The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-03-10
THE LABOR QUESTION.

| the breadth of the country As it stands it
is anarchy. The employee asserts right to
control the power of an employer in so far
that he can hire none except men belonging
to certain labor organizations, nor make any
| rules that do not meet with their approval.
The employer asserts that he has an inherent
right to hire any one whom he pieases. and
also that If this right be not conceded, his
business is practically entirely out of his
control and that he must submit to any con-
ditions his employees see fit to impose. This,
in view of his exact knowledge of the neces-
sites of his business, and of what it will and
what it will not bear, he assumes means its
practical destruction. This difference is
fundamental. Both sides claim an inherent
right and both claims are Numerically OPP
posed. Worse than this, there is no middle
ground upon which to base a compromise.
They are two opposing ideas that
clash the moment they come together.
From all the mental habits snd the grewths
of our industrial and social system, under
which our people have developed, the idea
that an employer may hire whom he chooses,
has been constantly accepted. We 90 not
assume that the multitude who compose la.
Dor organizations are wrong; but neither can
we conceive that the principle involved in
the assumption of the employers of their
right to hire whom they please, or whom
they can, is wrong. Especially as we con-
ceiVe that to make general application of
the principle will destroy enterprise, cripple
industry and react with disaster upon every
man, rich or poor, and the most upon those
who have not the means to subsist, except
from the earnings of their hands, simply be-
cause it not only takes his business out of
mis- hands, but makes demands that often are
impossible.
Modern civilization is exceedingly COM
plicated, maintaining itself by a very deli
cate equilibrium that if seriously disturbed
breaks into confusion and inaction. Already
the threatening and militant attitude of the
labOring classes is frightening investors, and
people who have money are hiding it.
Two large enterprises contemplated in
this city have been abandoned solely
because of the threatening possibilities
of this anarchical struggle. Even if
the laboring people were right on the funda-
mental principle, they can not change the
habit, the conditions of trade, the method
by which industry is utilized, with the sud-
dennesS they seem to be attempting, without
destroying all corellative conditions and in
situations that have slowly grown up out of
them.
We submit it to them if it were not better
to call halt. Even if the ideas of the
unions were right in the abstract, they can
not substitute a condition of cooperative
socialism for condition of competitive in
dividualism in day, or in a year. or in de-
cade. In our opinion they are going to-
ward self-destruction by going further and
soaring higher than the common level of
popular understanding.
As friend of labor, we ask them to con-
slider if they are not going too fast, and that
unless more peaceful, more conservative,
less eKacting and less combative coun-
sells prevail the country will be thrown into
inextricable confusion that will result
in untold misery. Labor feels the press
ure of low wages and only partial employ
ment. But it fails to perceive that employ
ers, as whole, are in life and death strug
gle for existence. While it is employed, get
ting its wages regularly, no matter now
small, it knows little of the struggle the EN-
ployer has had to get this little together.
This is not true of all, but it will apply as a
rule. Ii the laborIng man were to be given
number of bills to collect. we know he
would come pack with different percep.
ton of the condition and difficulties of an
employer.
The labor organizations have gone so far,
and to such an extreme, as to engage many
employers in direct antagonism. As the case
stands, it is nascent war Where will it end
in compromise, in surrender. or in drifting
wider and wider apart into more pronounced
antagonism? These questions are full of
portentous possibilities. Portentous from
any point of view. Both sides have gone far,
and both in the firm conviction that each is
| struggling for a sacred right. Both of these
rights are distractions. AS distractions both
may be right. But as equivalent forces both
may he wrong in making their assumptions
of rights, that ONLY exist concurrently with
surrounding conditions, a matter to be de-
cided by force.
Whether right or wrong these surrounding
conditions are matter of growth, and they
are conditions that the labor restlessness is
threatening to overturn, and overturn before
other conditions have grown up to take their
place. There is no other actual or possible
industrial condition that will supplant the
competitive system, the wages system, ex-
cept a soclalistic system. And this the
country has not, can not understand, and
will prevent That many of the great minds
of the earth regard secialistic system as
certain to grow, does not in the least affect
the present, and least of all America, where
even so simple thing as a cooperative store
has failed to take root. Forcible agitation
can only result in destruction and anarchy.
We again ask trades organizations to con.
slider if they have not gone too far. If their
aspirations have not proceeded far beyond
their development, as it seems to us they
will perceive in their failure, unless they
resort to brute force, and worse than failure,
IN anarchy and despotism if they do.
Would it not be better to call halt and
counsel moderation and patience? GAL