Year: 1874

The AntagOnistic Relative Position

 between. thei Employer and the Elm

 plOyed.

 One of the saddest results of the changes which the last quarter of @ century has made in industrial life is the severance of personal relations be- tween the employer and the employed. An unavoidable consequence of this severance of interests, or rather an inseparable part of it, says the New York Tunes, is an antagonistic reIa- tive position between the employer and the employed upon the subject of work and wages. The matter has come to be merely one of buying and selling that is, of trade; and the sole object of trade is to get as much as you may and give as little as you can. The em- ployer asks only how he can have h1s work done at the least expense, and the employed where he can sell his labor at the highest price. Personal infu- ence, deference, and respect on the one side, care, consideration, sympathy, on the other, seem almost t0 have disap- peared. Moreover, the employed, par ticularly among those who do the ruder and coarser kinds of work, seem to be beyond the reach of good counsel from any quarter. Were it not 30, such strikes as those of our longshoremen, and of the Philadelphia operatives, would not occur at this time. Labor is abundant now, and money is hard to get. There are thousands of unem- ployed men in all the great cities whose is nearly exhausted, and who will soon, al 1oo &~ undertake work of lower grade and at lower wages than they have lately been accustomed to. The cold hand of win ter is upon us, and it would seem as if, under the circumstances, this was the very time when striking for wages was the most unwise step that could be taken.

 The fact that the strike is against a reduction of wages is not at all to the purpose. For it is to be. considered that during the past ten years the en- ploying class has been almost at the mercy of the employed. The latter have reduced the hours of work and raised the rate of wages, the first so low and the last so high, that at last employers, whether capitalists or not, ceased, as far as possible, from having work done. Then came the crash, and now the hard times, and the conse- quence is that employers must reduce wages, or actually stop paying them, at all, and that is. ruin to the employed, even more surely than to the employer for the latter has something to live on and the former comparatively nothing. And besides all this, with the scarcity of money has come, by the blessing of Heaven, so rich yield from the earth that food and clothing and all the necessaries of life have diminish. ed very much in cost. Whether the employers or the employed carry their point at the present moment, it seems very clear that the high wages and. short hours of the past few years can not endure. They have been suicidal, to labor.

 But although this is to be said to labor, has not labor something to say in turn? Might It not justly retort upon the employing class that it's ex- ample is now it's only teaching, and that that example is merely one of graspinq greed. It must be admitted that there would be much justice in such an answer. The commercial con- duct of the employing class, not so much toward the employed, but within it's own limits, is too often such as must shut it's mouth against all efforts of one party to compel another to come to it's terms. If men will combine to "corner not only stocks, but green backs, and even flour, and coal, and beef, and pork, how can they, with semblance of reason, find fault with those who combineto " corner labor 1? Manifestly they have nothing to say ]; in lawyers phrase they are concluded. They themselves proclaim by their ac. tions the gospel of greed. If they will combine to "hold ' flour, they must not be surprised that the men whose children need the flour combine to "hold labor. We do not mean to de- fend the actions of either class, or to hold either to standard by which only Pharisees would pretend to abide but the season of trial through which we are passing would, indeed, be one of fruitless sufferingi if it did not teach one side more prudence, and the other a higher commercial morality. =.