The record-union., 1899-05-26
The Future of Labor.

Eds. Record Union: The discus
sion of various problems of education
and business in recent issues of the
Record Union,' apropos Of Mr. Hunt
ington's speech, leads me to say few
words that may not be anliss. Let US
glance at the problem of human indus
try briefly
If there is one plain lesson to be
drawn from history, it is that civiliza-
ton lberates men from manual labor.
The whole trend of civilization shows
that, as man has learned how to con-
quer nature by invention, he has been
freed from irksome toll.
Emerson forcibly' expresses this
thought in his very profound essay en-
titled Civilization" in which the ten
dency of the times is strikingly por-
trayed. He says:
THE farmer had much Ill temper,
laziness, and shirlzing to endure from
his hand-sawyers, until one day he be-
thought him to put his sawmfll on the
edge of the waterfall: and the river
never tires of turning his wheel.
l admire still more than the sawmfil
the skill which, on the seashore, makes
the tides drive the wheels and grind
corn, and which thus engages the as
sistance of the moon, like a hired hand,
to grind, and wind, and pump, and saw,
and split stone, and roll iron. Now
this is the wisdom of man, in every
instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon
to a star, and see his chore done by the
gods themselves. That is the way we
are strong. by borrowing the might of
the elements. The forces of steam.
gravity. galvanism, light, magnets,
wind, fire, serve US day by day, and cost
us nothing
Who that has beheld the marvellous
achievements of machinery in sup
planting man in the lower handicrafts
of hewing wood and drawing water
can doubt that the work Of production
is being steadily relegated to muscles of
iron and hearts of throbbing steam?
Under this tendency the realm of hu-
man activity ever spreads into regions
beyond mere force and brute strength.
As thinking, planning, social being,
man more and more demands of his
fellows a service that machines cannot
render.
The history of human vocations dates
back to time when the majority were
hunters or fishermen, and when more
than 80 per cent. of the male popula-
tfon was required in those active pur-
suits in which food and raiment are
obtained; in such eras of simple hands
funtrained and unaided by machines)
with little ingenuity and almost no
wealth, it was a long struggle for the
total population to wrest the creature
comforts from nature. All men We're
producers. and there was no leisure
class to minister to culture, or to follow
other than manual pursuits. Men in
caves and nomadic camps died as
horses and the wolves die-without es-
tates.
How is it to-day? The army of pro-
gress is making drafts for more and
more men and women to minister to
the wants of civilized man. Typewrit-
ing machines, telephones, electric light
plants, and thousands of other pro-
ducts of the era, called into being by
human ingenuity, summon men and
women to attend them. And while flu-
man tyocations are thus multiplying, a
few steam plows and harvesters in the
Dakotas are doing more work than
thousands of brawny workers could
have done with mole board plows and
fails two generations ago. The rapid
strides made in the economic journey
from barbarism to civilization, often
result in temporary hardships, for
thousands at times wake up to find
that the invention of some genius has
destroyed their trade in a single day
The man whose ingenuity and educa