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Tous les autres exemplalres originaux sont fiimds en commen9ant par la premldre page qui comporte une emp'einte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernldre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles sulvants apparattra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols — ► signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbols V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent *tre fiimis d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour §tre reprodult en un seul clichd, il est film* A partir de I'angle sup6rleur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas. en prenant le nombre d'Images n6cessaire. Les diagrammes sulvants illustrent la mithode. 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 m I 4-7/ A PLAIN MAN'S TALK ON THE LABOR QUESTION 6f BY SIMON NEWCOMB, LL.D. AUTHOR OF "principles OP POLITICAL ECONOMY" "tUE ABC OF finance" ETC. f . ^^ Strike^ but hcar^* NEW YORK HARPER k BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1886 J- 203315 C-^ / c^'- Copyright, 1886, by Haiiper & Brothers. AH rxQlii* rturved. PREFACE. The following chapters owe tlieir inception to the editor of the New York Independent, in which journal the outlines of most of them liave recently appeared. They are now recast, amplified, and submitted to the courteous con- sideration of the reader. CONTENTS. PART I -SOCIETY AND ITS WANTS. TALK fA«" I. To THE Reader 9 II. Society is a Co-operative Union ... 13 III. Our Common Interests 22 IV. Objections Considered 80 v. Benefits and Evils op Organized Ac- tion . 41 PART II. -CAPITAL AND ITS USES. VI. The Railway Question : its Bio Side . 51 VII. The Railway Question: its Little Side. 5t VIII. How One Man may Do the Work op Ten Thousand 68 IX. Was it Good for Us that we Allowed One Man to Make a Hundred Mill- ion Dollars ? 79 X. The Capitalist and what he has Done for Us , . . 91 XI. What Capital HA Done for the Laborer. 101 vi CONTENTS. PART III. -THE LABORER AND IIIS WAGES. ViliK PAQI XII. Vision op a Puritan Deacon . . . .113 XIII. The Account Current 127 XIV. A Talk to a Knight of Labor . . .135 XV. Another Talk to a Knight op Labor. 144 XVI. How CAN All get Better Wages ? .152 XVII. Cheap Labor and its Effects. . . .161 XVIII. The Same Subject Continued. . . .169 XIX. Is Waste a Good ? 178 XX. Conclusion 189 E8. PAOB 113 127 135 144 152 161 169 178 189 PART I. SOCIETY AND ITS WANTS A PLAIN MAN'S TALK ON THE LABOR QUESTION. L TO THE READER. I DO not address you, dear reader, as an au- thority on this subject, propounding a code of doctrine which you are bound to accept. I am only a pkin man, who has all his life tried to find out what he could, from study and observation, about the state of society in different countries of the world, and about the relation between the great operations of in- dustry and commerce on the one side, and human welfare on the other. I do not expect to tell you anything which you cannot easily understand, and most of the facts I have to lay before you you must already know; or, at 10 A PLAIN MANS TALK least, you can easily verify. Of doctrine I have little, and of theory still less. Indeed, I am not a believer in any rigid theory of society, for the simple reason that any theory we may propound is liable to be modified by changes in the condition of society. The way I look at the labor question is this : We find ourselves face to face with a state of things which no thinking person can contem- plate without deep solicitude. Wide-spread dis- satisfaction prevails among tlie laboring class- es, not only in this country, but in the most enlightened countries of Europe. What gives gravity to the problem is, that these classes wield a power, social and political, which they never before wielded in the world's history. Their power is reinforced by a belief among the intellectual classes, and in society generally, that men have accumulated large fortunes by unworthy means, and that great corporations exert a power for evil which society ought not to tolerate. When we inquire how it is that great fortunes have been gained and dan- gerous powers acquired by compact bodies of men, we find it to be in pursuance of a cer- tain way of doing business which we have in- lierited from our ancestors, and of which the ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 11 main feature is foinided on the supposed right of every man to get as rich as he can by law- ful combinations and bargains with his fel- low-men, and to use the wealth thus acquired in the way that he thinks best. The question whether this system will, and ought to be, permanent, or whether it is unsuited to the new conditions of production which now pre- vail, is the great question of the day. We see everywhere in society a deep-seated belief that there is something wrong in a state of society in which one man may be enormous- ly rich while another has not a place that he can call his own in which to lay his head. The great object of the labor movement is to do something towards curing the wrong. Every right-feeling man must sympathize with this object because every such person must desire the good of all his fellow-men. But it does not follow that, because labor- organizations desire to cure the evil, therefore all the measures they propose will have that effect. Suppose all their measures well adapt- ed to getting out of the frying-pan, the prov- erb tells us where they may then find them- selves. The interests of sixty millions of people make a very complicated whole, which 12 A PLAIN man's talk the mind cannot easily grasp ; and when we try to promote them at one point, we may set them back at a hundred other points without knowing it. The only way to reach a satis- factory conclusion is, to study out all the facts of the case, beginning with the biggest ones, and going step by step to those which are smaller. Great and universal facts should form the basis of all our thought upon the subject, because they are of vastly more im- portance than the special facts, which, by their newness and force, strike our attention at the moment. In accordance with this general method of viewing the subject, I have tried to see what is the greatest fact with which we have to deal, and I find it to be the one which forms the title of the following chapter. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 13 II. SOCIETY IS A CO-OPERATIVE UNION. The first and greatest fact we have to deal with is, that the society of which we are all members has grown into a great co-operative association, extending over the whole country, nay, over the civilized world. Look where we will, we find that every one is working for the good of people whom, in most cases, he never saw and never expects to see. For example : walking through the streets of a city we find hodcarriers and bricklayers en- gaged in erecting a building. But not one of the men at work on that building will ever live in it. Yet it will be sure to benefit some one. If it is a warehouse, it will, perhaps, be used for the storage of clothing for thousands of other people ; possibly for people who are not yet born. If a dwelling, a family, or a score of families, will soon be sheltered by it. Going a little farther, we see a cobbler at work. He is mending shoes for his neighbor. A IB 14 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK little farther on we find a furniture factory. Here a thousand men are running machinery to make furniture for their fellow-men. The chairs they make may be used in half the states of the Union. Going through the streets where retail stores are situated we shall find merchants and clerks taking care of and selling goods for all the people of the city. If we go into a manufacturing town we shall find operatives weaving cloth or forging iron for the community. If we watch a railway we shall find that the thousand men engaged in running it are bringing goods for the use of the people of a whole city, or of a whole state. Moreover, everything that all these people are doinsj is for the benefit of others. Let us in imagination walk along a railway and stop the first freight train that comes along. We insist on finding out what interest we have in that freight train. Opening the first car, we find it loaded with hides, which are to be tanned into leather, which leather is to be made into boots and shoes. Accidents aside, every hide will help to clothe somebody's feet. Another car we find loaded with flour. Every pound of that fiour is going to be eaten by ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 15 soinebod}^ ; and what the men in charge of it are now doing is to bring it within the reach of the consumer. Another car we find loaded with butter and apples. Every pound of that butter and every one of those apples arc to be eaten by somebody. Go in this way through the whole list, and examine every car on every railway in the country, and you will find that each is loaded with something for somebody, and that all the work of the men running the railway is for the benefit of the people who are finally to make use of the goods they are transporting. As you read these lines there are tens of thousands of men scattered from Maine to California — nay, spread over the various coun- tries of Europe and Asia — who are at work on things which are to minister to your individ- ual well-being, one, two, or three years hence. Men in China are raising tea, which is to sup- ply you with drink. Men in France are rais- ing sheep, the wool off of whose backs will go into your future coat. A man in Dakota is cutting a log, the timber of which will go into a match with which you are to light your can- dle. A cowboy in Texas is now pasturing the animal out of whose hide the boots you are 16 A PLAIN man's talk to wear two years benco will bo made. A man in Cornwall is digging out tin ore, tbe metal from wbicli will go upon tbe roof of your bouse to protect yon from tbe rain. Men in Scotland are building a sbip wbicb will bring tbe tin over to you. Men in Pbiladelpbia are preparing tbe macbinery for rolling tbe iron on wbicb tbe tin will be spread. Men in Illi- nois are preparing tbe ground to raise tbe wbeat to make tbe bread wbicb you will eat during tbe next two years. I bave studied a great many tbings, botb in tbe beavens and on tbe eartb, but nowbere bave I found anytbing more marvellous tban tbis social organism, a glimpse of wbose oper- ations I bave tried to give you. Tbe most marvellous tbing about it is tbat tbe opera- tions are all can'ed on by men wbo seem to tbcir fellows entirely selfisb. We cannot pos- sibly claim tbat all tbese tbousands of peo- ple wbo are at work providing for your com- fort during tbe next two, tbree, or four years are actuated by love for you. Following out tbe principles wbicb I bave laid down, we need not inquire too closely into tbeir mo- tives. Tbe great fact is tbat tbey are work- ing for our benefit ; and so long as tbey do ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 17 this we need not criticise their motives. Let it satisfy us to remember that " handsome is as handsome does.'' I feel that my description of this social ma- chine is extremely inadequate ; but the reader knows as much about it as I do, and must complete the description for himself. 