The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1895-06-21
THE PROBLEM OF LABOR
Eugene v. Debs on the Evils Of
the Day.
CAUSES FOR THE Discomfort,
The Eject of the neutrality-suspicious.
Trusts and other Combinations of Wealth
and wickedness-How the Pathway to
Reform Is Made Luminous.
TConvripht- l6Q5. I


Copyright. 1851
II Is to be doubted if there is a more
hackneyed phrase relating TO current af-
fairs than the elevation" of the Ameri-
can toilers, breadwinners and wealth pro-
ducers, and the frequent use of the express
sion, indicative of its vitality, makes 1t
wonderfully suggestive of conditions, of
lines which, unlike parallels of latitude
and meridians of longitude, are visible to
the naked eye and show with terrible dis
tinctness where the rich reap and gather
into barns often requiring them to pull
down their old barns and build larger
structures that they may have ample room
for their goods and the muzzled poor, who,
bowed and sweating, tread out the corn
and receive less than in the oldep time was
awarded the unmuzzled OK which used its
cloven hoofs TO enrich its owner.
The frequent employment of the term
elevation" when the condition of labor is
under discussion involves the idea of de-
preston, lowliness, poverty, Ignorance and
degradation, "a chain of moral, intellectu-
al, financial, industrial and domestic
sloughs from which labor must be extri-
Gated and exalted to higher plane, but it
so happens that amid the clashing contra
riety of opinions and panaceas, methods,
means and appliances labor, instead of be-
ing elevated, sinks lower in the industrial
slough.
The Optimistic School.
In scanning the industrial field from
center 10 horizon, whether with the naked
eye or with the aid of the optigraph, the
investigator must be an optimist of the
most sublimated type, who concludes that,
as a nation, we have put into operation
those mind and moral forces which, by
searching, have found out the will of God
concerning the great mass of our fellow
men whose only source Of income is their
toll. These devotees of optimiStical philos-
ophy regard further investigation as time
thrown away and agitation scarcely less
than crime against the peace and well
fare of society They advocate stagnation,
they do not know that investigation is
truth in motion, nor will they believe that
its mission is icOnoclastic; that it abhors
shams and hypocrisy and the manifold ills
which are the progeny Of duplicity and
chicane.
The optimistic school of philosophers
who believe, or affect to believe, that all
things are ordered for the best look abroad
and say the present conditions are well
enough and ought to be let alone" Their
faith is Supplying. 1t would never re-
move a mountain nor mole hill, not even
straw. In all the ages of the world the
optimist has in human affairs symbolized
inertncss, and left to them the slaves of
the Pharaohs would still be building pyra-
midS, tombs for dead monsters who in life
We're their taskmasters If the colonists
had been optimists, Massachusetts would
still he hanging witches and whipping
"A l., y,
of Victoria. If Jesus Christ had been an
optimist, surveying affairs rs they existed
in JuO5ca and in Jerusalcm, he would have
said, "All things are ordered for the best,
and will let them alone" He would not
have scourgcd the money changers out of
the temple nor denounced the Pharisees.
He began the agitation crusade against
oppression. He denounced the rich not
because they were rich but because they
made riches their god and the means Of
oppression, and what was true during
Christs sOiourn upon earth is true now,
and the agitation of which he was the au-
thor has moved forward with varying
force To the present.
Financial Leserdemain.
The profound solicitudc manifested on
the part of philanthropists to educate the
poor, thereby enabling them to estimate
the blessings that have fallen To their lot,
ought not to be treated with flippant crit
icism. 1t is doubtless an honest and an
earnest concern for their welfare. But
education, instead of exerting pacifying
effect, has brOadcncd mems conceptions Of
rights and prerogatives and fed the fires of
agitation with e8haustless fuel, and now
graduating from the ranks of wage earn
crs are men who are equipped to stand be-
fore the world and plead the cause of men
who like themselves wear the badge of la
Dor. l. it flnanceY However sophisticated
and obscurcd by the arts of advocates of
"honcst money, - sound money, par
ity" and all the Juggling Of "single stand
ard" or "gold standard nccromanccrs,
the trick Is discovered and the impostor
exposed, and since the government ; fiat
is what gives money its value they demand
that no institution standing between them
and the government shall have any power
conferred by statute to determine the quail
ity or the quantity of money, and they
will continue 10 agitate the money ques-
ton until national banks and their dead
fall machinery cease to exercise statutory
rights To collect tribute from an overtaxed
and ovcrmortgaged people. They will not
consent 10 he robbed in tine interest vi
CDyIOckS DOT dlu lne hOInScDlluS nOr any
other of their descendants, native or for
eign born who advocate the gold standard
60 enrich themselves under the plea that
only gold Is honest money" This finan-
cial legerdemain has about run its course,
and the day is at hand when the Shylock
curse is to he removed from silver and its
ordained equality restored.
In this educational evolution, which is
becoming phenomenal, workingmen have
discovered that conditions are not the re-
suit of natural, but Of artificial causes as
when President Cleveland informs con-
gress and the country that the untoward
calamities he SO vigorously deplored were
caused chiefly by congressional legisla-
ton, and If TO this vicious congressional
legislation Is added the mischievous legis-
lation of states we have IA sum total of fol-
ly and fraud SO monstrous in the aggregate
as TO defy the power of exaggeration.
Laws are enacted or defeated by lobby in
fiuences which arouse alarm and universal
condemnation, rs for instance the anti
trust law, which was ostensibly designed
To defeat the nefarious designs of unscru-
pulous robbers, is found to be of no value,
not worth the paper upon which 1t is
printed and utterly pOWerleSs TO restrain