The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-10-26
BUYING THINGS CHEAP.
The Sermon of Rev. o. G. McCul!och at Ply
mouth Church Last Evening.

TIL Sermon of Rev. o. G. McCul!och at Ply
mouth Church Last Evening.
The Rev. Oscar c. McCulloch, at Plymouth
Church, last night, addressed a large audience
on Buying Things Cheap" He found a scrip
tural application to this topic in the thirty-first
verse OF the sixth chapter of st. Luke: And
as We would that men should do to you, do ye
also to them likewise" He said that when an
insurance solicitor came to him, a few days ago,
and offered to carry his policy for fifteen or
twenty dollars less than he was paying he de-
declined, because he did not wish to buy things
cheap. Advertised bargains had no attraction
for him: The air was heavy with murmurs of
discomfort, and strike followed strike. The
Cleveland rolling mills had hardly resumed work
before the st. Louis street-car strike began.
Throughout the manufacturing and laboring
world were evidences of dissatisfaction. It was
the old question of capital and labor,
so large, so old, SO complex that one knew very
little about it. One of the results of his Chris
tian life was to treat men fairly. Christianity
nourished an increasing constituencies to others
sorrows and TO others pains. This was the out
growth of the golden rule, or, as it can be scien-
tifically termed, the principle of sympathetic
imagination; or, again, as it can be phrased,
putting ourself in another's place. 'One-half
the cruelty in this world" says John Fisk, lis
the stupid incapacity to put ourself in anothers
place." The boy tortures the cat. but Christian
teaching leads him to know that the animal suf-
fers. Through this teaching, cruelty is disap-
pearing from the world.
When we study life from another's point of
view, we feel his pain, his sorrow, his grief.
There is not 80 much positive cruelty as cold
Indifference to the affairs and interests of others.
Thus it is between manufacturers and working
men. Wages are never large. Indeed, the ma
jorityo OF working people are miserably undefpaid.
Life with them is prolonged starvation. The
live days solely for food and drink. which is not
life, but mere existence. Into life enters the
desire for and admiration of things beautiful. 1t
means books, music, concerts, %theaters, better
houses and more varied food. But the law Of
competition puts merchants and manufacturers
into a bitter struggle. 1t is productive of cheap
things, and cheapness reduces wages until
workingmen take the bread from other working
men. Through this, competition to buy things
cheap has become an insane desire. He did not
buy cheap shirts. because for the finest the seam
stress was paid only sixteen and one-halt cents
each. There vas blood on them, and each shirt
spoke of agony. Carpets are cheap. He would
cost of production. Iron is cheap, with miners
working for sixty cents a day, while mill-hands
get only ninety cents. Coal is cheap, and he is
sorry for it. In the Hooking valley the miners
have been crushed by capital, and
to forty-fve cents per ton. He believed
in giving every one a chance to live, for he
wanted to live himself. He did not give them
cheap preaching, nor would he. Fair prices
should be paid for labor, but he did not intend to
dictate what rate should constitute fair wages.
He only asked people to study the question.
He illustrated the advancement of condition of
employees by showing the results of cooperative
organizations. In the great Pittsburg mills the
employees were allowed. in addition to their
wages, a share in each years profits. At the end of
the first year $25, 600 was thus divided; at the end
of the second, 81 900 more, ard at the end of the
third, $35. 600. From this came, in Minneapolis,
q development of cooperation, until all but two
of the cooperage factories there were managed
on that plan. Cooperative stores on the Roch-
dale system followed. The Connecticut.
the Willimantic Thread Company, and
the Cheney Brothers treated their
employees as if they were human
beings. There was a great light breaking that
would lead to better work and a better condition
for the employed. Workingmen and working
women ask for Justice, not charity-a fair DAYS
wages for a fair days work. But it will be
many years before justice is done. for when that
comes charity will disappear. There has been
no time when this question of labor and capital
was so ~grim-never a time when things were so
cheap and so many people were wearing out life
at cheap wages to produce them. He had never
seen anything exorbitant in the demands of
knights of Labor. Trades Assembly or other
organized workingmen. They want no anarchy,
no dynamite, no leveling distinction, no charity,
but simple justice.