1 beg that he will look around his room and his house, think what he is going to eat and drink during the next few years, and try in imagina- tion to picture to himself the present activi- ties of the men on whose industry his future happiness depends. If he will thus get ti complete picture of the facts as he already knows them well in his mind, he will have the key to the whole problem of the labor ques- tion. I now have to make an application of the great fact just set forth. The question is often raised whether men are born under a natural obligation to use their powers and faculties for the benefit of their fellows. I am disposed to hold that they are. But the ques- tion has always seemed to me, at its best, a somewhat barren one, for the simple reason that it is idle for us to claim the validity of any such obligation unless we can enforce 2 18 A PLAIN MAN S TALK it. Laws which cannot be enforced do more harm than good whether in morals or poli- tics. But the point w^hicli I wish now to urge is, that the interest which might attach to this question of moral obligation is dimin- ished by the great fact that men are al- ready engaged in using their best faculties for each other's benefit. We really have, among us and around us, the very Utopia which social philosophers have so often dreamed of; a state of society in which, if not every man, at least a large majority of men, are using their best faculties for every- body else's benefit. When they stop doing this — when the physician refuses to heal, the railway manager to direct, the Congressman to legislate, the professor to teach, the actor to go upon the stage, the farmer to sow and reap, the engine-driver to run his engine, the car- penter to build, the bricklayer to do his work, and the grocer to sell his gooas — then we shall have before us the great, burning question whether we are all to compel each other to perform our social obligations. So far as the present juncture is concerned, all I can say is that the views set forth in this little book will be found in perfect consistency yntlx the the- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 19 cry that man is born with some obligations towards his fellow-man, but that I see no pres- ent need of urging the theory. The real point on which men differ is, not the question of obligation, but the question what a man onght to do if he wanted to fulfil the obligation, and this is the question I want to submit to your judgment. At this point I have a confession to make. It has seemed to me that, in nearly all practi- cal and social questions, the true position was that of the golden mean. But on this partic- ular subject of the social organization I must confess that I am an ultraist, in admiring the co-operative system at work among us. When I reflect that two hundred years ago nearly all our ancestors went barefoot, because only a few rich people could supply their children with shoes ; that a hundred years ago none except the rich had any clothes except what they made themselves^ nor any food except what they raised by their own labor; and when I now look and see railway managers planning and thinking liow they can so man- age their trains as to bring to you, to me, and to our families, in the quickest and surest way, the fruit from California which we so 90 A PLAIN man's talk like to eat, the butter from New York State, the hides from Texas, and the flour from Chi- cago, which are so necessary to our comfort — I say when, in addition to all these thousands of men who are making these things for us, we see these great administrators of railways patiently planning by day and night the most effective way to supply our wants — I am as- tonished that any man should be otherwise than most thankful that ho was not born until the nineteenth century. If the reader thinks he could devise any better system for his own happiness or for that of his neighbor he has a much higher opinion of his own ability than I iiave of mine. I confess that I should despair of inventing any system under which that man up in Dakota should be insured to cut down the timber to get the wood to make the matches to light my gas with next year, and to secure the proper co-operation among all the thou- sands of men who must work on those match- es, both in making and transporting them, until the grocer's boy in his wagon shall de- liver them at my door. If you, dear reader, have any plan by which this will all be done more economically than it is done now, by which you can guarantee that all the cutters ON THE LADOE QUESTION. 21 of timber, tlic makers of rafts, the men in the sawmill, the brakemen on the railway, the man- ufacturers of chlorate of potash, the diggers of sulphur, the makers of machinery, the makers of match-boxes, the grocers and the grocer's boy, shall every one perforin his func- tions without fail, I should like to know it. But I do not think you have. Possibly, however, you think there are cer- tain unsatisfactory features in its workings which you could remedy if you had the power No doubt there are. No matter how well a thing may be done, w^e always find it to admit of improvement. Much as I admire our so- cial system, I know it has many imperfec- tions. My main object in preparing these talks is to see what causes of complaint we have, and whether we can heal them better than they w\\\ heal themselves. What wo most want to know at the present critical juncture is whether the policy urged by friends of the labor movement will make tho laborer better or worse off ; hence we have to consider the interests of the laborer as well as of every one else. ill III A PLAIN man's talk III. OUR COMMON INTERESTS. From the facts laid down in the two pre- ceding chapters we may draw certain infer- ences of prime importance. Our first infer- ence is that the material welfare of every individual depends entirely upon how much work his fellow-men do to supply his wants. If we consider the products on which our well-being depends — the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the beds we sleep upon, and the houses which shelter us, w-e find that they are all results of the labor of other men. Moreover, so far as merely material prosperity is concerned, that is, the prosperity for which we are all laboring, our welfare depends wholly upon the extent to which we can get our fellow-men to supply our wants. No matter how dull business may be, no matter how lit- tle money we may have, no matter how low our wages, if we are only assured for ourselves i! ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 28 and onr children that wo shall be warmly and comfortably clothed, housed, and supplied with all requisite nourishment, bodily and mental, then we are prosperous. Tlius our prosperity depends upon what wo get our fellow-men to do for us, and upon nothing else. Of course it is not claimed that this kind of prosperity is the only kind worth having. Strong digestion and a good conscience are more important than better food and finer clothes ; but we cannot buy these great requi- sites from anybody. I am here talking only of things made for us by our fellow-men, and which we cannot make for ourselves. I now wish to illustrate the great fact that the general prosperity and welfare of the com- munity at large, so far as they arise from ma- terial things outside of ourselves, depend upon the quantity of things that are produced by human labor, and upon nothing else. Let us begin with the need of houscf , and let us see how completely the satisfaction of that need depends upon the number of houses that can be built. There are, we may suppose, sixty millions of people now living within the limits of the u A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK I! '!' United States. Let iis suppose that there are in all four millions of houses within the same limits. Then it is mathematically certain that, on the average, we must put fifteen people into each house. By no kind of legislation, by no organization, by no social changes, can wo get sixty millions of people into four mill- ions of houses without putting an average of fifteen into each house. If this is a greater number than the average house will conven- iently hold, then it is mathematically certain that the inconvenience can be relieved only by building more houses, and that the greater the numbei* of houses built, the more rapidly the means of relief will be attained. Thus our whole sixty millions of people, no matter what their occupations — capitalists, laborers, carpenters, bricklayers, and farmers — have a deep interest in getting as many houses built as possible, and every kind of action on the part of house-builders which diminishes the number of houses built tends to the discom- fort of everybody. Another consideration may be adduced. During the next ten years the population will probably increase by fifteen millions. If we adopt the principle that every fifteen persons ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 25 must have a house, then a million of new houses must be built during that time to keep lip our present degree of comfort, and we must also keep the present ones in repair. There is. therefore, a still greater necessity that we shall get as many houses built as pos- sible. Thus we see clearly that if bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, lumbermen, and others whose services are necessary to build houses insist on reducing their hours of labor by twenty-live per cent., the whole community will, with mathematical certainty, be subjected to a certain amount of physical discomfort for want of the house-room to which they are accustomed. I say this is a physical and math- ematical necessity, from which no adjustment of wages and no public policy will relieve us. AVhat we have said of the necessity of houses is true of everything else conducive to our comfort and our subsistence. If we divide the number of barrels of flour produced in the country by the number of families in it, wo shall liave the average number of barrels which each family may possibly have. To find the average which each family really gets we must, of course, subtract the number sent abroad before we make the division. It 26 A PLAIN man's talk II I 1 ! is then certain that we shall have a certain quantity which cannot be exceeded for the average use of each family. If the sum total of flour produced is diminished by any cause whatever, there will be less to cat. Moreover, since all flour produced is finally eaten, the greater the crops the more flour everybody will have. Again, in the case of clothes, every suit of clothes which is made is worn by somebody, and none can be worn by anybody unless they are first made. Hence we all have an interest in having managers of factories, tailors, leather- makers, shoemakers, and a host of other peo- ple engaged in promoting the manufacture of clothing and shoes, working as long and efii- ciently as por>sible. Of course, if any of these things which are now made by human labor can hereafter be made by machinery, so as to save labor, we shall be the better off. A certain amount of labor will be set free from the manufacture which can be employed either in improving the product, or in making something else which we want. If we reflect how utterly in- adequate all the labor of the country would have been to produce a quarter of the good ON THE LABOK QUESTION. 27 things which surround us, had labor-saving machinery never been introduced, we shall see how much we all owe to this machinery. We also see that there can be no great de- struction of property, no matter to whom it belongs, without damaging thousands or mill- ions of people to greater or less degree. No doubt when the unthinking man reads of such a great calamity as that of the great Chicago fire in 1871, he feels sorry for it only because others suffered ; and he thinks he did not suf- fer himself at all. Yet, on the average, the people of the country at large were the worse off for that fire. Of course, the calamity most affected the hundred thousand people who were for a time rendered houseless, and who had to suffer privations while houses were be- ing built; but the wheat that was burned diminished the quantity that was available for the country at large, and increased the price in tlie same proportion. Thousands all over the country had, during the year or two fol- lowing, to go with a little less bread than they would otherwise have had. There is a way of thinking of those conclu- sions which will greatly help the reader to judge whether any particular policy does or u 23 A PLAIN man's talk ill '^ il )ii in I ! I does not benefit the public at large. The an- nual products of the country form a certain sum total which, if we knew what they were, we could add up at the end of each year. For example, at the end of each year there will be a certain number of houses finished, a certain number of barrels of flour produced, a certain number of suits of clothes made, and so on. We may imagine all these things to be brought into one great central depository. Then we may imagine everybody who uses them to take them out of the depository. We then see that nobody should be allowed to take any- thing out unless he puts an equivalent in. We also see that the more put in, the more can be taken out, and vice versa. We shall also see that the question whether the effect of any policy is good or bad depends very largely upon whether it increases or diminishes the sum total of the products necessary for human welfare. This way of