St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-09-05
TRIUMPH OF LABOR.
1t Must Be Gained by Educational
Evolution

III MUST be canned by Educational
Evolution.
The middleman in manufactures has
to pay interest to honest capital.
Then to make profit for himself he
must rob labor, cheat in his wares, or
force by combines all honest capital
either to follow his example Or quit
honest business. If you controlled leg
lslation, the courts and the admins
trative places i'll the republic, you
wage men who are forced to see these
conditions would destroy false capital
by force of law. But hold that free
labor is attended by an inherent power,
which compels, by evolutionary proc
eSses, the ultimate eradication of all
obstacles to its freedom. Your labor
organizations have already set this evo-
lutionary force IN motion in thes
United States. You alone are to be
credited to the present standard of
American skilled labor.
1t was not the tariffs of the country
which was tie moving cause; it was
not competition of demanding markets;
it was the ideas and tendencies of men
endowed with personal, conscientious
and political liberty, which, massine as
an uncOnQuerable force against the
selfish forms of national polity and po-
litical neglect, kent up Individual men
by the sympathetic action of Christian
sentiment to demand a fairer equality
for free labor than capital wished to
dole out. More than this, it was the
genius and intelligent invention of en-
ilghtened men engaged i'll labor which
mo al inn ND %l,O
processes by which man has bound the
very elements to toll in place of man as
slave and serf. This material advance
in discovery and invention has been the
gifts which free labor has lavished upon
the race, and to it more than any other
Is due the position and power of Ameri-
can capital and American investments
in the comparisons Of the world All of
these things have the artisan lives of
the republic done by being only fairly
we'll fed, clothed and buried. and you
would not have been fairly we'll fed and
clothed if you had not been defended by
your historic trades unions and labor
organizations.
The laws, the governing powers, the
political parties, and all acknowledged
powers forsook you, but your organiza-
tons and trades unions kept hope alive,
and the processes of free labor rolling
and evolving and growing in fraternal
principles. Adam Smith was right
when he analysed wages to be a dis
pute" between the employer and the
emplOye. With your local organizations
you have made that dispute" available
to save America from the shame of en-
forced pauper labor. AS long as wages
are dispute" free labor owes it to
the cause of human progress to dispute
long narnnSfIV n1finnflv RI ~
bitter end in all time, whether in ma
tional prosperity or in national poverty,
and keep up and steadily increase the
present wage rata of the land.
Do you know what is going on in
business circles or capitalistic concerns
now i'll these United States? The pres
ent condition of trade came not by
design or forethought or legislation by
any man. By the revolution of free
labor its own processes, the middle man
has received his death notice in these
free states. Free labor and honest cap
ital have forced the false capitalist from
the shops and manufactures. Capital
can never again sit back on its throne
in this republic. 1t will hereafter be
compelled to ally itself with skilled
labor and go into business for itself.
Gold and silver have but little to do
with our strange financial condition.
England has checked our middlemen
statesmen upon the chess board where
all nations are playing with the political
economy of the seventeenth century.
Bat the evolution of free labor in
America now is crushing the very es-
Sence and life of the money economy.
If honest capital will not act fairly with
organized free labor. an event | am as
sured can never take place i'll this
christian land, then the laborer and pro-
ducer can, from the fiat of their own
great federation of labor, fraternally re-
sumo exchange of kind, and not in
money, as did the trade guilds of the old
medieval free cities. For our labor is
our own. Bunker Hill and AppomattOX
have sealed that as automatic for ever
more.
The resources of peace far outnumber
those of violence and war. You have
all the future to exercise your courage 4
and your strength in. Wait patiently
the future. holding firmly unto the pre-
sent. Struggle TO found as a living truth
the divine fraternity.
Go back, then, wagemen, to your
num6erlesS divisions of active labor.
Increase mems wants to give labor Op-
pOrtunity. Your certain freedom is as
sure as the story of the resurrection.
L have seen a picture representing
majestic living lions walking upon the
housekeeping sites of old Babylon.
TO me it seems to speak with voice
which rolls away back of Assyrian life,
piercing to the old, time-old desert
places of Egypt and Chaidea.
humanity survives art-all art, even
the art of human law"
Oh laborers, you are the living lion
who still under Gods providence are
struggling above the wrecks of time to
attain wisdom and to know God Walk
on! He gives you life and strength and
victory.