The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-06-01
THAT NEVER CEASES.
The Great and Never-Ending Struggle
Between Labor and Capital.
Dr. Talmage Declares that the Only Safe So
luton of the Problem Is Found in
Applying the Golden Rule.
Special to tho indianapolis journal.


BROOKLYN, n. Y, May 3l-Dr TaImage
preached this morning in the Brooklyn Taber-
nacle, on the subject, Fist versus Brain Be-
fore the sermon he read passage from the
Book of Proverbs and from one of the epistles,
the in regard to siothfulness and the other in
regard to insufficient compensation. The open
ing hymn was
The mornir g light is breaking,
The darkness disappears,
The sons of men waking
To penitentia tears
The text was from Matthew, vii, 12: 'What-
soever ye would that men should do TO you, do
We even so to them.' DR.. Tamage SAID:
The greatest war the world has ever seen is
that going on between labor and capital not
strife like the Thirty Years War of which his
tory tells u.s. for this is war of centuries. 1t is
a war of five continents, war hemisphere. In
this country the middle classes who have held
the balance of power, and upon whom the Ma
ton has depended as mediator between the two
same ratio we will soon have no mid
die 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 upon each other.
Telegraph operators strikes" railroad en-
ployes strikes" pennsylvania miners strikes"
the movements on the part of boycotters and
dynamiters are only skirmishes before the gem
eral engagements or, if you prefer, they are
escapes through the safety-valve Of an impris-
oned 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 belittled it into insig
nifcance by calling it Socialism, Fourierism.
St Simonism, Nihilism or Communism, but
that cannot hinder the fact that it is the might
est, darkest, most terrific threat of this century
Moreover, all the attempts at pacifcation have
been dead failure. Monopolists are more arro-
CANT trades unions more bitter. Give us more
wages" cry the employees; I'VE will give you
less" respond the capitalists. "Glve us less
hours work, say these; you shall have more"
say those. 1--WE won't work under such condi-
items cry these; Then you shall starve," respond
those Soon the laboring classes will have ex-
hausted what little property they had accumu-
lated under better state of things and unless
there be something done there will be in this
country three million hungry men and women.
kept quiet. All the enactments Of legislatures
and all the constabularios Of the cities. and all
the army and navy of the United States cannot
keep them quiet. What then9 Will capital and
labor ever settle their quarrel by their own
wisdom9 No. The brow of the one will be
more rigid and the fist Of the other tighter
clenched. But what secular wisdom cannot DO
Christianity can accomplish If it be given full
swing You have heard Of medicines so power
full that one drop would stop q 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 We would
that men should do to you, do ye ever 80 to
them"
The pulpit must be heard on this subject
When Benjamin Franklin made his discoveries
in electricity, John Wesley put electrical ma
chimes in several neighborhoods that people
might by them be healed of their nervous dis
orders. Our gospel is a gospel for the body as
we'll as the soul. First will showyou how this
capitalstic war won't be stopped, and then how
it will be stopped.
HOW 1T WILL NOT BE STOPPED.
First it will not be stopped by an cutlery
against rich men because they are rich. There
is not member of a trades-union in tho United
States who would not be rich if ne could Some
times, through fortunate invention or some acct
dent of prosperity. a man with nothing rises to
at1uepce, and he Immediately becomes supercili
Gus and overbearing, and takes people by the
throat with SIS tight grip as he himself was
taken by the throat. Human nature is moan
thing when it comes to the supremacy 1t is no
more sin to be rich than to be poor. While
there are men who have got their property by
fraud there are milionaires who by foresight of
changes to take place in markets, or business
brilliancy won their property as honestly as the
plumber ever earned his money for mending
pipe or mason for building wall With vast
multitudes of people the poverty is their own
fault. They might have been well off but thsy
smoked or drank up their earnings, or they lived
beyond their means Men on the same wages
or salaries as they had went on to competency.
I 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-
Der, in prison for debt is reported as saying to
David Copperfeld, my boy, income, one pound;
expenses, twenty shillings and six pence; result,
misery Income. one pound; expenses, nine
teen shillings and six pence; result, happiness
A vast multitude Of the poor are the victims Of
their improvidence Iprotestagainstt the assaulted
men, who, through economy, and elf-denial and
assiduity have amassed great fortunes Thank
God for honest rich men. They build art gal
leries and endow colleges, and adorn cities. ana
erect churches. and if foreign despotisms should
threaten us would subscribe, if need be, fifty
million dollars to sink them before they got
through the Narrows By indiscriminate attack
upon success you can never settle this fight.
Neither will this pacifcation come through a
cynical and unsympathetic treatment of the
laboring class. Some talk of them as though
they were cattle or draft horses. Their nerves
are nothing their tastes are nothing their do