looking at our welfare and prosperity may seem so singular to you as to cause doubt in your own minds of its correct- ness. I do not ask you to accept it on my authority, but I do ask you to think it over. The common method is to talk about wages, I .11 ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 29 prices, demand for labor, the brisk or dull state of business, the plenty or scarcity of monoy, and so on. But a very little thought will show you that our real welfare does not consist in any of these things. It may, indeed, be aifected by it, but the effect must depend on whether demand for labor, brisk business, plenty of money, competition, combination, and so on, result in our getting more or better food, clothing, houses, and furniture. I think, therefore, the true way is to go right down to the actual things we want and see what will help us to get them. Instead of thinking of these indirect agencies, as we are prone to do, let us think of the things themselves — food, clothing, and shelter. If you do this, you will clearly see that it is for your interest and mine that all the things necessary to supply our wants are made and brought within our reach, and that, if this is assured, w^e need not care further for the state of the market. ^:' 30 A PLAIN MAN'S TALK t "Ht IV. OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. EvEBY person capable of reasoning must see that the conclusions that I have drawn are unavoidable, so far as tlie general or aver- age prosperity is concerned. But the ques- tion may arise in the mind of the reader whether increasing the general prosperity in the w^ay pointed out necessarily increases the prosperity of each individual. I can imagine him to make the following reply to all I have been saying on the subject : "You show plainly enough that if we put sixty millions of men into four millions of houses, we must, on the average, put fifteen people into each house ; and I readily admit that, were one million of new houses built, we should, on the average, have to put only twelve people into each house. What you call the average prosperity, obtained by dividing the number of people by the number of houses, will no doubt be thus improved. But it does ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 81 nut at all follow that there will be any pro- portional increase in the actual material pros- perity of the people, as yon yourself have de- fined it. As a matter of fact, although the people may average fifteen to a house, they are divided very unequally. Some large houses have, only a single family, of perhaps ^vg people, all told. In our great cities there arc large tenement houses in which hundreds live in a single house. Now if the million new houses built were all to be occupied by those who now live in crowded quarters, your con- clusion would be all right. But would not these new houses, as a matter of fact, be mostly occupied by well-to-do owners, who al- ready have house-room enough, thus leaving the crowded poor as badly off as ever ? And so with the bread, the shoes, the clothing, the furniture, and everything else you have de- scribed. Who will be benefited if their pro- duction is increased ? It is not merely a ques- tion of producing what the people want, but it is a question of the product going to those who most want it and most deserve it — that is, the laboring classes. How will your theory stand this test ?" I have stated this objection as fairly and i ■:!' it :k I: ifij! 82 A PLAIN man's talk strongly as I can, because, as a matter of fact, the thing actually works just the way you think it ought to work. As a general rule, an increase of product is mainly beneficial — not perhaps to the lowest class of all, but cer- tainly to the class of honest skilled and un- skilled laborers. Let us look closely into the question. A million new houses are built. As things go, will those houses be occupied principally by the rich, who already have house- room enough, or by those classes who have not house-room enough, or will it be divided between them ? I reply to this that they will be mainly occupied by those who most need houses, and who are industrious enough to pay rent for them, and that very few will be taken by the rich. The reason of this is that the rich have already all the house-room that they want, and will have it, do what we will. Practically they have the first pick out of the depository we imagined in the last chapter, and so will take out just what they want, and no more. So what is added is not for their benefit, but for the benefit of those who are less fortunate. For example, a rich man with his family cannot occupy more than one house, except in rare instances, where a man of wealth .' ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 33 keeps several for his own benefit. The num- ber who want to do this is so very small that if a million additional houses were built we may be assured that not one out of fifty of them would be occupied by those who are rich enough to have all the house-room they want. They might indeed vacate old houses to oc- cupy the new ones, but then the old ones would be for rent, just as if they had been newly built. The additional million of houses would therefore be mostly occupied by those who now have need of more house-room for their own comfort. It may be still further asked how the labor- ing classes could have more house-room unless they were better able to pay house rent? This question is answered very simply and briefly by saying that the increased number of houses would result in the lowering of rents. The owner of each house of course wants to get some benefit out of it, and, if he cannot live in it himself, the only possible way by which he can be benefited is in getting somebody else to live in it and pay rent for it. Hence house-owners would be obliged to lower their rents until they got tenants. Moreover, we must remember that in design- 3 t: 34 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK ';:! II ' I ii ing and building a house, their own interest would lead them to keep in view the wants of the particular classes who would be able to rent new houses when the rents were a little lower. What we have said of houses is yet more true of the other necessities of life. Suppose a diminution in the production of beef and pork brought about by a strike on the part of laborers engaged in producing the staples of life. It is then mathematically certain that the community, taken as a whole, will have less beef and pork to eat. Does the objector think that in this case it will be the rich rath- er than the poor who suffer ? If he does, he thinks the contrary to the truth. The Yan- derbilts and the Goulds have no regard to the scarcity or the high price of food in deciding what and how much they shall eat. They never said to their wives, " Beef is so high we must stop eating it and take to pork." "Pork is so high that we must economize in its use." " Flour is so dear the children must be satis- fied with corn-cake." But since, when the supply is diminished, it is mathematically cer- tain that somebody will have to have less beef and pork to eat, if this somebody is not among ui ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 35 •I? 11 the rich, he will be found elsewhere. Hence it will not be the rich, but the poor, who, find- ing the price raised, will be compelled to econ- omize. Thus the whole pressure will fall upon the poor. The very same thing is true of clothing. No matter how much the production of cloth- ing may be diminished, the wealthy will get all the clothes they want. They will wear them so long as they arc fashionable, and then they will give or sell them to poorer people. The man who must wear an old coat a week longer in consequence of a scarcity will not be a rich man, but a poor one. We thus sec that the objection, instead of operating against the theory we have laid down, operates to strength- en it, by showing that it is the laboring classes who have the greatest interest in the manu- facture of the necessaries of life, and in the continuous running of the railway trains and other machinery of communication necessary to bring the products to those who want them. The objector may claim that all this does not quite cover the point he wishes to make. Per- haps he proceeds as follows : "What you admit about the advantages which the rich have over the poor is one of ao A I'LAIN MAN 8 TALK the very things I comphiin of. You say thiit society actually is a great co-operative uiiioii. I grant it. But it is a union which does not divide its profits fairly among its members. It gives one man a hundred or a thousand times what it does another ; and there is no such difference as that among their merits. Our system does not lead to justice in the dis- tribution of the products of labor. Your claim that if we improve our work by building more houses, and producing more abundantly of the necessaries of life, the poor will get most of the advantage, does not do away with this fundamental injustice." Desiring, as I do, to make no claims which the reader will not consider valid, I must say that I cannot fully answer this objection in the present chapter. In fact, the remaining part of the present book is principally devoted to answering it, directly or indirectly. I cannot even claim that a conclusive answer is possi- ble, for the simple reason that questions of justice are very largely questions between a man and his own conscience. I shall endeavor to anticipate your verdict only by suggesting two points. In the first place, I hope to show to your en- tit ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 87 tire satisfaction tliat the proportion of injus- tice to justice is far less than is generally sup- ])osccl, and that there is no such inequality in the general distribution of the products of labor as men think there is. True, the in- equalities are great, very great, but I think that, looking at them on a largo scale, you will iind that they are not inconsistent with Chris- tian justice and the well-being of the race. In the next place, I must point out that the practical side of the question is that on which it must finally turn. Granting that things are not exactly what they ought to be, that is no reason for changing them by making them worse. I am in hearty sympathy with every effort to make them better; and I do not be- lieve there is any difference of opinion between the reader and myself as to what a better state of things would consist in. We fully agree that things will be improved when every man can earn a comfortable living without laboring more hours a day than is good for his health and happiness. The only point on which we can differ is whether particular measures, es- pecially those proposed by labor organizations, are going to promote this object or retard it. Now this is the very question that I have m 4 ii 1 88 A PLAIN MAN S TALK written this little book to discuss, so that we need not consider the matter further in this chapter. There is still another objection which possi- bly might have been the first one to present itself to tlie mind of tlie reader. Jle will probably put it in the following shape : " You seem to think that human welfare is necessarily promoted by always increasing the quantity of. the necessaries of life produced. You forget that after enough of these neces- saries to supply the wants of the population is produced it is a waste of labor and a positive disadvantage to produce more. For example : when we have made all the clothes that people want to w^ear, nobody will be the better off for piling up more clothing in warehouses. The same is true of all the necessaries of life — food, clothing and shelter. The overpro- duction of the necessaries of life is not only useless, but it is a positive disadvantage, be- cause it lowers their price, and thus tends to lower the wages of those engaged in the pro- duction." This objection would arise from mistaking my meaning. When I talk of in- creasing the production of those things neces- sary to our welfare, I do not mean making the ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 89 same old goods in greater quantity, but mak- ing them of better quality and making new and better kinds of goods. For example : sup- pose that the labor of all the clothiers and tailors of the country sufficed to keep the pop- ulation comfortably clad. Then suppose that an improvement in producing clothes is made of such a kind that the whole population could be clad in the same way by the labor of one half of those clothiers and tailors. The whole body of the latter could then make twice as much clothing of the same kind. But they will not do this, nor do I mean that they ought to do it. What they really ought to do, and what they will do, is to employ the labor saved by the improvement in making the clothes finer, softer, warmer, and better ; in putting more needlework into the dresses of your children, so that they shall look nice when they go upon the street ; in making you white table-cloths, so that you will have a nicer looking table to give you an appetite for your dinner; in making cushions for your chairs, and better beds to sleep on, and so forth. It is surprising how soon you will find your- self able to enjoy twice the product when it takes these improved forms. This is the kind 1^ !