, 1892-03-04

All Draw Heavily from the Products OF
Honest Toll. Though In Differing Ways
and from Differing Notwithstanding
Is Radically Wrong.
Especial Correspondence.l
The honest wage Garner bears besides
his own the burdens of two other classes
of s~ociety-the idle wealthy who are
sumptuously supported, and the idle
poor who are miserably kept. No indi-
vidual member of either class is person
ally to blame, but the fact presents an
anomaly that should convince every
thoughtful mind that something is wrong
in the organization of society which
ought to be investigated. 1t does not
,lo to merely denounce and abuse the
me class, or shut the nations gates
against the inflowing of the other. Mere
bitter arrangement without logic and
wisdom will not lessen the power or
numbers of the rich, o will immigra-
tion laws, vagrant laws and tramp ordi-
decrease thea aggregate of human
poverty and suffering in the world.
The wealthy classes, which from the
all prevailing instinct of self preserva-
ton must always be aggressive if they
NOuiu DICStlNp bii1h BiiNAANSNot ~ ~
infect the condition of the wage class
more definitely than does that large
army of idlers and criminals which lies
u seething, threatening mass beneath
them. If economies had to deal only
with workers who were always en-
ployed, even at very low wages, there
would be no labor question as we under
stand it today. Human beings are too
prone to leave undisturbed old customs
that do not bring with them actual suf-
fering, and if all people were secure in
positions Of any kind hat insured them
from want, they would accept the situa-
ton rather than rush into ills they know
not of. 1t is the certainty hat just
without the comparatively comfortable
domain of genuine wage working there
surges a dismal throng eve ready to
rush over any feeble barriers labor may
erect, which arouses people to discon-
tent, a sense of insecurity, a tendency to
study, investigate and change things,
and thus a labor questionis evolved. 1t
takes on various phases, and this in
evitable army is considered by the many
different reform movements in as many
different ways. But it is always there.
There is no getting rid of it without rev.
authorizing the whole system of So
ciety down to the very foundations. 1t
cannot be evaded or ignored; it is always
furnishing recruits for the criminal class
"a yet more perplexing factor in the
labor problem; its injurious effects may
be combated successfully in one direc-
ton only to be found pressing harder in
another.
1t is natural that the industrial classes
should feel a deep antagonism toward
those who constitute this army, first, be-
aus directly or indirectly they must
all subsist ON the products of their labor.
Whether doled out in charities from ac-
cumulations of unpaid labor, or taken in
petty thievery, all they consume was
originally called into valuable existence
by the workers. And again, they con-
tinually harass them and endanger the
workers opportunities for toll by their
very existence. Every struggle of or
ganized labor against the encroachments
of organized capital is hampered by that
army of men whose needs are so keen
they forget fraternity and mutual de-
pendence- The ''scab" is not always to
blame for being one, but the exigencies
of occasions-the "war measures" fig
uratively speaking-necessary to success
make it essential that he should be re-
garded as an enemy.
In passing, we may remark that the
fact that every strike is hindered by an
influx of idle men into places left vacant,
proves that the old accusation against
the army of tramps and idle men, "they
would not work If they could" is false.
Tko ,l1n 1890, l., ,.a,..al IL
industrial systems; its members may
keep changing, they may or may not be
willing and energetic-it cuts no figure,
for there are always abou the same pro-
portion "out of work" Those employed
work to exhaustion, and there are no
places for those outside. Naturally the
''ittest survive"-that is, the most able
and enterprising obtain the places, but
it does not show that the unemployed
are necessarily shiftless, vicious or lazy.
Besides the throng of involuntary idle
there are the ranks of criminals to
threaten the welfare of wage workers.
This much despised class contains mem
bers no more to blame for the position
they occupy than are the starving
''scabs." In the first place n study of
criminal records and statistics discloses
the methods by which criminals are
made, the way idleness and homeless
ness lead to arrests, how arrests throw
the culprits outside the pale of respecta-
bility and into circles of habitual Grim
inals, and how the path downward is
made easy by police, magistrates and
other officials who live by the miserable
vices of their %fellowmen, and then one
may know that the official stamp of
criminal" does not always make a vii
lain of a man. The worst enemies of
mankind are not always behind prison
bars.
But once a man is marked a criminal
serving sentence he has no responsibility
for what he may do. Perhaps he is bet
ter housed, better clothed, better fed
than many a poor worker who tolls
faithfully ten or twelve hours a day; he
may be ordered to make shoes when he
knows the shoes will be paid for at such
rates as to ruin free tradesmer; he may
be sent at the point of q bayonet to do
the work of a miner starving and strug-
Cling against fearful odds for better
conditions; but he is not the man to