Year: 1870

Letter from General Butler-How WORKING
men Liye-suEgestions for the Benefit of the


Masses.


The New York Standard publishes letter
from General Butler to Wendell Phillips, dated
May g. from which we make the following ex-
tracts:-


1t seems to me that the time has now come
for the interference of the Legislature in the
investigation at least of the limit of the hours of
labor, and the limit of the employment of
youth, to determine how far it is best for the
State that its children shall be deprived of an
opportunity for education and training by the
employment of its young life in accommodating the
gains of selfish parents or adding to the profits of
equally selfish capitalists; also, what safeguards
ought to be placed around the lives and limbs
of the operatives engaged in managing huge
and powerful machines, where false step or a
false motion may cost the life or limb. On this
very necessary and important subject our sta
tute books are wholly silent, while the laws of
England are dotted all over with penal enact
ments to preserve the persons of the laborers
from accident. Also, to inquire as to what may
be done to insure a fair division of the rewards
of labor as against the profits of capital In a
word, that the law may intelligently do in this
most important relation of life and business
what it ought to do and does do in almost every
other-step in and restrain the strong from
crushing the weak. and protect the needy
against the promptings of avarice or the cruelty
OF selfshness.


Let the capitalist remember that unlike Eng
land, here the vote of the laborer controls capt.
tai in legislation, and that if capital desires to
preserve itself from unjust legislation, il must
be because labor wields the ballot with intelli-
genee. Let capital also remember that abuses
if any exist, in its relations with labor, cannot
be hidden, and may grow all the more magnif-
cent in their proportions from being partially
unknown. wrong understood only to be felt
as q fear, is always the most terrible. The
voter, uninstructed will act upon exaggerations
and erroneous impressions. The capitalist will
refuse the amelioration of evils of which he
neither knows the extent, nor perhaps the ex-
istence; and, therefore, collision with the ope-
rative because of them is inevitable. When
that collision comes, the historyo of all govern
ments shows, capital goes to the wall. Such is
the universal result of the struggle of the few
however powerful, against the many, who are
still more powerful in their numbers.


We must remember that there are now form
ing all over the country labor associations,
some of whom, feeling what they deem to be
and perhaps rightly--the injustice of the distri-
button of the rewards of labor between the capi-
talist and the operative, are demanding legisla-
tion that shall control the rate of interest upon
money even to the breach and reputation of
contracts already made. Others insist that taxa
tion shall wholly fall upon capital, and that it
shall be reached by the short and sure method
of the abolition of the public debt, for the pay
ment of the interest of which taxes are now
necessarily so heavily imposed. Other asso-
Citations of laber have deemed it necessary
for their self-preservation to refuse to in
struct in the art and trade those who
are not members, so as to prevent wha
they claim to be extortionate reduction
wages by the employment of labor outside of
the association which the capitalist can oppress
Ali these questions are pressing to-day upon the
Republican party of Massachusetts, who have
for ten years, and will, if guided by wisdom, for
many more years, control the legislation and
the destinies of the Commonwealth. Now, we
know that Massachusetts, ideas, Massachusetts,
statistics, the education of Massachusetts people,
quite considerably impress the legislation of the
whole country. In everything that depends
upon statistical information in everything that
depends upon accurate and thorough knowledge
OF the details of the subject under con-
sideration, Massachusetts has taken and
must still take the lead. But above all, being
the pioneer State in manufacturing enter
prise, she must settle for herself and for the
country the relations of labor and capital en-
ployed in manufactures. The Republican party
of Massachusetts, cannot afford to deny the de-
mand of the operative for shortening the hours
of labor, uDless it can show the laborer-who il
quite intelligent enough to understand-facts
tnat will justify such refusal. He will not take
the arbitrary exercise of the power so to dc
for a sufficient reason for its exercise. The
Republican party of Massachusetts, cannot
afford to refuse to incorporate the CO.
operative and other associations Of
the great mass of laberers who are engaged
upon the leading manufacturing product of the
Commonwealth, the shoe and leather business
because they deem it necessary to combine a.
against capital for any purpose, unless 1t car
show by a full exposition of the actual fact
that such incorporation and such association
are not requisite for self-protecton, and that al
the protection necessarily needed as between
capital and labor, and all the adjustment of th
rewards between them, can be accomplished b.
laws applicable 10 both.