■ y 40 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK of improvement tliat has been going on for tlie past hundred years, and is likely to go on for a; hundred years to come. If it is not perfectly clear to you that hon- est, efficient workingmen are those who have gained the most by machinery, manufactures, and railways, then you have only to learn from your grandparents what wages your predeces- sors used to command fifty years ago, what kind of beds they used to sleep on, what kind of chairs they used to sit on, and so forth. Find out, also, how often they could afford a doctor, and what kind of schooling the chil- dren got. If you will do this carefully, and read in Professor McMaster's " History of the United States " how these things were a hun- dred years ago, I have no fear of the result. l!iil!P I ■'SI ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 41 V. BENEFITS AND EVILS OF ORGANIZED ACTION We ought all to feel greatly interested in the question : What measures promote the public good, and what measures retard it? Every man is a part of society, and whatever is for the good of society at large will pro- mote his interest, while whatever injures so- ciety injures every member of it. Hence, whenever we hear of a public movement of any kind, an eight -hour movement, a great strike, a rise in prices, a tariff law, a boycott, the first question we should ask is : Will that movement tend to the benefit or to the injury of society at large ? Now, the great advantage of the way of looking at our common interests which I have pointed out in the preceding chapters is, that it affords us a rule for answering this great question in nearly every case which arises. Every kind of action which gives the pub- lic at large a better supply of the necessaries jip: '■i- tig 42 A PLAIN man's talk and comforts of life promotes our prosperity ; everything which diminishes that supply re- tards our prosperity. We have, therefore, only to inquire whether more or less service is rendered the public by any course of action to judge of the effects of that action. As a general rule, every man promotes his own interest when he takes such measures that he can render better service to the public. For, as a general rule, he will be able to com- mand a higher price for that better service. Then he beneiits the public and himself at the same time. But he may also benefit himself by such a course of action that the public shall be in greater need of his services, so that he shall be able to exact a higher price without im- proving those services. Such a policy will, as ft general rule, injure the public more than it will benefit him. Assuming, as I do, that the reader feels an interest in the public welfare, and wants to know whether any particular pol- icy does or does not promote that welfare, I will give some illustrations of the principle just laid down. When the members of a medical society direct their efforts towards learning how to ]i ■'■HI ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 48 cnre disease by exchanging the results of their own experience and stndj, they promote the public good, because they thus learn how to treat diseases more effectively, and to heal their patients more rapidly. It is to their own profit to do this, because the better heal- ers of disease they can make themselves, tlie more ready their patients will be to employ them. But when tliey combine by an agree- ment that they will not visit a patient for loss than a certain fixed price, their action tends to the public injury, because they may ex- clude many poor patients who, not being able easily to pay the price, will go without med- ical attendance. They injure the public even more than they benefit themselves. When manufacturers associate themselves together to collect information for improving their methods of producing goods, they bene- fit the public by giving it a larger supply of the goods. But when they agree that they will not sell below a certain price, even if they have to diminish the supply of goods, then they injure the public, because they gain their end only by increasing the public necessities through cutting off its supplies. When an association of merchants, or a ■,*- ■m pp i ii 44 A PLAIN man's talk ifli mercantile exchange, devotes itself to procur- ing the latest and most exact news of prices and markets in various parts of the world, it promotes the public good, because its mem- bers will then buy from the people who most want to sell ; and they will sell to the people who are in greatest need of goods, because it is such people who, other conditions being equal, will be willing to pay the highest prices. lUi*-. if they should combine not to sell below a Certain price, and to stop trading unless they <^ould make -a certain profit, it would tend to the ger.eral injury by lessening the supplies of the necessaries of life. Please notice the principle involved in all the preceding cases. The whole question turns on whether you attract men to do what you want them to do, or throw obstacles in the way of their doing differently from what you desire. Suppose that you are accustomed to go by a certain road to market. I open a dijfferent road, which it is for my advantage that you should take rather than your old road. If I induce 3'ou to change by digging up your old road, so that it is harder than be- fore for your horses, and thus press you to take mine, then I injure you. But if I plant ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 45 my new road with flowers and make it pmooth- er and better than the old one, so that you take it of your own choice, then I benefit you. The distinction between inducing the pnbh'c and pressing it is so simple that 1 do not sec how any one can fail to see it, yet the astonish- ing fact is that they do fail. We continually hear people say they are forced to do things which they need not do at all unless it is for their own advantage; and Ave also hear of ap- plying force or pressure to people in order to give them liberty to do as they please. This same principle can be applied to the effects of labor orn^anizations. A union of laborers throughout the country, having for its object to get information of the rate of wages in all employments in different parts of the country, and to learn the prices of the necessaries of life with a view of knowing where to apply for work, would be beneficial both to the members and the public. It would benefit the members by enabling them to find the best market for the^r labor, and it would benefit the public by sending labor- ers where wages are highest ; that is, where the public had most need of labor. So, also, if the organization devote itself to 46 A PLAIN man's talk III!' the improvement of its members in the effi- ciency with which they could carry on their trade, it would be a public benefit. For exam- ple, if an association of carpenters should learn, by comparing notes, how to do ten per cent, more work in the same time, and still do it in the very best manner, it would be a public benefit, because then each person who lives in a house would be able to have a little larger or better house than he had before the carpen- ters thus improved themselves. The same thing would be true if bricklayers taught each other how to build a better wall in the same time, or plasterers to do fine and strong work as easily as they now do poor work. In all such cases the wants of the community would be better supplied. So, also, if a labor union should devote its energies to searching out the idle children of the poor, who are growing up without either manual training or an education, and should induce or encourage all of them to learn such trades as would make them useful members of society, then a great good would be done. I do not know any feature of our modern so- ciety more discouraging to the philanthropist than the number of child^'en in our great ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 4T cities who arc growing up with no thought of how they shall earn a living in the future, and I know of no more wortliy form of be- nevolent effort than that directed to their training. But when such a union agrees that none of its members shall work for less than a certain rate of wages, and makes them stop work be- cause they cannot command these wages, then it injures the public. For every day that its members stop work there will be fewer houses for ourselves and our children. If, by hold- ing out, they finally succeed in commanding the increased wages, they have still suffered privations during their strike, and have gained their end only by increasing the public neces- sities for their work. I do not pretend to know authoritatively in which of these two directions labor organ- izations have tended ; but all I have heard of them is in the second direction rather than in the first. I have seldom, if ever, heard of their combining to render better service to the public. Such of their rules as I have seen are rather in the direction of rendering as lit- tle service to the community as they conven- iently can. For example, it is certain that a m 48 A PLAIN MAN S TALK. man who works ten hours a day will render more service to the community than one who works only eight. Bnt some labor organiza- tions, instead of encouraging their members to work ten hours, fine them if they do it ; that is, they seek to compel each other to ren- der a less service to the public. My object in writing this book is not so much to criticise as to enable other people to criticise and judge for themselves ; and, there- fore, I shall for the present leave the reader to draw his own conclusions as to what is good and w^hat evil in labor organizations. I may, however, remark that I could never feel quite satisfied of the soundness of the oft-re- peated claim that organized labor, as it is called, lias been of great benefit to the laborer. I have already shown in part, and shall try to show more fully hereafter, that the enormous increase in the production of the necessaries of life which has resulted from the introduc- tion of machinery could not but make a great improvement in the condition of the labor- ing classes ; and I think that this, and not or- ganization, is the source of the improvement which we have witnessed. But this is a sub- ject to be discussed hereafter. PART II. CAPITAL AND ITS USES 'I V ti i ii 1 1 ij ! v«... VI. THE RAILWAY QUESTION: ITS BIO SIDE. I VERY much fear that I am now going so to expose my ignorance and lack of under- standing that the reader will distrust my teachings. But as I promised in setting out only to tell things whieU the reader as well as myself would understand, I am bound, when I come to something I do not understand, to make a frank confession. I read a great deal in the newspapers, and hear a great deal else- where, about the despotic dominion of rail- way corporations and the grinding monopoly of railways. I confess that I find it quite im- possible to understand this view, or to see any reason in it. I have travelled over numerous railways in nearly every quarter of Europe and America, and have been surprised at the pains always taken by their managers to con- sult my wishes and convenience. Their trains always started at the hour most convenient for me and for my fellows who had to travel ill r I ■ ll |l|>i! i'i 52 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK over tlie road. The study and experiments of scores of scientific men, and the mechanical ingenuity of hundreds of inventors, had been drawn upon by the railway managers to make an engine and car which should carry me with great speed in entire safety, and land me at my destination in time to transact my busi- ness. Different railway managers had con- sulted together to have their trains so connect that I should get through with the least pos- sible loss of time. Every man on the road, especially the engine-driver, the most impor- tant of all, did his very best to further my ob- jects. Among the men for whom I have a particular admiration are managers of railways and locomotive engineers. When I leave a train I am in the habit of turning my head as I pass the engine to have a good look at the engine-driver who has rendered me so excellent a service and kept such a sharp lookout against any accident happening to me. It seems to me that there is hardly any class of men who show such nerve and such skill, and who have oftener risked or laid down their lives to save their passengers. The cheapness with which the whole thing is done is one of its marvels. Fifty years ago . i. