The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-04
EQUALITY.
Some Observations for Independence
 Day-Are The Rich the Conseryator
 of the PaoI. .-<

Day--Ars the Rich the Conseryatol
 of the P0oIs --%
 Are not my ways equal2 Are not I your ways unequal?"-The Word oi God by the Prophet Ezekiel
 All men are created free and equal''- | Constitution of the United States of
 America.
 All men may be born equal, but they don't stay that way long.
 phia Record. z.
 Why not? The Philadelphia Record, whose observation, recently printed,
 makes a true assertion which involves some unweleome truths in its explana-
 ton. If men are created equal, then fair-minded thought must arrive at the
 conclusion that men do not stay equal because they are not equally well I trained and taught in youth, or else l they are unjustly treated by their fell low-men. The larger part of the I1u-
 man race is in pressing need of either l being taught or being treated with jus- l tice4 and consideration. Is It one or both?
 The recent action of the American Steel corporation in giyingl opportunity to it's employees to become stockholders, and the eagerness with which the l shares were subscribed for, was a sur- prise to many in what it revealed of the attitude of the working men. This attitude of the working people is a non l descript in the minds of many. This writer has had unusual opportunities for observing this attitude for many vaarq apd x,rbifa ,i,, q ,o;a
 logical studies with. all the inherited and inbred views of an employer, yet fair-minded observation has compelled me to conclude that as a rult what the workers want Is not unreasonable, and that they are more ready to trust their employers than employers are to trust the workers. It is not because their faith has too often been unrewarded that they resort to radical measures to obtain what they so earnestly desire?
 An assumption on the part of the employer that he is better able to use money than is the man who has pro- duced it, deprives the .laborer of his just share of the profits, and gives the em- ployer despotic power over the work CT. It does not take many years of such arbitrary treatment to make the em- ployer a tyrannical nabob while the worker is so bereft of his thinking pow CTS (from lack of use1 that he does not know enough to know that he is im- posed upon, but feels grateful for the privilege of toiling ten or twelve hours a day for s15O, when wise and just management might give him an eight or six hour day for S3o0.i Under pres ent conditions it cannot but be ac- knowledged that there is much truth in the idea that the laborer often is in competent to use his wages or his leis- ure for his own best good; but it is the purpose of this article to show that this incompetence is the result of unfair treatment during generations of compe- titive struggle which has produced a separa ton of equally endowed people into classes of inferior and superior development. We may also grant that the inventor or manager could not make his idea worth, a penny without the mechanic to give it concrete form, and is not the man who gives all his time to producing entitled to equal re- muneration with the man who gives all his time to thinking ?-both being abso- lutely necessary to the finished product.
 If one man assumes the right to take part of the just wages of another from him 1t Is also just assumption that the employer so doing ought to use that portion for the benefit of the work CT from whom it is taken. We often hear the system of paying small wages to the. laborer,, and large profit to the capitalist, justified by the argument that the laborer would not know how to use the money to good advantage if he had it. Do the users of this argument realize that by thus taking what right fully belongs to the laborer they consti- ute themselves his conservator? Do they realize that they should keep this money to use for his benefit and not for their own? Do they expend it in some way which will make the laborer better able to use his just share wisely. Doubtless many wealthy people do feel in this way, as is evidenced by their es- tablishment of libraries, their building of churches and endowing universities, but do they realize also that they are thus simply using the money as they ought to use it, and that it is really the laborer's money which establishes the library builds the church or endows the university?-too often, alas, for the benefit ofpthe rich man and his family and not for the use of the laborer who has built it. f5| t3
 It would be an injustice to many wealthy people to not give them credit for right feelings in bestowing their benefactions, for we often hear individ- uals say that they consider their wealth trust to be used for God Perhaps a clearer statement would be a trust from God to be used for the people. If all wealth were used in this conscientious spirit it would matter but little who had the handling of it-doubtless the laborer would often be the gainer by having an experienced person use his money for him, although it is univer- sally conceded that experience is the best teacher, and there is certain sat isfaction about handling ones own