Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1892-08-11
THE MONARCHY OF MAN.

operation Instead of the Present System.
Your correspondent, Mr.. H. II. Frary,
takes issue with my recent contribution
on the Wage System of Labor" The
point of his article is that the condition
of men must be utterly changed before
the wage system can be supplanted with
another; that cooperation presupposes
q stage of human development which we
have not yet reached and may never
reach.
Therefore we must be content with
the wage system and jog along until
let us say, the crisis breaks in some uni
versal upheaval of society in which both
labor and capital will be engulfed. To
my mind it appears strange that men
foreseeing the evil day will not provide
against it. Rather than undertake some
rational change in the existing order
they are willing to drift on, closing their
eyes against the coming storm and say
ing, In deeds if not in words, after us
the deluge."
There would be great force in what
your correspondent says if it were not
true that the wage system itself, and
human slavery behind it in time and
place, were not to blame for the exist
ing condition. Why should any one
argue out of the existing condition that
1t ought to be perpetuated in virtue of
its own abuses? The fact is that the re-
generation Of men which your cor
respondent would have to precede the
new industrial age of the world cannot
occur until the existing order has been
supplanted first. 1t is the old question
as to whether man may not more safely
learn to swim before he goes into the
water. The argument of your cor
respondent recurs, and constantly re-
recurs, with all those who would support
and perpetuate any given abusive and
pernicious condition in human society.
There are always those who want to
plaster things over. There are people
who think that the present order of So
ciety in Europe, with its suppressed
peasantry on one side and its mobiles, its
priests and soldiers on the other, is
good condition, at least tolerable con-
dition, and that it ought to be made
more so by doctoring up its minor rela-
tions so that the half serf shall have a
little better life under his half master
than before. For ourselves we say
away with it-away with it all! We say
away with it before the evil day draws
nigh when civilization shall say, have
no pleasure in them.
Notwithstanding the poor condition
of the laborer, upon which your CORE
spondent dwells, and his alleged un-
thrift and vice, it were far better to try
him in new and nobler relation than
to allow the present system to go OIL
until it produces its necessary historical
results. Let me say that the co-opera-
tive system Of industry is demonstrably
successful. l cite the whole world to
the greatest and most successful -four
manufactory in the world. Persuade
the Pillsburys, if you can; persuade
their co-operatives, if you can, to go
back to the industrial system which
they have abandoned. They will not
do it. Elk uno disco omne-out of one
instance learn the possibility of every
thing. If the laborer is to come up it is
by this road.
If any industry be so vast and varied
that cooperation is not applicable there
to, then that industry is too vast and
varied for either private or corporate
management. II belongs to society as
a whole, to the government if you will,
to be managed in the interest of all. |
repeat that according to my judgment
the new era is at the door, and that the
wage system of labor, inherently vicious
as 1t is, must give way to some form of
cooperation more generous and emo
bling. There is in this world one thing
to be considered, and that Is the people.
There is one kind of interest and right
to be consulted, and that is the interest
and right of the masses. There is one
kind Of monarchy to be established
throughout the earth, and that is the
monarchy of man.
AS to what your correspondent says
that the scholar, the thinker, the man of
the library, is not fit in ability and ex-
perience to cope with such question as
that of labor and capital, as that of en-
ployer and employee, the hirer and the
hired man-permit me to say that that
is a form of the argumentum ad homi-
nem which no longer goes in an age when
truth is truth and justice Is just, by
whomever defended. John Clark Rid
path in Christian at Work.