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 68 it would have been quite incredible that these monopolists should have carried a passenger at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour at the rate of two cents a mile. Here I may so far anticipate as to remark upon the very small fraction of my money which goes into the pocket of the owners of railways. Much the larger portion is paid out to the thousands of workmen whose services are necessary to my journey. Where does the grinding and oppression come in ? I am sure it is not on the railway. Is it when I am away from the railway ? No ; I never knew a railway oificial to follow me after I left the station. Never in Europe or America did one of them come to me and in- sist that I should ride on his railway. I be- lieve in one or two cases during my life they woke me up by a steam-whistle when I hap- pened to sleep in a hotel near the road. With this exception I was never disturbed by one of these monopolists unless I went to ride on his train, and then I found him doing all ho could to carry me to my journey's end in the most easy and convenient way. Possibly, in my ignorance of this whole subject of monopoly, I liave made a great mis- m 54 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK take in concluding that it is the public at large which is injured by it. When one is igno- rant he has to grasp at mere possibilities; and it may be that it is only the workmen on the railway who are supposed to be injured by the monopoly. If this is so, I confess to an almost equal difficulty in understanding the case. If these railway managers ever force men to run their trains who do not want to do so for the wages they were receiving, I never heard of it. This is a free country, and under our laws not even a Yanderbilt or a Gould can force a man to run their trains one hour longer than he wants to. Where, then, docs the injury come in ? I do not deny that a man may temporarily feel himself oppressed by some action of the railway by which he is employed; that a great many arrangements for his comfort and con- venience may be omitted ; and very little re- gard paid to his daily wants. If so, he has ?. perfect right to do all he can to make his com- plaints heard, and even to leave the service of the road if they remain unheeded. Certain- ly, it seems to me for the selfish interest of railway managers that they should do the very best they can to please the men, because, the ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 55 better they treat their men, the more willing the latter will be to serve them, and the less likely to engage in strikes. If, then, they wil- fully ill-treat their employees, they are not such sharp men as we commonly suppose, and should rather be classified as dull fools. It seems to me that the general principle that those corporations which treat their men best will get the best service affords about as good a guarantee against ill-treatment as we can well advise. This, however, is a subject on which I am open to correction ; indeed, as I have al- ready explained, this whole chapter is little more than a confession of ignorance and lack of understanding, which I should be much obliged to have remedied. Possibly those who know more may reply that I entirely misunderstand the matter in dispute. The real cause of the complaint may be, not that these railways do not serve the public in the best way they can, but that they are owned and managed by a very hateful, selfish, proud, overbearing set of men, who have managed to accumuhite from one million to two hundred millions of dollars each. If this is the case, I immediately raise the ques- tion of common-sense as against sentiment. 56 A PLAIN- man's talk ■■1:;: 'Hi! I say boldly that I do not care how selfish, prond, wicked, and overbearing the managers and owners of these roads may be, nor do I care if they own one million or one thousand million dollars, if they only arrange their trains to suit my convenience and convey me at the lowest rates. What should we think of a man who brought such sentimental con- siderations into his practical, e very-day life ? Suppose, for example, that a man should re- fuse to have an ivory ornament or utensil be- cause the elephant from which it came was a very large and ugly animal, who had trampled a man to death ? What should we think if he would not allow his children to learn geog- raphy because the geographies tell us about the Atlantic Ocean, which has drowned thou- sands of people, and makes men seasick when they sail on it? I am sure you would say that such a man was not guided by sound judgment. But I do not see how the case is any better with a man who complains of a very well-managed railroad because the prin- cipal owner of it is a very objectionable person. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 57 VII. THE RAILWAY QUESTION: ITS LITTLE SIDE. I FANCY the reader complaining that in the preceding chapter I have ignored the strong objections which he urges against our railway management and considered only the weak ones. I admit that he is right to this extent : that I persisted in looking on the subject from a single standpoint, to wit, that of the inter- ests of the great public, of whom we really see and hear very little, and considering whether, on the whole, that public was well served by the railways. I claim that this is the big side of the question. Bnt let us by all means hear the other side and weigh it impartially. So far as I know, its ablest and most authoritative representa- tion is found in Mr. Hudson's book on " the Railways and the Republic," and in certain papers by Dr. R. T. Ely in Harper's Magazine^ I commend these publications to the careful study of every man interested in the subject. I 58 A PLAIN man's talk But I cannot pretend to answer their views and arguments, and tliat for two reasons. In the first place, if they could be answered it would take a big book to do it. In the next place, I am disposed to think that a good deal of what they say is true. They do, indeed, present only one side of the case, and I sus- pect that that side is a little exaggerated ; but I do not object to this, because I am in favor of all measures which will improve our railway management, and, in order to secure such measures, the attention of the public must be loudly called to the subject. But what I wish the reader to clearly un- derstand is that this is the little side of the railway question and not its big side, and that the great facts which I set forth in my last talk are more important than all that can be said on the other side. Allow me to show by an illustration what I mean when I say that this is the big side of the question. If a person should travel through the iiealthiest country in the world, search out all the sick, watch and describe their suffer- ing, and then publish to the world what he had observed, he might make his readers be- lieve it the most pestilential country on the ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 59 globe. He could rival Milton in describ- ing "All maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Dropsies and asthmas and joint-racking rhcuras," in such terms that one would hardly dare to visit that country, and yet tell nothing but the truth. But the person who wanted to know the real merits of the country would look into statistical tables in order to learn the death- rate per annum. If he found it to be only fifteen in a thousand he would know that the country was the healthiest in the world in spite of the melancholy picture. This little result of statistics w^ould be a great big fact swallowing up all the little facts about the sufferers, because it would be a result founded on a consideration of all the cases of life and death in the whole population, while the facts set forth by the observer would only describe individual cases. Just so with the railroad question. The fact that our great trunk lines of railway car- ry a ton of freight a thousand miles for six or seven dollars may seem like a little fact, but Hfv ■.f T It •"^^^ ■1 i 1 111 li. 1" ■ ' 60 A. PLAIN man's talk hi: in reality it is a very big one, because it is a general average result of the price at which they serve all the millions of people who live in the Western and Middle States. Com- paring it with the rates for similar services abroad, it shows that our railroads serve the public about as cheaply as any in the world, notwithstanding the drawbacks under which they labor arising from sparseness of popula- tion and high wages. This again shows that our railway management is among the best in the world, in the terms on which it serves the public. Every sensible man who is quali- fied to judge of the subject knows that on no other system could we get passengers or freight carried more cheaply than we now do. If the government of the United States should take possession of every railway in the country to- morrow there can hardly be a doubt that the average cost of freight transportation would be higher than it now is on the great trunk lines. This great big fact completely swal- lows up all the little facts that one or two railways have no fixed prices, and charge whatever they think a customer can be made to pay, that some others make discriminating rates, charging one man more than they do ON TUE LABOR QUESTION. 61 another for the same services, and that yet otliers charge more for a sliort haul than for a long one. Carrying passengers forty miles an hour for two or three cents a mile is a fact which outweighs all we can say about watered stocks, just as the fact of the Etruria carry- ing a thousand passengers across the ocean at a speed of twenty miles an hour outweighs all we can say about the badness of the coffee these passengers have to drink. Do not misunderstand me. I am not argu- ing against any measures which will improve our railway service. I go yet further and admit that this little side of the question is the one which requires most attention. If, in the healthy country we have just imagined, it was found tliat here and there people suf- fered from bad drainage, of course I would want the drainage improved. So with our railway service. What I think we ought to avoid is any policy which will discourage cap- italists from building more railways. If we so hem these roads by restrictions that capi- talists can no longer feel secure of a profit by running them, w^e shall simply stop their building until we adopt new measures, or give new guarantees to capitalists against loss. i • ;- 62 A PLAIN man's talk 1:1 Bflll ''■ fill! I admit that there is much that is wrong in the relation of railroad corporations to the public. It is a wrong upon the people that nearly all our prominent and influential pub- lic men, including members of Congress and members of state legislatures, travel free wher- ever they wish to go. I am ready to do any- thing I can to correct this wrong. It is wrong that corporations of any kind can own and manage state legislatures. It is a wrong when courts are under the influence of such corpo- rations. It is a wrong when a railroad charges one person more than another for the same service. We may consider these different wrongs from different points of view ; for ex- ample, from one point of view with reference to their nature and remedy, and from another point with the object of understanding their connection with the benefits rendered by the roads. It is from the latter standpoint that the matter should first be considered. The corrupting influence of railroad corpo- rations upon state legislatures, and hence upon the public and upon politics in general, has been denounced in such terms as might imply that it would be better to have no roads than to suffer such demoralization as we are suf- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 63 fcring and are likely to suffer from them. Even if this were true, which it is not, it is an exceedingly incomplete statement of the question, because it implies that the main fault is on the side of the railroads and corporations. It is not correct to say that corporations cor- rupt legislators. No influence can corrupt an honest man. If corporations practice bribery with success, it is only because they have cor- rupt men to deal with. Hence, to state the case exactly as it is, we ought to say that the corporations take advantage of the corrupti- bility of the men who form our state legisla- tures. They find them already corrupted, and act accordingly. Now, if these legislators are corrupt, whose fault is it? Evidently it is the fault of the public who send bad men to represent them. It is, therefore, the voters who ought to be de- nounced for all this wickedness, and not the corporations. The real evil is that the aver- ago voter is nearly always ready to support his party's ticket, regardless of the character of the men whose names it bears. When the great mass of voters are determined that none but honest men shall represent them, and that none but honest methods shall be employed , mi ! 