The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-04-28
POPULISM AND WAGE WORKERS.

Mr.. Editor I will endeavor to COM
ply with your request to write an
article on why Laboring Men Should
Vote the Populist Ticket"
4 The term ~"laberingrlen needs soma
definition. Any zone VINO. makes due
returns to society. for what he uses
may be styled a laboring man. Under
our modern system of the division of
labor we are all specialists to a, certain
/ degree. The physician who devotes his
time, talents and energies to the study
( and practice of his profession is no
less laboring man than is the man
who delyes in the ditch, mine, factory
or farm with spade, pick, drill or ploW.
The teachers of schools and the ti,lars of
the soil are alike toilers and public
benefactors, and are both laborers, the
occupation of each as honorable but no
more so than the other. Society may
be divided into three great classes,
namely: Those who labor, those who
beg, and those who steal.
The laboring people are divisable into
two classes, the employer and the en-
ployed.
In mans original state he served the
dual role of employer and employed
and that man was himself, in other
words he worked for himself. Those
were the times when all natural oppor-
tunltles were open to him. Self
preservation then as now, was the
first law Of nature" Man worked for
himself then for two reasons: First,
he found himself an agreeable en-
ployer. and secondly. no one cared to
hire him. 1t was the monopolization
of the land and other natural oppor-
tunities that made one class of men
able to employ others to work for them.
and the others too poor to find EMPLOY
ment for themselves. Hence the wage
Garner is creature of comparatively
modern creation, that is, men who are
compelled to depend on selling their
LABOR to other men. / take it that the
wage earners are the men referred to
ds "laboring men," You ask. then.
Why should wage earners vote the
Populist ticket? 1 answer because 1t is
the only political party whose plat
form demands the returning to man
those God-given opportunities to make
his own living. It's platform declares
that land is the heritage of the people,
all the people. Man seeks employment
from his fellow man because he cannot
employ himself. He cannot employ
himself because others have monopo-
hzed the opportunity that by nature
/ anu Justice are MS.
Give man access to these opportuni-
ties and he would become his own mas
ter at once. He would sell his labor
only when he could obtain more for II
than he could earn by APPLYING his
labor to the land. This would equalize
matters and wages would adjust them
selves accordingly.
Neither the Republican nor Demo-
cratic parties have a word to say
a HI I,
ing it is safe to presume they will do
nothing. Closely allied to the land
question is that OF labor. 1t might be
said that the two are one, and in
separable for such they are. To settle
the land question right would settle the
labor question. But. until the land
question is settled something must be
done for the wage Garner. The great
est disturbing element in the labor
question is that of labor saving ma
chinery. What the genius of man has
accomplished along that line is al
most incomprehensible; what he may
yet accomplish cannot be conjectured
AS we stand before one OF the
mechanical wonders of the age and be-
hold it performing with untiring steel
and iron what for ages has been per-
formed only with fingers of flesh and
bone; when we see that machine
performing the work with that degree
of accuracy and perfection unattain-
able by the human hand. and in
volumn. almost incredible. we ask our
self, What next? What may we not
reasonably expect? One man does the
work of ten. The nine who have. been
displaced find they are still possessors
of appetites. The loss of work has mol
! lessaned their physical wants in any
way. They are still the same flesh and
blood they always were. They seek
employment elsewhere TO find the same
condition of things. They meet the
machine everywhere they go. Whai
ale they to do? This question is being