleries and endow COL
leges II adorn cities and erect churches.
and if foreign despotisms should threaten
US would subscribe, if need be, $50, 600, 900
to sink them before they get through the
Narrows. By indiscriminate attack upon
success you can never settle this fight.
HARD-HEARTED MASTERS.
Neither will this pacification come
through a cynical and unsympathetic
treatment Of the laboring classes. Some
talk of them as though they were cattle or
draft horses. Their nerves are nothing.
Their tastes are nothing. Their domestic
comfort nothing, and there are men who
have no more feeling for the toilers thar
the hound has for the hare or a hawk for
the hen or a tiger for the calf. In warm
slippers, what do they care for cold feet:
When Jean Vatican, the grandest hero of
Victor Hugo, after a life of misfortune
goes down into Incarceration and death,
they shut the book in exultation and say:
"Good for him." They stamp the foot in