64 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK i:!!:: in politics, the evil will be cured, and it will not be cured before. Our first step is, then, to educate the people to a proper sense of their duties and rights. If we now look at the matter from another point of view we shall see that the wholesale denunciation of corrupt practices which I have referred to tends to aggravate rather than cure the evil. The more respect the public Ihis for the legitimate rights of a corporation, the less excuse that corporation has for trying to de- ceive the public. Vice versa, in a community where the rights of corporations are not duly respected, those bodies will necessarily seek to secure their rights by improper methods. The nearer public sentiment approaches to correct views in this respect, the more readily will great corporations let the public understand and see into their affairs. Let us illustrate this by the watering of stocks. Suppose that some enterprise, it may be a copper-mine or it may be a railway, ^^ itself making very large profits. ^ ^ / p rule it has a perfect right to all t pio. it can make by legitimate business aixl Luvful methods. But the stockholders know very well that if the public saw stock on which r ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 68 only thirty, forty, or fifty dollars a sliaro had been paid going up to three hundred, five hundred, or a thousand dollars a share, there would be a loud complaint, and perhaps tho state legislatures would be called upon to in- tervene and stop these exorbitant profits. So, in lieu of paying money dividends and leav- ing the shares to grow in value, the directors declare " stock dividends," which continually increase the number of shares held, so that tho profits per share are kept down to a moderate percentage. The public at large is neither better nor worse off for this " watering," for the simple reason that the company will make as much money from the public as they can under any circumstances, and they cannot com- mand any more after watering their stock than they could before. "We may lay it down as a rule that nothing is more useless than the denunciation of indi- viduals or bodies of men for acts which are in consonance with the general tendency of hu- man nature. As a general rule such denun- ciation makes matters worse more than it helps them. When a remedy is needed, it must bo applied through public opinion, not by meas- ures against the men complained of, but by 5 4 ;iif 'I m ill' w 'M .'III ' Qii I'. ee A MAIN man's talk changing the situation so that selfish men can- not take advantage of it. The cure for bribery of legislators is not reached by merely de- nouncing the men who bribe, but by sending honest men as representatives. Of course I do not mean to say that bribery should be condoned. I mean that there will be very lit- tle bribery where we have a sufficiently pure and elevatod public opinion on the subject. Practically the courts and the laws represent public opinion. "When the latter is controlled by a high moral standard there will be very little bribery, and that iittle will be speedily punished. When the moral standard is low, there will be plenty of bribery, do what we will, and we shall not be able to punish it in the courts. It is, therefore, to public educa- tion that we are to look for a cure. Now let us get things in their true perspec- tive. The facts which I have brought out in these talks are greater and more wide-reach- ing than any of the evils of railway manage- ment. Denounce the latter as we will, it re- mains true that the i leu who run railroads are the ablest business managers that the country has seen, that they serve the public cheaper than any other set of men could have done ON THE LABOK QUESTION. 67 ■if it, and that their work lies at the very basis of our civilization. To settle the question whether, as a class, they charge too much for their services, we must sec what profits they make. It is said that during the past twelve months the railways of the country at largo have not earned the current rate of interest upon the capital actually invested by their pro- jectors. If this is true, it disposes at a single stroke of the complaint against high charges. As to their tyranny, all that can be said of it is disposed of by the great fact that not one person out of a hundred who reads these pa- pers w\is ever consciously injured by a railroad corporation or ever received anything but benefits from it. it m ['11 • 68 A PLAIN man's talk ,j I 'Mi VIIL now ONE MAN MAY DO THE WORK OF TEN THOUSAND. " There must be something wrong in a S3's- tem under whicli one man can accumulate a liundred millions of dollars, and the people of this country are determined to do something towards rectifying it." We have all heard this sentiment in a thousand forms during the last few months. I am inclined to think that it voices the feeling on which the popular support of the labor movement is based. When the common man hears that somebody has gained one hundred millions of dollars, ho naturally thinks that the system by which he gained it must have an element of injustice in it. If asked why any lack of justice, the common man would probably answer, that this rich man must have rained monev which in equity belonged to other people. The ques- tion of equity is not, however, the only one to be considered. That of policy also comes into ■' i ■m ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 69 play. If it should turn out that the public at large were great gainers through some one person being allowed to accumulate a hundred million of dollars, wo might dispense with the question of equity. But since equity as well as policy should come into consideration, I shall consider the subject from both points of view, beginning with the former. In considering a question of equity we must agree upon some principle determining what we are to understand by that word. Now the customs of society have established the prin- ciple that if two men are rendering the same service, they should get the same price for it, no matter if it costs one ten times as much as it does the other. For example, if a very skilful dairyman should learn to make but- ter with half the work that other dairymen make it, and should bring that butter to a market where the selling price was forty cents a pound, it would not be equitable for the buyer to say to him : " Although I have been giving forty cents a pound for butter to c til- ers, yet I will only give you twenty cents, and will not allow any one else to give you more, because you make two pounds as easily as those other sellers make one." If the reader ) 1 { ,t !.' .*' 70 A PLAIN MAN'S TALK will not accept this principle, then he need not proceed any further in this chapter, be- cause it is on this principle that the conclu- sions are based. But if he does accept it, then he must do so to its fullest extent, and admit that if one man does the work of ten thou- sand, there is nothing positively unjust in paying him the wages of ten thousand men. This may seem to be carrying the principle a great deal further, but still the principle it- self remains the same. Questions of justice, considered apart from questions of policy, be- long rather to the instincts than to the reason, and I confess that my instincts are such that I see nothing unjust in paying one man the waercs of ten thousand for doinff the work of ten thousand. Let us now see how a few men did the work of ten times as many thou- sand. Before railways were built, the people of Boston, New York, Baltimore, and other cities could be supplied with flour only from farms near the ceaboard or watercourses, or in the immediate neighborhood of the cities. A farmer in the middle of Pennsylvania, New York, or Ohio could not get his wheat to mar- ket without carting it to some canal or navi- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 71 gable river. So laborious was this to farmers who lived many miles from other means of transportation that they often burned their corn as fuel, because it did not pay to carry it to market. The reader may calculate for himself how many millions of men would be required to transport all the flour we eat from the farms to the cities on our Atlantic seaboard if we had no railways. Fifty years ago the construction of railways was only fairly commenced ; and it was doubt- ful if they could be successful on a large scale. But a few far-sighted capitalists saw that if such a road were built through New York State, a few thousand men, by running the railway, would do the "svork of as many mill- ions in transporting the products of farms to the seaboard. Probably very few believed them. At least only a few men were ready to invest their fortunes in the enterprise, and so it was by these few that the new roads were first inaugurated on so large a scale. The re- sult was that the productiveness of the inhabi- tants of New York State was increased many fold. The railroad was soon doing the work of a hundred thousand men ; perhaps I should be nearer the truth if I said a million. "T T ^ 1 lu 72 A PLAIN MAN'S TALK Now what ought the people of New York State to have said to tlie leading men of the enterprise when their roads got going ? Should they have said : You are making too much mon- ey off of your road ; although your organization is doing the work of a hundred thousand men, you are yourself only one man, and shall only have the pay of one man ? It does not seem to me that this would have been right. But if we consider that it would be right to allow liim the pay of more than one man for his services in building the road, by what principle shall wo learn where to stop? If two men, why not three? If three, why not four? If four, why not a thousand? If a thousand, why not a hundred thousand? Facts make the principle that govern the case. Tiie projector might have said in reply : My railroad is doing the work of one hundred thousand men, and I must have the pay of one hundred thousand men as long as I live, and my heirs must have it as long as the road lasts. If we estimate the pay of one man to be five hundred dollars a year, he would then have been demanding fifty millions of dollars per year in perpetuity for his services. But society did not concede any such claim ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 73 ■ !