Year: 1870

based upon false premises, anu, Oh course, re-
sulting in unfair deductions.


1t is too frequently the case that the work
ing classes select to represent them, even in the
minor affairs of their Trades Unions, the mem
bers most ready with an argument or retort,
rather than the practical, plain-spOken man of
long experience and sober judgment. The
delegates to the Labor Congress at Cincinnati
were chiefly young men-quck, impulslve-
with hold and elaborate theories for the relief
of their class in body from the ban TMch
requires them and others to obtain their bread
by the sweat of their brOws, and with little
knowledge of the thousand and one instances
in which better-laid schemes for the same
purpose have gone awry. These delegates GER
tainly displayed crude ability of very unusual
sort but it was exerted in the wrong direc-
ton. They have studied certain questions of
the day, but not the vital, national ones and
they presented these, or rather we should say
distorted them, in manner to interest, but
not, we imagine, to deceive the working
classes. They talked at great length of the
land question, which is not one with which to
revolutionize parties or to found new one !;
but so confounded their declaration OF opposi-
ton to land grants with theories of the equal
distribution of the public domain, so that every
laboring man might have sufiieiency
thereof, that the effect of the sensible part
of their doctrine is lost. They talked
of the finances, but were not more practical.
The financial scheme of the Labor theorists
would be very bad one for the labOring
man, inasmuch as ait abrOgates," to quote
one of the delegates who opposed it, private
debts as well az public, and adds to the dls-
grace of reputation the hypocrisy OF pretend
ing TO paw There was discussion OF C00lle
immigration, which was based on the erro-
neous notion that the Burlingame treaty
permits instead of prohibits the Coolie
traffic. Cooperation came in also for its share
of attention, and the Congress finally resolved
that the laboring men "will at all times pa
tronize and encourage the products of Coop
"erative industry in preference to those of
"Capitaln OF course the resolution is nom
sense signifying nothing; for as long as hu-
man nature remains unaltered sensible and
economical laboring men will continue, indi-
yidually, no matter what they or their repre-
sentatives may resolve collectively, to buy
their supplies where they are to be had most
cheaply


In brief, the Labor Congress talked of poll
tics which it did not clearly comprehend, and
with which the purely industrial interest Is
wholly disconnected and betrayed what has
long since ceased to be a secret, that its prl-
mary purpose is to use the machinery OF the
Trades Unions of the country to form po-
litical party whose chief and guiding principle
shall be Legislation for the laboring classes"
We refuse to believe that any respectable
party can be built up in this country on any
such unsOund and narrow principle. Neither
Republicans nor Democrats will any more
consent to abandon the parties which they be-
ieve to be national in their aims to support
faction that openly declares itself to be the
party of class, than they will voluntarily act
with a party representing only a section of
| the country. The debates in the Congress
themselves indicate the great strength OF the
opposition among workingmen to the scheme
for transforming the Trades Unions into po-
litical clubs and it may be said that the
movement is a failure at its inception. The
designers of the Labor party have not struck
deep enough, nor at the right time. There
prevails among the laborng classes of this
country no deep sense of great wrongs, no
earnest desire for needed reform, upon which
to base political movement. And 1t is the
lesson of all ages, which the managers of the
Labor party would do well to study, that
strong vigorous parties which deserve to live
are born only of great cOnvulsions. 1t Is
not given to every one to direct such parties
| and conduct such reforms.