The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-12-10
DEBS'S CALAMITY CRY.


To the Editor of the indianapolis Journal:
In your issue of the 9Th inst. you quote
in an editorial note from some remarks of
Mr.. Eugene V. Debs in referring to the re-
suit Of the election. as follows:
TRUSTS will run riot in the spoils of con-
quest. . Then the working class Will
get In full measure what they voted for
tories, silent mills, deserted mines, en-
forced i~dleness, reduced wages, strikes.
lockouts, injunctions. soldiers and the fu-
nerals OF workingmen in rapid succession.
There will be no work for the hand, and
the brain will have a chance"
Dark picture, indeed. Yet, dark as 1t is,
in the perspective of that picture the prac-
ticed eye can discover shades and shadows
upon which Mr.. Debs and his school would
do well to expend some earnest thought.
In the first place, Mr.. Debs's assertion
sounds painfully like political dictum and
is in keeping with Mr.. Bryan's assignment
of causes for his own defeat. There can
be no oyerproduction unless there are men
to man the forge and the bench, the loom
and the lever. The man for every place
and every station in all the sounding marts
of industry will be forthcoming If the
wage offered is great enough to tempt him
Ito tempt the young man from the farm,
the clerk from the country store. the rural
teacher from his little white schoolhouse
TO the city to enter into competition with
the men already there. 1t is a fact not
generally known that for the past three
years farm hands have been at a premium
in Indiana and many farmers have had
to forego contemplated improvements on
their farms from sheer inability 10 secure
labor. The country-bred boy is drifting to
the city and the factory because he be-
lieves he can earn more money there. On
the farm he earns $40 a month, and that
is as good as $45 in the city. But to the
city he goes. gets a job. displaces another
man and there he stays.
In the very near future this condition
of things will bear fruit to the immense
advantage of the farmers and to the re-
gretable undoing of the city wage Garner
and all other urban residents in a degree.
The population of the cities inflated at the
expense of the farms there are more
mouths to be fed and fewer hands to pro-
duce the food. The inevitable result-a
greatly enhanced price for farm products,
the first and necessity of life.
AT the present time the farms are earn
ing as much money as they can be made
to earn, and the farmers are paying all
they can afford to pay for help. If the
farms earned twice as much as they do
pay twice as much for his food as he now
does. Whenever the reward in any one
of the great spheres into which human eff
fort is divided is materially enhanced the
supply of labor in that sphere is increased
in a greater ratio. Unnatural wage infa-
ton is invariably followed by wage de-
preston. Tn depression is more endur-
ing than the initiation because the supply
of labor has been increased in a given
field-attracted by the greater reward
offered.
There is only one law that does or can
govern the whole body of what is called
the laboring class-the supply of and the
demand for labor. Both are regulated
wholly by the demand for the products of
labor, and no union, no statute, no COM
bination of either labor or capital can un-
make this rock-ribbed and i~ron-bound law.
There is enough work in the world for us
all to do. Mankind owes 10 each man the
task that he Is fitted TO perform and a liv-
ing for its performance. Every organiza.
ton or conspiracy designed to prevent
men from selling their labor in the market
is contrary to the letter of our law and
the spirit of our liberties. Unhampered la
Dor freely offered in the labor market will
yet solve the great industrial questions.
Mr.. DebS's calamity cry is a bogy. Take
away the creature called capital and the
territory of the United States would not
support its present population. Labor is
standing I'm its own light. A LABORER.
Attica. Ind Dec. 8.