St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-03-12
STRIKES AND RIGHTS.
What the Public Has to Expect
Rev. Simmons's Sermon.

6cV. oCEihous
At the First Unitarian church yester-
day, Rev. H. M. Simmons preached
about Strikes" After speaking of their
effects on the strikers and employers
and those Immediately concerned, he
said they had another relation to the
public at large. From the time of Men,
enius Agrippa, 2,400 years ago, the state
has often been compared to living
body, whose various members need to
care not only for themselves, but for
each other and for the whole system.
The comparison is truer to-day than ever
before: for every advance in society,
like every advance in animal life. in
creases the mutual dependence of the
parts. A savage tribe, with each family
doing all it's work, does not suffer from
a division, any more than rhlZOpOd,
which uses any part for hand, foot or
stomach, and can be cut into several
pieces without noticing that anything
has happened. Such tribe is no more
disturbed by revolutions, than hydra
which can be turned inside out without
inconvenience. Even half civilized
nation can lose a part OF itself, like a
crustacean which leaves its limb be-
hind when it gets into trouble. But
civilized state, with its many mutually
dependent parts, is like delicately Or
ganiZed man in whose body eye Sympa-
thizes with eye, and each member with
every other, and scratch in the hand
brings lOck-jaw and death. Indeed, a
highly organized state is much like a
human body, and Herbert Spencer has
drawn out the parallel through hum
dred pages. Its soldiers, hunters, farm
ers and miners are its arms and hands,
defending it and gathering from nature
the raw material for its consumption.
Its mechanic arts and manufactures of
hundred kinds are its digestive SyS-
tenn working over this raw material
for assimilation. Its inland commerce
is the circulatOry system of the state,
bearing the finished products where
they are wanted, as arteries and veins
do the blood. Its discoveries and OBJ
servers and reporters are its senses, and
its newspapers and postal and telegraph
lines, are its nervous system bearing
tidings and orders to every part. While
it's rulers-including legislators and
teachers and writer's and thinkers and
business managers and leaders of every
kind-are the brain of the state direct
body is the state. And to-day the de-
pendence reaches beyond the state and
includes the civilized world. Savages
living on roots and graSShopperS, and
having holes in the ground for their
homes, and wearing skins and going
naked and warming themselves i'm the
sun, possess independence, and are
welcome to it. But we, getting our
beef steak from Texas and our bread
from Dakota, keeping our coal bin in
Pennsylvania, and our fruit dish in
Florida, and our coffee can in South
America, and our tea chest in China,
are very dependent, and all the better
for it.
strike becomes public concern, affect
ing the whole system. Carlyle said the
Indian trapper in the wilds of Winnipeg
could not quarrel with his squaw with
out making Englishmen suffer by the
creased cost of products ceases to be in
finitesimal when the quarrel includes
hundreds of producers and stops manu-
features. Still more does the strike con-
Germ the public, when it interferes with
so very important function of the
social body as the circulation. The
stOppage of railway trains, whether
by the fault of engineers or
railroad directors, is at any rate like ty-
ing arteries. and ought not to be al
lowed. On railroads both the managers
and the men ought to remember that
they are in charge of the most vital
function of the public life, and hence to
be ever ready on both sides to submit
their disputes to ARBITRATION, without
any interruption of kasinesS. And the
feeling that all industries and classes
make one body ought to bind employers
and laborers in closer sympathy and
brotherhood, and help to heal all divis-
ions and to solve the labor problem.