Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1892-09-10
THE CENTURYS GREAT PROBLEM

IF you divorce capital and labor,
capital is boarded and labor starves, ("
said Daniel Webster, and the truth of
the observation will be generally adj
mitted. But for all that the tendency
of industrial agitation i'm this country
is clearly i'm the direction of such sep
aration. Mammon is the god of the
nineteenth century and his worship is
responsible for most of the ills which
our civilization is heir to. Selfishness
and insatiate greed for gain are at the
bottom Of nearly all of the labor dis
turbances which are regarded by so
many as protentOus of serious upris-
ing against our political and social sys-
TENS. There is a deal of buneombe
about the common calamity howl that
the rich are growing richer and the
poor are growing poorer" That such is
not the case is clearly proven by the
government reports of the industrial
progress of the past decade. The rich
are growing richer undoubtedly, but
the poor are not growing poorer. Quite
the contrary in fact, so far as this coun-
try is concerned, in which the mutu-
atty Of interest which should always
exist between labor and capital is more
apparent than in any other nation on
the globe. But nevertheless it is evil
dent that the day is yet afar off when
the Utopian dream of the wage-earner
Will be realized. Labor disturbances
Will continue to occur for many years,
at intervals varying with commercial
conditions. The responsibility for them
rests about equally upon the great cor
porations and individual employers of
labor on the one hand, and the extrem-
list leaders Of the vast army of employees
on the other. The search for some
great middle ground upon which labor
and capital can stand as mutual allies. |
working in unison for the benefit of
each and both, will never be successful
until certain axiomic propositions are
accepted as sound fundamental princi-
piles, to serve as basis for amicable adj |
Justments of disputes. Such, for in
stance, as the following:
Every man has right TO labor.
Every man has right to such wages as
he can get for his labor.
No man has a right to coerce another
to labor.
No man has a right to coerce another
TO desist from labor.
No man has a right when he refuses en-
ployment to destroy the means of employ
ment he has rejected, or 10 prevent an
other taking such employment.
Workingmen, by organization, acquire
no legal rights that are not possessed by
each Individual member before orcaniza- |
tien; nor can they deprive any working
man outside that organization of any
right.
Until some such principles as these
are recognized as proper rules Of action |
by labor organizations the labor prob
lem will remain unsolved. Had such
principles obtained at the time of the
Homestead strike there would have
been no riot, and labor's escutcheon |
would not have been stained by das-
tardly assaults ON misguided but de-
fenseless men.
We cannot afford in this country to
temporize with communism. We
should offer no encouragement to men
who are troubled with yearnings for
the equal division Of unequal earnings.
IL is impossible to conceive any two
causes more radically and dangerously
antagonistic than Anarchy and Indus
try. The one is the implacable foe Of
law, order, thrift, industrial and educa-