Wood River times. [volume] (Hailey, Idaho) 1882-1915, 1886-07-12

lied the finances, the business meth
DDS and the morals of the Nation.
The civil war broke down local preju-
dices, made East and West homoge-
neous, introduced communities to
each other on the battle field, obliter-
ated State lines and made individual
effort in business, in finances, in man
ufactures and in politics less profita-
bic to the individual than participa-
ton in aggregated effort, where his
gains were increased but his person
alism was submerged.
We have had examples of late Of
the power of organized labor, but
God pity the laborers if the milliouaires
should ever organize for retaliation.
OF course the mob could hang the
millionaires, and probably would, if
they could catch them. But the mil
lionaires would fight the wage-work-
ers from deadly and impregnable van
tage ground. After labor had desc
lated the land in its hot wrath, after
it had made the cutters of cities run
with blood, after it had sent tie ware.
houses and palaces in flames to the
skies, it would be besieged by the grim
implacable, tireless, unconquerable
legions of famIne-for capital can
choose its own time to re-invest and
resume. The active aggressions of
capital may be successfully encoun.
tered, but no force can withstand and
no cunning outwit the power of its
sudden, silent, patient withdrawal from
industry. The laborer may resolve
and re-resolve as to his purposes, but
he who has nothing to dispose of
hut his labor is very much at the
mercy of the purchaser. And this
because labor must find its market
upon the instant or never find it at
all. All things else in nature, except
time, are yielding to the genius Of
man. The proverb that "the mill will
never grind with the water that is
past" is now proven fallacy, for the
wonderful growth of electrical sci
ence enables us to stano by the side
of the cataract, and gather the power
of the falling waters, and store that
power in the cells of the dynamo,
and month or n year later one may
turn wheel with the power thus APP
prupriated and preserved.
But neither God nor man can stay
the course of time. Time stands by
the dial of the universe. and as the
minutes are licked off He gives them
to all who grasp them. But left I'M
claimed they pass on unused, unfruit-
full, unyielding, INTO the night of the
nnreturning past.
Because it is thus helpless and thus
dependent, labor may not rightly as
sert its independence of capital
Suppose that capital-arrogant in its
strength, impatient of interference
and perhaps apprehensive of its safe
ty, should say to labor at some grea,
strike: "You have stopped the wheels
very well; we will not start them
You have extinguished the furnace
fires, We will not rekindle them
You have disabled the engines, we
will not repair them. With the down.
ward stab Of your knife you have
cut our surface veins, but you have
received the force of the blow ir
your own vitals-bleed to death al
your leisure, we will retire for while
to nurse our scratches"
Is it possible to conceive the misery
and ruin that would result from sixty
days stoppage of labor in the foun-
dries and factories and furnaces, and
sixty days cessation of traffic over the
railroads of our land? If the million.
aires should ever combine against the
loborers. If they should leave the
disabled engines in the round houses
and the cars covered with dirt in the
deserted yards. If they should leave
the ships and steamers at the wharves
or send them to trade between the
ports of other lands. If the turbines
gathered moss upon their shafts, the
ch!mnies lowered smokeless to the
skies, the music of anvil and forge
were hushed. If the almshouses were
crowded, the asylums filled, the jails
overAowing-would not our Repub.
lie have fallen far from the ideal which
the fathers fought to achieve? Would
not the greed of few thousand cap.
!talists and the unwisdom of few
hundred thousand workers, have re-
duced 60,0O0,o00 of people to a con.
dtion of subsection more absolute
than that from which our fathers lib.
Grated the land?
| Monopolies in transportation, in
teligence. light, fuel, land, water
These are the corporate vampires who
sit upon the body of American labor
sucking its life blood, and tanning i
into continued slumbec. These art
the impalpable, ubiquitous, powerful
despots, who have torn the bandag'
from the eyes of American justice
and fastened false weights upon he
scales, who have turned our legislatiy,