The state chronicle. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1883-1893, 1886-05-06
OtR K NEW I0Rk LETTER.
THE LABOR QI ESTION SWALLOWS
u ALL OTHER SUBJECTS.
Ar. Page Discusses the Strike. SHOW.
that 4 hey do Not Tend Towards An
archy But Towards Democracy,
Especial Cor. STATE CHEoSIt

subject. Strike follows strike In such rtria
7 succession that the number that are ..on
now III and about New York. nobody
knows; and nobody knows who viii h.. the
next strikers Many of them are just-if
there be such Il thing as Justice in the
World-but the most notable ones Of course
are the Wild mistake of ignorant and Grim
maj labor leaders. The great agitation Tor
the shortening OF the hours Of labor is =
most unhappy iece OF business The 40
600 men who met AT Union square on Sal
urday night and made and listened 10
speeches, more or less lncendiary, in three
or TOUR languages, are the victims of the
general industrial unrest. But the agita-
ton Is having a very depressing effect on
business. Investments are less secure; the
amount OF money paid III wages Is much
! less the general spirit Of turbulence is
wonderfully contagious; and during such
an agitation many of the very worst men
get the leadership for the time being !t
Is mad time. And mad as these deiuGei
men, are the angry aristocrats who think
that American liberty is in danger. 1t is
no such thing
And there Is the deepest lesson Of this
latter part OF our century TO be learned
from this very agitation-a lesson that YOU
had just as well be thinking about now of
your own will as waiting to do your think
ing under force of an unpleasant necessity
1t is simply the lesson o1 democracy
Start if you will with the state of things
in monarchical government Then a
king had what he called divine right
to rule and to tax; and the people had no
part in the government. That seems mon
strous enough to us now because we have
outgrown 1t. That is to say, we fought it
down. 1t costs US the revolutionary war
to do it, however Then we got the Dem
ocratic idea III politics partly at least.
And we understood that much of it very
well. We didn't get it in the largest meas
ure, however; because the negroes were
held as slaves; and there could be no real
Democratic government founded on sla-
very, of course. We didn't learn that
either till we fought again-whether we
fought about that or not.
Now bring the same idea down to a
further application You have so, 600 and
you build factory. Your factory is good
for nothing until you get labor. You en-
ploy laborers and the combined product
Of your outlay of money and their outlay
of labor is-after all expenses are paid
| say g, 600 year. Who earned this 81
600 You say of course that you did that
it is yours; that the laborer has nothing to
say about it. Up to this time in this coun
| try, this has been so But it is so only be-
cause you are the master of the laborer;
very much as the king with his "divine
right, was once master of the people. In
| politics now III our cOuntry-such is the
| theory at least-one man is the equal of
| another man. In industry it is bound to
| come about not that every man is equal
| to every other one, but that every man
will get the reward of his industry in full
! on ;he same conditions precisely that
every other man gets his. We will say,
1 81. ha{
| factory was included d salary for yourself
= salary as large for overseeing it as you
could earn if you were in another mans
| employment. That has already gone into
| your pocket. Now the 50, 600 profit is the
sum that is the result Of the combined
work of your money and Of the labor of
everybody who gave labor-of hands Or
brain. That is 20 per cent. on you in
vestment. Let us say that ten per cent
| Is a pretty fair return. On this basis ST.,
600 of these $4,000 will go to you rs the
earning of your money: for your money
could have earned about 10 Per cent with
out the factory, if it had been invested in
some other way. In good morals (and
moral right does not hold in business as it
is conducted to-day, any more than it held
in government, when the kings were pratt
ing about divine right ')-in good morals,
the other $1,000 belongs to all the men
| who did the work-to you and to all the
rest-in proportion as their work was val
uable:and it ought to be divided in pro-
portion to salary or wages among all the
men from you down who earned it. When
we get to the Democratic idea in business,
this will be the idea. That is what is call
ed profit-sharing. 1t is in extensive ap-
plication already in France a.al England
and in a good many establishments III this
country,
Yet, if you expound this doctrine in
North Carolina, you can very easily get
yourself called fool. Your little tyrant
of fellow with few thousand dollars
who can make 100 per cent, naturally
now looks upon anybody who should say
that the men whose labor really earns it
it is entitled to the most of it, an enemy
of society, The good old kings had the
same notion about men who thought they
ought to have some say so in the manage.
ment of affairs.
1t will be long time before any sue n
state of things comes IN North Carolina,
because the great mass of the laborng men
there are are not MEN at all-they were
slaves only the other day. They have
neither the ability to understand nor yet
the capacity to learn az any short period
nor the Wisd1n to use any such Demo
cratic ideas. And where labor is almost
| wholly agricultural labor, the injustice
that have illustrated does not in fact Sc
f1agrantly exist. The agricultural laborer
often gets a good deal more than he earns,
because he oftens practically gets his whole
living outside of the bargain-kind O picks
it up.
But this extrene (and JUST application
of democracy in business is precisely what
is coming here; and all this blind and
, mostly foolish and partly criminal agita
ton is bringing it about. 1t has already
come in one noteworthy instance in the
, South. Mr.. John c. Calhoun, the grand
son ol the great South Carolinian whose
name he bears, has III Arkansas a great
, cotton plantation COR a number of them
where every faithful laborer gets certain
, share OF the profits in addition TO wages.
Pride is the thing that has kept human
progress back more than all other forces
A man or IA crowd of men Oh a class o
men will conclude that they are in some
important way great deal superior Il
t other folks and .hey set up as little kings
with claim to some sort of divine right.
: If it be in politics, you have your littl'
: boss If it be in discussion of public
matter, it is your little pundit who call
. folks with opinions different from MS owl
TRAITORS # it is in the matter of an in
i, ! dustrial school, it is your fellow who i
burning with desire to have it, you kaOw
. but Who knows law or something that is il