^ on his part any more than it tried to restrict his proiit to the pay of one man. It simply said to him, You have got your road and we will pay you the lowest price at which we can get our transportation done; but we give you notice that now, you having iaught us what good a railway can do, we will build all the roads we want for ourselves, and we will not allow you a dollar more for what you do for us with your railroad than we have to pay other people for the same service. This, it seems to me, was the just and natural solution of the problem. In the process we have been examining is involved a principle which it is most necessary to understand. AVe see it in all the operations of business and manufacture, yet we are prone to overlook it ; I must, therefore, ask your care- ful attention to some further illustrations of it. Suppose a tribe of Patagonians who gain their subsistence by killing birds with bows and ar- rows. With the utmost industry, each of them can only kill, on an average, two birds a day. A lame but skilful civilized man comes among them with a supply of guns, sulphur, saltpetre, and lead. With the charcoal which they can supply him he proceeds to make gunpowder, 74 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK , " ri !l^l lii't : and with the lead to mould bullets. He now says to them, It takes one of yon a whole day to kill two birds. I cannot kill any birds at all myself because I am lame ; but I can show you how each of you can kill, not two birds in a day, but fifty. Whoever makes powder and shot in the way I show, and uses one of my guns in the way I will direct, can kill forty- eight birds more per day than he now does. In return for this service you must give mo half the extra birds which my skill enables you to shoot : that is, each of you must give me twenty-four birds out of every fifty, or their equivalent. It is evidently for their interest to accept such an offer. He shows them how to get the charcoal by burning wood ; he weighs out the materials for the powder, and shows them how to use them. lie melts the lead and makes it into shot ; shows them how to shoot, and very soon each man who uses one of the guns is bringing in fifty birds a day, which is more than they all can eat. If the tribe is a hundred strong, its members are now, in combination with the owner of the guns, doing the work of twenty-five hundred men ; and the owner is doing the work of ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 76 twenty-four bundred men, and getting the pay of twelve hundred. Getting nearly half the whole product, he has nearly half as much to cat as the whole tribe. Now, is there anything inequitable in this? If the tribe should say to him : " Look here, pale face ; you have not shot a single bird, nor put in a stroke of work, unless you call it work to weigh out the materials for making powder. Our labor has made the powder; our legs have carried us through the swamps. You have no business getting more birds than any of the rest of us, and you shall have no more." Would that be exactly fair? Ques- tions as to whether a thing is or is not fair must ultimately depend upon the inner con- science of the judge ; so I leave this question to the conscience of the reader, only remark- ing that I myself see nothing wicked or un- just in the arrangement by which the one civilized man gets half the product. Now what is the principle concealed in this illustration ? It is that labor alone is not suf- ficient to produce the things necessary for our welfare to the best advantage. To make a pair of boots to the best advantage requires something more than the mere labor put into i 1 1. p 76 A PLAIN man's talk i{,. tliem. It requires tlio know-how and the sliow-how. Just as the Patagonians gained their birds through the help of the man wlio did no shooting, but knew liow it ought to bo done, and showed them liow to do it ; so boots are made, not merely by tanners and boot- makers alone, but by the labor of these men combined with the knowledge and direction of business-managers. Clearly the latter are entitled to a share in the product. You reply, perhaps, Grant that they are en- titled to a share. But a great many of them get too large a share. But by what principle will you decide what share they shall get? Must they all get tho same share? In that case the good manager and the bad manager would bo paid exactly the same profits. The latter might buy poor leather, might fail to take good care of it, might let his machinery be badly used, might mismanage his business in every way without suffering for it, if you adopted any such princi- ple. It is evident that we must have some way of letting a good manager get more of the product than a bad one. If you reflect how difficult it would be to find out whether tho business was well or badly managed, you n I - ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 77 will SCO the impossibility of fixing any definite rate of profit for the manager. This correct rate of profit, which it would be so hard for the wisest man to fix by investi- gation, is determined by our system of free competition among managers. We simply say to every manager : " I)o the very best you can. Direct your men in the most cfticient way you know how, jind manage your business with the least waste. Whatever profits you can make in this way over and above your fellow-mana- gers you are entitled to, and no more. If they do better, then you must go into some other business. If you do better than any of them, take the profit which will thus come to you." Please remember that under our system no man and no body of men is required to work under a manager, and to accept his know-how and show-how, if he does !\ot want to do so. Every workman in the factory, every brick- layer who helps in building a house, is at per- fect liberty to sell his own services directly to the public if he finds it advantageous so to do. If workmen find that the managers who di- rect them are getting an undue share of the proceeds, they are at perfect liberty to form co-operativo associations, and thus secure all mh 78 A PLAIN MAN B TALK Ni tlio profits themselves. Bnt, if tliey find that tlicy get better wages from the manager than they can earn by working for themselves, then there is nothing inequitable in the manager getting as much advantage of his skill as the competition of his fellow-managers will per- mit his getting. In view of these facts it seems to mo that the quotation with which I opened this talk should be expressed thus : " There must be something wrong in a sys- tem under which one man is allowed to ren- der a hundred million dollars' worth of ser- vices to his fellow-men, and the people of this country are determined to do something to- wards rectifying it." ON TUB LABOR QUESTION. 78 IX. WAS IT GOOD FOR US THAT WE ALLOWED ONE MAN TO MAKE A HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS? The reader may possibly object to the last chapter, that it dealt in the equities of the case, and therefore had a little too much sen- timent mixed up with it. He may say that it is not a question of equity at all, hat one of public advantage or disadvantage, and may claim that the subject should be treated from this point of view. I am perfectly willing to discuss the sub- ject on this basis, because then the foundation is a great deal stronger than before. If you choose to follow me carefully, leisurely, and thoughtfully, you cannot fail to see that it is for your good and for mine that any man who wants to be a capitalist, and who has a talent for business management, should be allowed to gain all the wealth he can, whether one million dollars or one hundred millions, by iijii ! <1 T 80 A PLAIN MAN S TALK it I rSi^ legitimate business enterprises; and that the more ho gains in this way tlie better for us all. The common belief seems to be that, when a man gets very rich, he does it by collecting wealth which, but for him, would have been gained by somebody else, who, perhaps, de- served it better. There are few or no opin- ions, gene'tlly held by men, which are false under all conditions and in their entirety. So, before wo deny this popular doctrine, let us see in what cases it may be true. Thcro is, undoubtedly, a great deal of speculation in the business world in which one man can gain only what another loses. It amounts to about the same thing as betting on the future prices of stocks or goods. Thousands of people go into Wall Street to speculate. The large ma- jority are the so-called " lambs," who are not so wise as they think. The sharper men win the bets made with them, and thus grow rich. Fortunes won in this way are not of the slightest concern to any one except those who make or lose. None of your interests are af- fected by some Wall Street shark gaining a hundred dollars or a thousand from each of a thousciud other speculators. If you do not want to suffer, all you have to do is to keep ■^^ ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 81 out of Wall Street. If you have been a " lamb '* you have only yourself to blame. If you have not, you have lost nothing. Leaving out this exceptional case, which, as I have said, is of no public concern to anybody but those who engage in speculation, the only way in which a man can make a fortune of one hundred million dollars is by doing one hundred mill- ion dollars' worth of good, probably several times over, to his fellow-men. The question now before us may be con- sidered under several different aspects. We might first inquire whether there is any pos- sible way of stopping a man who wants to be rich from making all the money he can. If we found that this was not possible, we might dispose of the whole matter by saying that it is of no use to trouble ourselves about it because we cannot help ourselves. But I do not propose to dispose of the question in this simple way. I want the reader to put the question to himself in such forms as the following : If we could persuade or force a man not to accumulate more than a certain fixed amount of wealth — say one hundred thousand dollars — would it be to our interest to do so ? C :Ui •m »i ^n" I 6 88 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK If, when Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt liad made one hundred thousand dollars, he had said to himself, "This is as much wecolth as one needs or ought to possess ; I will, there- fore, retire from business, and make no more money," would we have been better or worse off on account of that resolution on his part? To answer this question, we must examine the history of the case, and learn how Cor- nelius Vanderbilt gained his wealth. The reader probably knows this as well as I do; 80 all I need to do is to give a short summary of the well-known facts in the case. When still quite young, Cornelius Vander- bilt was the owner of several small steamboats, which he managed himself. lie was so suc- cessful that, before reaching middle age, ho was, for those times, a very wealthy man. Did he become so by injuring any one else ? I think not. He never forced a man on board his boat who did not wiiut to go ; never car- ried a pound of freight which the owner did not want carried ; never charged more for faro or freight than the people to whom he ren- dered the service were willing to give. No- body ever paid him for his service more than lie would have liad to pay any one else. His ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 83 only advantage lay in the fact that he knew how to render more service at a given outlay of labor and money than anybody else did. lie bought the kind of boats which other peo- ple found it pleasant to travel upon, lie sent them to the places where they were most want- ed, and took people where they most wanted to go, at the times most convenient for them, lie selected good men to run his boats, and, while putting into them whatever the public liked to have, he was careful never to waste labor or money in doing what people did not want done. As he made money ho bought more steam- boats, thus extending his operations ovcvr a much wider area than before. Thus ho car- ried more and more people where they want- ed to go, and brought more and more goods where they were wanted. It was through be- coming rich that he was enabled to build these new boats; and, having built them, lie man- aged them on the same principle as before ; that is, he sent them where thousands of peo- ple were most desirous to go, and brought goods from various parts of the continent to the places where people most wanted them. When he had thus gained several millions I ! I in f^ 84 A PLAIN MAN S TALK of dollars by rendering, we may suppose, a dollar's worth of service to each of several millions of people, he saw that railway mana- gers did not work together to the best advan- tage, and did not convey their millions of pas- sengers and their enormous quantities of freight in the most advantageous and economical man- nt \ So he proceeded to purchase the stock of the Harlem Railroad, the Hudson River, the New York Central, and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, and finally succeed- ed in inducing the owners of a line of road extending all the way from New York to Chi- cago to place the whole under his manage- ment. The result of this was, that he brought the breadstuffs of the West to New York State more cheaply and expeditiously than they were ever brought before, and thus en- abled millions of people to buy their flour at a lower price than they would otherwise have had to pay. As in his early steamboat life he never de- manded from one of his million of passengers more money for a ticket than the passenger deemed it to his advantage to pa}^, and never charged a dollar more freight than merchants were willing to give. Competing lines wore £F^ ON THE LABOR QUESTION. S!