Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-06-04
NUMBER 48.
Capital and Labor.



ployed. fhe change from a sparse pop
ulation to one of considerable density
has increased the demand for manufact-
ured articles. The tendency has been to
produce these more cheaply each succeed
ing year, so that people of narrower
wider range of consumers be reached.
In order to do this it is absolutely essen
tial that there should be a strict division
of labor. and that large amounts of cap
ital should be employed. Now. as De
Tocqueville says, "When workman is
increasingly and exclusively engaged in
the fabrication of one thing, he ultimate
ly does his work with singular deNterity:
but at the same time he loses the general
faculty of applying his mind to the direc-
tion of the work. He every day becomes
more adroit and less Industrious; so that
it may be said of him, in proportion as
the workman improves the man is de-
graded. What can be expected Off man
who has spent twenty years of his life In
making heads for pins, and to what can
that mighty human intelligence, which
has so often stirred the world, be applied
in him except it be to investigate the
best method ofmaking pin heads? When
a workman has spent considerable por-
ton of his existence in this manner, his
| thoughts are forever set upon the objects
OF his daily toll; his body has contracted
certain fixed habits which it can never
tchp p1-n nA. sY, l,at hn
longs to himself but to the calling which
he has chosen. 1t is in vain that law S
and manners have been at pains to level
all the barriers round such man and to
open to him on every side different paths
to fortune. a theory Of manufactures
more powerful than manners and laws
binds him to a craft and frequently to a
spot which he cannot lcavc.''
While not agreeing fully in all the con-
clusions of the eminent author whose
language have just quoted, l think he
has correctly indicated the tendency of
our modern methods of business. Had
our present advancement in science taken
place century or two ago, before the
| diffusion of knowledge, civil liberty would
have been greatly retarded. As it is, our
increased educational facilities. the rapid.
ity with which knowledge circulates
among the people by means of the great
daily papers, the floods of cheap litera-
| ture OF the better class that are pouring
over the land, the study of the constitution
OF society itself, has tendencv to neutral
/
SO long as the avenues of public opinion
are kept open we have little to fear, for the
component parts, after time, will ad-
just themselves. When correctly inform
ed, the people are to be trusted.
But one of the complaints that labor
now makes is that capital has charge OF
1.-THE great news arteries and is quietly but
effectively usuing this power which ught
to be public trust against it. When a
strike ends u"favorably to the strikers we
hear good deal of it; but when they
succeed nothing is said about it for fear
of encouraging rebellion elsewhere. 1t
will be an unfortunate day for us when
| our moneyed classes endeavor to mould
public opinion by controlling our system
of public education. While, as / have
before indicated, the tendency of our
great moneyef men from the vastness OF
their enterprises is to regard their men as
they would ants performing the same SER
vice, these employed classes, conscious of
their weakness as individuals, are en-
deavoring to offset the power of capital
by the power Of united numbers. In
stead of contracting directly with the en-
ployers they are endeavoring to make
their trade associations, their agents and
to compel their employers to deal with
them as their representatives. And thus
it is that we have combinations of capital
would not be strange if these labor COM
binations did after awhile remodel our
representative system by making trade
association, to great extent, the polit-
ical unit, rather than the individual; thus
transferring the sphere of individual ac-
tivitiy in politics, at least in cities and
great manufacturing districts, from the
stump 10 the societies rooms. That seems
to me to be the drift now.
All attempts on the part of labor to
combine will meet with, and we may say
are now meeting, with the most determ
ined opposition from capital. The rcas-
ons for this are many. In the first place
there is the selfishness of the human
heart that makes men tenacious of power
and loath to part with it. Then, again,
the employer desires to have complete
control of hi men, so that in dealing
with the public, the value of no factor in
his business will be lett unascertained.
But no matter how spacious the pretense,
society can not afford to let the control
of the labor market pass entirely out of
the hands of the laboring man, We are
all aG this day opposed 10 slavery and
unite in condeming it; but if any man is |
live does he not make me his bond SER
want? If live by labor and another has
power over me to say when and for how
much shall work, is he not my master?
At least this is the view that working
men take of it, and have called their en-
ployers to the bar of public opinion.
They claim that labor is not properly re- |
warded That, while they the wealth
creators remain stationary, men who
toll not neither do they spin, are amassing
immense fortunes out of their sweat. |