The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-05-19
TALMAGE ON LABOR WAR
He URGES MEN TO DO AS THEY
WOULD BE DONE BY.

The Whole Hemisphere Involved In the
Fight-The Middle Glasses in the
Country Diminishing-Christi a
Peace-Maker that Will Stop the
Conflict If Given a Chance.
BROOKLYN, May 1S.-The Tabernacle
congregation is still worshiping in the
Academy of Music, but expects next SEN
temoer to have the main auditorium of the
new tabernacle ready for use in the holding
OF services. After the usual preliminary
exercises this morning, DIR. Talmage
preached on ''The Old Fight to be Settled, -
from the text: Whatsoever We would that
men should do to you, do We even SO to
them" Matt. vii, IL. Following is the SER
mon in full:
Two hundred and fifty thousand laborers
IN hyde park, London. and the streets of
American and European cities filled with
professions of workmen carrying banners.
brings the subject of labor and capital to
the front. That all this was done in peace,
ana !nat as result in many places arbitra-
ton has taken place, is hopeful sign.
iae greatest war the world has ever seen
Is between capital and labor The strife is
not like that which in history is called the
Thirty. Years War, for it is a war of
centuries, 1t is war of the five continents,
IL rs a wer hemispheric. The middle classes
in this country, upon whom the nation has
depended for holding the balance of power
and Tor acting as mediators between the
Two extremes, are diminishing, and if things
go on at the same ratio as they have for the
last twenty years been going on, it will not
Dc very long before there will be no middle
class In this country, but all will be very
rich or very poor, princes or paupers, and
1frsNF wuTfIl H. Il
hovels
The antagonistic forces have again and
again closed In upon each other. You may
Poon-pooh it; you may say that this trouble,
Ike an angry child, will cry itself to sleep:
you may belittle it by calling it Fourierism,
or socialism, or ST. Smonism, or nihilism,
or communism, but that will not binder the
fact that it is the mightiest, the darkest, the
most terrific threat of this century. Most
or the attempts at paciication have been
dead failures, and monopoly is more AFRO
CANT. and the trades unions more bitter.
"Glve us more wages" cry the employees.
" GU shall have less" say the capitalists.
compel US to do fewer hours of toll in a
day." "You shall toll more hours" ;" say the
others" "Then, under certain conditions,
we will not work at ALL" say these. "Then
you shall starve," say those, and the work.
men, gradually using up that which they
NSNNAAuAoSOd III DObtCA blulcoy uuleoS bU6I6 Do
some radical change, we shall have soon in
this country three million hungry men and
women. Now, three million hungry people
cannot be kept quiet. All the enactments
Of legislatures and all the constabularies of
the cities and all the army and navy of the
United States cannot keep three million
hungry people quiet. What then? Will
this war between capital aud labor be SET
tied by human wisdom2 Never. The brow
of tho ha0ot,1oc y-fnr %hn Get
the other more clinched.
But that which human wisdom cannot
achieve will be accomplished by christianity
IL it be given full sway. You have heard
OF medicines so powerful that one drop
would stop disease and restore patient
AMI have to tell you that one drop of my
text properly administered will stop all
these woes of society and give convalescence
and complete health to all classes. "What-
soever would that men should do to you, do
ye even SO to them.n
| shall first show you this morning how
this controversy between monopoly and
hard work cannot be stopped, and then
will show you how this controversy will be
settled.
Futile remedies. In the first place there
will come no pacifcation to this trouble
through an outcry against rich men merely
because they are rich. There is no laboring
man on earth that would not be rich if he
could be. Sometimes, through fortunate
invention or through some accident of pros
perity, a man who had nothing comes to
large estate, and we see him arrogant and
supercilious, and taking people by the
throat just as other people took him by the
throat. There is something very mean
about human nature when it comes to the
top. But it is no more a sin to be rich than
it is a sin to be poor. There are those who
have gathered great estate through fraud,
and then there are millionaires who have
gathered their fortune through fore
sight in regard to changes in
the markets, and through brilliant business
faculty, and every dollar of their estate is
as honest as the dollar which the plumber
gets for mending a pipe, or the mason gets
for building wall. There are those who
keep in poverty because of their own fault
They might have been well off, but they
smoked or chewed up their earnings, or
they lived beyond their means, while others
on the same wages and on the same salaries
went on to competency. / know a man
who is all the time complaining of his
poverty and crying out against rich men,
while he himself Keeps two dogs, and chews
and smokes, and is filled to the chin with
whisky and beerl
Micawber said to David Copperfield:
"Copperfeld, my boy, one pound income,
twenty shillings and sixpence expenses; re-
suit, misery. But, Copperfield, my boy,
one pound income, expenses nineteen
shillings and sixpence; result, happiness" !"
And there are vast multitudes of people
who are kept poor because they are the
victims of their own improvidence. 1t is
no sin to be rich, and it is no sin to be poor.
protest against this outcry which | hear
against those who, through economy and
self-denial and assiduity, have come to
large fortune. This bombardment of COM
mercal success will never stop this contro-
versy between capital and labor.
Neither will the contest be settled by Gym
ical and unsympathetic treatment of the
laboring classes. There are those who
speak OF them as though they were only
cattle or draught horses. Their nerves are
nothing, their domestic comfort is Moth
ing, their happiness is nothing. They have
no more sympathy for them than hound
has for a hare, or hawk for a hen, or a
tiger for calf. When Jean Vatican, the
greatest hero of Victor Hugo's writings,
after life Of sufferings and brave endur-
ance, goes into incarceration and death,
they clap the book shut and say, Good for
him" They stamp their feet with indigna-
tion and say just the opposite of ''Save the
working classes They have all their SYM
pathies with Shylock, and not with Anto-
MO and Portia. They are plutocrats, and
their feelings are internal. They are filed
with irritation and irascibility on this sub
ject. To stop this awful embroglio between
capital and labor they will lift not so much
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