The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-03-31
The Sentinel and the Farm Guide for s1.ss.
PowDERLY's EVOLUTION OF LABOR.

| POWDERLY'S EVOLUTION OF LABOR.
! Some doubt has been thrown on the genu-
| ineneSs of the circular of Powde-ly, but it
bears internal evidence of truth, as a whole,
at least, and Mr.. Powderly's subsequent re-
marks both at Scranton and Philadelphia,
bear out the conclusions of the circular.
But, leaving this aside, it is what man of
| Mr.. Powderly's antecedent history and Or
derby progressive policy would lead one to
| Judge he would write at a time like this.
The advice is wise and its conclusions far
reaching, and we believe it will do more to
overcome the unfavorable opinions that the
rapid accession of strikes and trivial boycott
ting, and the property destruction they have
caused in the public mind than anything
that could have happened. 1t is exactly
language that will give to the labor problem
the force of an intelligent impulse, and
weaken the fever of brute force that would
degrade it to a meaningless and resultless
and destructive riot.
What is there in it that the most radical
knight, if a reading and thinking one, can
condemn As whole it Is a plea for pru-
dence and patience. ConcreteIy it is state
ment of ali important fact, a fact that any
Knight whose judgment is not obscured by
the passion of strife and, perhaps, of disap-
pointment, will certainly admit-that it is
totally impossible for human nature to sub
| stitute conditions that are absolutely neces-
sary, not only to social existence, but to
physical bread-and-butter existence by
other conditions. however beneficial they
may be in theory, or in time might become
in practice, and survive. Speaking to the
man whose convictions are toward radical
changes, We would tell him this: That this
is an age where the means of subsistence are
not within individual control. Formerly,
when me planting and the reaping and the
spinning and the weaving and the making
of food and clothing, and even the rude
tools of century ago were usually suf-
ficient was the daily business of every fami
ly, perhaps supplemented with a village
blacksmith, miller and shoemaker, each
man was in the truest sense his own master,
and could nearly dispense with the rest of the
world But to-day the railroad, and the con-
centration of industry by machinery has
made whole towns that do nothing but make
shoes, others that do nothing but raise coal,
others that only manufacture iron, while
whole States and Territories are given to the
production of cotton, others to wheat, others
to meat production. There are great bodies
of men who do nothing but carry these pro-
auctions from one to the other, end others
who do nothing but distribute them. Now
then, suppose you introduce any thing or
measure that would suddenly stop all this2
If the towns and sections given up to the
making of shoes and clothing and coal and
iron and -four and wheat and cotton and
meat, all stop, if the carriers stop delivering,
how will the shoemaker and the tailor and
the miner and the metalworker get
bread and meat? These industries
are hundreds, yes thousands OF miles
apart and without railroads could no be
brought together in weeks or months. Stop
these industries for week, and there would
be suffering. Stop them for a month and
there would result the greatest, most wide
spread failures this planet ever knew. And
it is in just this interdependence of men
on one another separated by wide reaches of
territory that lies this prodigious monopoly
question, and this prodigious labor question.
But it also shows how perfectly powerless
any organization of whatever kind or of
whatever strength would be to suddenly dis
turb and paIaIyze the nice adjustment nature
herself has made by which all these people
are fed and clothed, or if it were not power
less how completely destructive it would be.
If all the people in the world were COM
bined in single labor organization, and it
should attempt to change this state of things
except by instantly substituting for it an
other equally automatic, the world would
fail. Mr.. Powderly sees, as every one may
see who will reflect calmnly for five minutes
that labor organization can not execute the
impossible. To any who are misled by the
mistaken parallel of the French revolution,
and who may imagine it could be repeated
/ IN America with the same good result that
time has demonstrated did really flow from
it, we will say: The French revolution was
revolution in a single city. The Paris mob
overthrow the government which in effect
was Paris government and put themselves
in IFS place. Paris did not make the iron
nor raise the coal, nor make the clothing
nor raise ne wheat nor make the flour of
France. The necessities OF life were as a
whole created in each family for itself, and
each family had the means of life, however
crude. in its own control. Division OF labor
was but just beginning, it had not then be-
come ingrained. France could exist with
| Paris or without il, and the excuses of the
mobs in cities did not destroy the physician
means of life Yet with all this, the confusion
was great. Slight, compared with
the present, as was the independence of
French industry, the greatest privations
ensued. Crude as were the means of inter
communication, and independent as was the
individual, starvation staiked through the
land, and it required the genius of Napol-
con to set the revolution on the path OF
method and order, and to accomplish tie
good that it afterwards proved to be. No
such revolution is possible in America, for
reasons above given, even if the entire coun-
try were TO attempt it.
But because mankind, separated by so