The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-05-05

ton is aimed not so much at the relief
of any distress which weighs them
down at the moment as the prevention
of the closer times which they think they
see approaching. The views of the
Sun on this subject are of general pub
lie interest, and we make the follow
ing extracts:
We are undoubtedly passing through
period of severe trial. 1t has been going on
for years, and when, or precisely how, it will
terminate we cannot yet say. 1t is not in
trinsically period of religious or social or
political trial, but simply of money and bust
ness trial For several years there has been
steady shrinkage in all kinds of values.
The worth of every sort of property, and the
profits of every sort of business, have been
suppressed by this continued incessant and
resistless process of contraction. Thousands
of men who were rich have become poor in
consequence of it; and up to the present
time it has affected mainly those known as
rich capitalists-persons having investments
in houses, or lands, or manufactures, or mer-
chandise, or railroads. While this immense
shrinkage has been operating upon this sort
Of persons alone, they were unhappy enough
and uttered their complaints in sorrow and
anger: but that was all. They couldn't
help themselves.
The process, however, continues, and hay
ing done its utmost upon all kinds of accu-
INFLATED property, and all kinds of produce
tive business, and having reduced the worth
and price of every description of the neces-
saries of existence, it is now about to lay its
unsparing hand upon the wages of those
who live by their daily labor. That is the
whole of the excitement in which we are
now involved, which so frghtens the anx-
ious and thoughtless, the superficial and the
timid The workingmen, naturally and al
ways anxious to strengthen their position,
feeling that their wages are the next sub
ject on which this irresistible force of
contraction, of shrinkage, of diminution,
has to do its office, are stirring about in
blind efforts to escape-by combinations by
strikes, by reducing the hours of work by
every sort of means that they can imagine
the enforcement of the mercless law. OF
course they cannot escape. There are not
two kinds of laws of nature, one for those
who live through accumulated property
and the other for those who live through
daily toll The depression, the contraction.
the reduction of value, which has affected
everything else, must, in its turn-unless
some new cause can be introduced to inter-
rupt the process or change its direction
also be applied to the wages of labor. For
this there is no possible help. We are sorry
for it, we deplore it.; we wish that it were
otherwise We wish that the great mass of
people might be spared the infliction which
has already been so freely and so destruc-
lively directed upon the few. But the wish
is useless. The efforts of the appointed
victims are also useless. Struggle as they
may, they cannot escape. The house they
live in is shutting down upon them and,
willingly or unwillingly, they must submit
to their fate.
Forty years ago the world was very much
in the same condition, but it was weaker
and poorer then than it is now, and society
to-day can stand the pressure better than it
could stand it then. AT that time, however
the discovery of great stores of gold in Cali !
forna and Australia changed the course of
events, and brought prosperity, expansion
and increase, instead of depression, con-
traction and penury. 1t was like provi- |
dental interference, but no interference,
either of Providence or of human wisdom
seems now to be at hand. Yet, while it is
painful necessity, we shall live through it,
and capitalists and laborers and all the rest
of mankind will find that, after it is over,
their relations will be essentially the same
as they were.