Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1899-08-24
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
THE STRIKE EPIDEMIC LAST
SUNDAYS SUBJECT.
Tho Eye Cannot Say Unto the Hand:
1 Have No Need of Thee"-From the
First Book of Corinthians, Chapter
12: Verse FL.

road cars; Cleveland in the throes of
labor agitation, and restlessness among
toilers all over the land have caused
an epidemic of strikes, and somewhat
to better things, l apply the Pauline
thought Of my text.
You have seen an elaborate piece OF
machinery, with a thousand wheels
and thousand bands and a thousand
pulleys all controlled by one great
water wheel, the machinery so adjusted
that when you jar one part of it you
jar all parts of it. Well, human So
ciety is a great piece of mechanism
controlled by one great and ever-re-
yolying force-the wheel of Gods
providence. You harm one part of the
machinery of society and you harm all
parts. All professions interdependent
All trades interdependent All classes
of people interdependent. No such
thing as independence. Dives cannot
kick Lazarus without hurting his own
foot They who threw Shadrach into
the furnace got their own bodies
scorched; Or to come back to the fig
ure Of the text, what a strange thing
1t would be if the eye should say, l
oversee the entire physical mechanism.
| despise the other members of the
body, If there is anything | am dis
gusted with, it is with those miserable,
low-lived hands. Or, what if the hand
should say, | am the boss workman OF
the whole physical economy; have no
r6Snppt for tho nthor horS NJ thp
body. If there is anything | despise,
it is the eye seated under the dome
OF the forehead doing nothing but look.
I come in and | wave the flag OF
truce between these two contestants,
and | say: The eye cannot say to the
hand, / have no need of thee.
That brings me to the first sugges-
ton, and that is, that Labor and Capt.
tai are to be brought to a better I'M
derstanding by a complete canvass OF
the whole subject. They will be
brought to peace when they find that
they are identical in their interests.
| When one goes down, they both go
down. When one rises, they both rise.
There will be an equilibrium after
awhile. There never was an exception
to the rule. That which is good for
one class of society eventually will be
good for all classes of society, and that
which is bad for one class of society
will eventually and in time be bad for
all. Every speech that Labor makes
against Capital postpones the day of
! permanent adjustment. Every speech
that Capital makes against Labor post
! pOnes the day of permanent adjust
ment. When Capital maligns Labor, it
is the eye cursing the hand. When
Labor maligns Capital it is the hand
cursing the eye. AS far as l have OBJ
served, the vast majority of capitalists
are successful laborers. If the capital
lists would draw their gloves, you
would see the broken finger nail, the
scar of an old blister, the stiffened
finger joint. The great publishers of
the country for the most part we're
bookbinders, or typesetters, on small
pay. The great carriage manufacturers
for the most part sandpapered wagon
bodies in wheelwright shops. While,
on the other hand, in all our large
manufacturing establishments you will
find men on wages who once employed
a hundred or five hundred hands. The
distance between Capital and Labor
is not a great gulf over which is swung
a Niagara suspension bridge; it is only
a step, and the capitalists are crossing
over to become laborers, and the la
borers are crossing over to become
capitalists. Would God they might
shake hands while they cross. On the
other hand, laborers are the highest
style of capitalists. Where are their
investments? In banks, No! In the
railroads, No! Their nerve, their
muscle, their bone, their mechanical
skill, their physical health are mag
nifcent capital. He who has two eyes,
two ears, two feet two hands, ten fin
gers, has machinery that puts into
nothingness carpet and screw and cot
ton factory, and all the other imple-
ments on the planet. The capitalists
were laborers, the laborers were CAPT
talists. The sooner we understand
that the better.
Again: There is to come relief to
the laboring classes of this country
through cooperative associations.
am not at this moment speaking of
trades unions, but of that plan by
which laborers put their surplus to-
gether and become their own capital
lists. Instead of being dependent upon
the beck of this capitalist or that CAPT
talist, they manage their own affairs.
In England and Wales there are 813
cooperative associations. They have
$40, 900 members; they have capital of
$4,000, 900, or what corresponds to our
dollars, and they do a business an
nually of 500 10000 Thomas Brassey,
one of the foremost men in the British
parliament on the subject says: Co
operation Is the one and the only re-
lief for the laboring populations. This
is the path" he says, "by which they
are to come up from the hand-to-the-
mouth style of living, to reap the re-
wards and the honors of our advanced
civilization" Lord Deroy and John
Stuart Mill, who gave half their lives
to the study of the labor question, be-
lieved in cooperative institutions.
The cooperative institution formed in
Troy, n. Y, stood long enough to illus
trate the fact that great good might
come of such an institution, if it were
rightly carried on and nightly de-
veloped.
But" says some one, haven't
these institutions sometimes been a
failure?" Yes. Every great movement
has been a failure at some time. Ap-