The Labor enquirer., 1886-10-16
The STRUGGLE
For the Fruits of Our Toll
Machinery Has Doubled
the Productive
Capacity, but the Toilers' GOndi-
tion Grows Worse Thirty
Years Ago Men Ran the
Machines; Now the Machines Bun the
Men-"Society Has Created a
Horde of Artificial Persons"

f The following editorial, taken from
the Salt Lake Tribune (capitalistic)
shows the progress that is being made
towards a realization of the 'Utopian
idea" of Socialism:
1t is said that of the 2O0O0,0O0 of pep
pie in the United States who do some
thing, who work for living. $4,000. 900,
or rnine-tenths, earn on theaverage about
$500 a year, which is necessarily con-
sumed in the means of subsistence,
while substantially all the savings 60 to
the other one.tenth.
After the recent riots at Brussels, in
Belgium, the king sent for the leader of
the liberals and asked what it was pro
posed to accomplish by these riots. The
liberal leader replied: "The govern
ment is needless of the wants and
wishes of the people. They starye in
thousands. Women destroy their babes
for want of bread. And YOU are more
intent on preserving the vested rights of
property than in saving the lives of the
poor. This must be changed or the peo-
pie will change it, The Socialists will
aggravate riot into Revolution, and the
people will back them. Vested rights
are nothing to the lives and liberties of
the people"
1t is said that 10000 men have signed
a call for Henry George to stand for
mayor of the city of New York. Henry
George represents his own panacea for
the wrongs of the worker, the abolition
of private ownership in land.
These things indicate the nature of
the struggle upon which the civilized
world is about to enter, the strugg le for
more equal distribution of the fruits of
toll. While the equality of men as to
political and civil rights has been practi-
CallY won, man g condition as worker
has for thirty years grown worse.
Steam and Iabor-saVing machinery have
more than doubled the general power of
production, and made the necessaries of
life cheaper, but they have on the whole
injured rather than benefited the laborer.
Thirty years ago men ran machines; now
the machines run the men. At the same
time society has created horde of arti-
| fetal persons, which have accumulated
and aggregated capital until the capital
of civilized states Is held and welded by
mere forces without feeling, without
moral quality or conscience.
This must be changed, even if at the
expense of a material change in mems
ideas respecting the nature of property.
The traditional idea is that what man
legltimatelv acquires is absolutely his
own. Among mems natural hts the
right to acquire and hold property has
always been ranked by logical thinkers.
1t is not to be supposed that this natural
right is to be or can be abrogated be-
cause it is based upon the just principle
| that the laborer is worthy of his hire.
But it may have to be modified, re-
stricted in It's application. Society may
find it necessary, as the condition of its
continued existence, to restrict the
amount which the individual may accu-
mulate, and to deny him sole and abso'
| I q
to the position that the community has
a right in individual property to some
extent, that the owner of property owes
something to those who are not owners
of property, and from force of circum-
stances cannot acquire properly.
Why should one man be allowed to
accumulate hundreds Of millions in
banking, railroading, or working the
stock exchanges, while the great mass
of men, even in such country as this,
are forever kept by conditions beyond
their control DANGEROUSLY near to want
and suffering? Such questions, We may
be very sure, will have to be answered
before the world it 100 years older, and
answered to the purpose. We may sup
pose that there is intelligence enough in
Christian states to grapple with the
questio. when they find that they must,
and to solve it satisfactorily.
A modification of our methods of edu-
cation, in the direction of teaching every
individual to do something that is ex-
pected in the work of the world the
vitalizing of our religion in the direction
Of making its inculcations matters OF
practice instead of profession the abo
lition of the saloon, of the club room
and of the brothel, and the material en-
largement of the protective and help
agencies of goyernment--these, and
many other notifications of ideas and
Institutions now prevalent, Will, it ap-
pears, in the not distant future, be
forced upon civilized mankind as abso
lutely essential 10 the longer existence
of civilization.
A civilization that has in fifty years
doubled all It's productive powers, an
at the same time grown st, adily more
heartless and hollow, until the mass OF
the working people are ever on the
verge uf starvation, will have to oe fun
damentally reformed, and if that is i'm
possible destroyed to make room for q
ho,,o T.
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