Year: 1878

account of the disturbance of the State by
popular discomfort, which at last rises to
revolt and formulates its demands for
changes, social and political. Sir Philip
Sidneys report of these demands is not
given in just tho style in which Dennis
Kearney states the demands of party with
q similar basis, but in the nature of the de-
mands themselves the difference is not so
great as in the style of their presentation.


First was the difficulty between pro-
ducers and consumers. FOR the artisans
they would have corn and wine set at
lower price and bound to be kept 30 still
the ploughmen, vine laborers and farmers
would none of that" Here was the griev-
ance of the workingman-as the artisan
is called by Kearney and company-put
boldly forward and its nature declared by
the demand for remedy. Prices were too
high-that is, Of course, the prices OF the
necessaries of life, not the prices OF labor
not wages. They were, equally OF course,
too low; for whether Dennis says wages
are too low or his fellow politicians in Ar
cadia say bread is too high, they make the
same complaint, since the real grievance is
that the relation Of value between the
money they earn and the bread they must
buy is such that no margin is lett for vine
in Arcadia or whiskey in Boston. If man
earns two dollars day, buys four meals
at fifty cents apiece and wants five, it is
the same to him whether his wages are in
creased to two dollars and half or the
the meals put down to forty cents. In
Arcadia the workingmen were uncon-
scious that they did not make up
the whole of society themselves, just
as they are now in San Francisco
and some other places. They thought
there was certain amount OF money
in the world, because, poor slaves, they de-
pended upon gold aud silver In their
dense ignorance they would have refused
to accept piece Of paper. even though
coupled with the most solemn assurances
that it was absolute money and that metallic
coin was only prejudice money. But
though there was limit to money and they
could not crowd in that direction, there was
none to the productiveness of the earth in
corn and wine, and SO they crowded that
way and demanded, not that wages should
go up, but prices down.


But at this point they discovered that
they were not in the world alone, for they
trod upon the toes of that other important
clement in all human activities, the
grangers. It is now, was and always will
be an important dispute whether the world
-. IL nit fri Of
workingmen, or made up of workingmen
with a fringe of grangers In the eyes
of the workingmen it is one way; in
the eyes of the grangers the other.
One great case has occurred in modern
times in which the respective Importance of
these elements was tried. and the adjudica-
ton was not fattering to the claims Of the
workingman. Thin case was the French
revolution of 184S. 1t was the assumption
of that movement that modern society
might be safely based upon the absolute
denial of the existence of anybody but
those particular horny-handed sons of toll
who work in shops. Dennis Kearney draws
the line little more literally and takes in
the capitalists who own trucks Neighbor
Schwab includes men who sell lager beer
There are some persons in the city who, we
believe, include the numbering of arch
bishops as one Of the most important trades
But the difference as to who are working
men is, in fact, not an essential one, but it
was deemed that society must be based
on the workingman as the world on the
shoulders of Atlas. So they organized
government which assumed control of
industry and set up national shops and was
prepared to find work for everybody,
pay wages and sell the products all on ma
tional account. Then the granger woke up,
rubbed his eyes, and saw that all this was
to be done out Of the money raised by taxa
ton. He wanted to know who was to pay
the taxes, and they told him that that was o
function to be exclusively reserved for
grangers. He did not know what to make
of it for while but one day, when he was
asked If he would not rather have Louis
Napoleon for his emperor and lord rather
than a workingman's republic, he voted,
eyes" seven million times, and that was
the end for time of an attempt to organ
ize society with the workingman as the cor
ner stone, the four walls, the roof and all
the floors.


But in Arcadia there was difference that
contemplated the granger and the working
man in another relation than that of the
farmer who wants to sell his corn for more
money than he now gets and the working
man who wants to buy it for less than he
now pays. "The peasants would have all
the gentlemen destroyed; tho citizens
especially such as cooks, BARRIERS. and
those that lived most on gentlemen would
but have them reformed" Here the citi-
zens are such as live by trades that are
piled in cities-shopkeepers and artisans,
in fact-and the peasants are farmers who