^ in operation, and every one had the right to send by other lines, or not to send at fill. The result was a continual addition to his fortune, amounting to several millions of dollars a year. At this point, dear reader, do not abandon business for sentiment by saying that I am eulogizing a very selfish man. I am only stating the essential facts and leaving out the non-essential ones. You may, if you choose, call him a greedy, grasping, bloated, inhuman being. But that would be mere sentiment and not business. If the ten millions of peo- ple to whom he brought bread all the way from Chicago, and the hundreds of millions whom ho carried on his railway were bene- fited by the services, as they undoubtedly were, his personal qualities do not affect the question at all. Not one man out of a thou- sand ever set eyes upon him, or was in any way injured by his selfishness. Let us, there- fore, confine ourselves to a business view of the facts. Suppose, now, that Mr. Yanderbilt, when he found his little steamboats so successful that he had gained a hundred thousand dollars from them, had said : *' This is money enough for one man, and I will now let some one else m ■T" 86 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK manage this business, while I, to show my belief in the dignity and rights of labor, will work as a mere hand on a steamboat." What would have been the result ? The enterprise which subsequently sent a line of steamers to Galveston and the Isthmus would either have been wanting, or would have been delayed for several years. A million of people would have had to wait two or three years for the advantages of shipping and travelling which Vanderbilt gave them ; and, when they finally got them, the boats would not have been so much to their liking, and freights would have been higher. Wo may suppose that the disadvantage of a million of people would have averaged one or two dollars a year to each person for a number of years. Of course they would never have been aware of these disadvantages, nor think that the ec- centric man who was working as a common hand when he had the ability to be a first- class manager would have served them much better had he continued to manage. But their ignorance would not have changed the fact that here would have been a great waste of valuable power. So with the railways. If Vanderbilt had. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 87 not got control of the roads I have described, the unity of management which is so neces- sary in working a road would have been de- layed for several years — perhaps until the present time — so that freight and passengers would not have been carried so expeditiously as they now are. Moreover, the managers, not being so able as Vandcrbilt to prevent all loss and waste on the road, people would probably have had to pay a little more on the average for their tickets. Tims everybody would have been worse off, rather than better. It is on a large scale what we supposed to take place among the Patagonians in our last talk. Tlie man who merely showed them how to use a gun benefited not only himself, but them also, by enabling them to get food much more advantageously tlian before. But there is more yet to be said. Before we can consider the question satisfactorily settled we must inquire who got the benefit of Yanderbilt's money ? Did he or the pub- lic get the good of it? Here I have to make a statement which at first blush may appear a paradox ; but it appears so only to those who have failed to look clearly at the facts. I say that Vandcrbilt never got any use of his Tf 88 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK ill 1 11 ll money, except In's board, clothing, house- rent, and appliances for the personal pleasure and comfort of himself and friends. The sole benefit of all the rest of his wealth went entirely to the public. It is one of the great vices of our times that we think and talk about wealthy men as if they liad the sole enjo}^- ment of their wealth. But all they really en- joy is the laborious privilege of managing it and the sentimental pleasure of calling it theirs. If Vanderbilt had said, " Now this is my railroad, and I shall not carry freight on it for anybody else, and will only bring food for my own family and give excursions to my own friends," then the case would have been different and the road would have been of no use to the public. But of all the freight brought over the road, how much did Mr. Vanderbilt ever get ? Of course, you know very well, not enough to even think of or mention. But, you may reply, everybody else who got freight carried ovei his road had to pay him for it. Very well, what did ho do with the money they paid him ? Nino tenths of it he paid to laborers. With a good part of the other tenth he laid new steel rails over the ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 89 whole road from New York to Chicago, by which passengers and freight were bronglit more quickly and cheaply than ever before. For whose benefit was that? Evidently it was for the benefit of the passengers and the public, because after the steel rails were laid they paid Vanderbilt less money for the ser- vice than they did before, and they got carried faster. But, you may say, they still had to pay him. Yes, but how insignificant the amount they paid him compared with the value of the service rendered. Let us again ask what he did witli the money he received for this important service? A portion of it he expended in building himself a house and filling it with pictures and furniture. What he expended in this way was uU that he ap- plied to his own uses. It was a small frac- tion of what he received for freight. He spent the remainder directly or indirectly in building new roads and in other business en- terprises for the public. When I say he did this indirectly I mean that he loaned the money to others to expend in tin's way, and thus enabled them to build railroads and steamboats, which they otherwise could not have built. l^ nil M ^ II i I I ! 00 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK ( s 1 I I think T have made it clear beyond a cavil that it was to yonr beiiclit and my benefit that Yanderbilt did not stop making money, to become a steamboat hand, but tliat his grasping love of wealth prompted him to en- gage in managing steamboats and railways with such success that he accumulated more than a hundred millions of dollars. I hope Vanderbilts will continue to arise until our whole industrial organization is so perfected that everything we want shall be made and brought to us at the lowest possible price. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. X. mi THE CAPITALIST AND WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR US. The lessons I have tried to teach in tlic last two chapters arc so important tiiat I must beg leave to recapitulate and enforce some of their points. I deem this necessary for the very i-eason that they are conclusions which run counter to our ordinary notions. One of the notions to which I allude is, that wealth is accumulated for the sole benefit of its owner: for instance, that Yanderbilt's hun- dred millions went for Yanderbilt's sole ben- efit, so that nobody else has any interest in it, or at least only a slight interest. Yet it is only necessary to open our eyes and look close- ly at the state of the case to see that this no- tion is all wrong. The great proposition, to which all that I have said converges, is that great accumulations of capital, whether by an individual or a corporation, arc really eni- *SI IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I IM III 2.8 5?o IIIIM !'.' IIIIIM IIIIIM ;.'■ IIIIIM :' m 1 = 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 ^ 6" - ► Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST AAAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 * y". (/j r 1 92 A PLAIN man's talk ployed for the public benefit, so that all get the good of tliem. What did Yanderbilt's wealth originally consist in ? As I showed in the last chapter, one of its large items were the steel rails wliicli were laid from New York to Chicago. If he and his associates had not accumulated great fortunes they could never have com- manded the money to purchase these rails, and the bread which you and I now eat could not have been brought so cheaply from the West to our homes. In a word, Vanderbilt's great wealth consisted very largely in railroads employed, not for his benefit, but for that of the public, and from which he did not get materially more good than anybody else did, because even the dividends which he gained were expended in enlarging and improving the roads. Now what is true of this particular part of Vanderbilt's fortune is true of all the accu- mulations of the capitalists, great and small. A capitalist may be defined as a man who saves up his money to gain interest upon it. But the only way in which he can gain inter- est is by employing it for the benefit of his fellow-men, or getting somebody else to em- !K: ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 93 'H ret ly n\ 1 ;o. ed ploy it in this way. That is to say, the money which he saves goes to build a railway for con- veying goods to and from distant communi- ties, a factory to make clothes for the contin- ually increasing population, a ship to convey goods to a foreign country, a house to be oc- cupied by people who cannot afford to buy one for themselves, or some other permanent agency for supplying the public wants. This point i^ so important that I must ask leave to illustrate it by continuing our little romance about the visitor to the Patagonians. We left him with a food supply of twenty- four hundred birds a day, contributed to his support by the tribe. This would be too ab- surd to continue, because the whole tribe could not eat half of what was shot. The tribe would say : " We cannot possibly eat all these birds, let us stop and build better wigwams." So the lame man would say, " instead of shooting all those birds for me, go to work and build me a hundred wigwams. You must make one of them very fine for my occupation, but the others are to be my property to dispose of as I please." When this is done the question arises. What will the man do with all those wigwams 'i As be can only occupy one of them, he can M m m 94 A PLAIN MAN S TALK I III i '/. L only say to tlie tribe, "Occupy the others yourselves, and pay me what rent you can for them." But when lie got the rent he could do nothing with it but get other things for the support of himself and the tribe, and so in the end the latter would be getting nearly all the beneiit of the man's skill, and this by the sheer necessity of the case. I think none of their moralists and philosophers would lament a state of things in which one man should be allowed to own a hundred wigwams. The fact is that until we think carefully over the subject we can have no conception how valuable one man's foresight and enter- prise may be to millions of his fellow -cit- izens. I recollect, in speaking to an intelli- gent and thoughtful Knight of Labor of the value of Yanderbilt's enterprise, he raised what was, in principle, the very sonnd objec- tion that if Yanderbilt had not done what he did somebody else would, and that there was therefore no particular reason why Yanderbilt should reap so large a reward. I say the principle on which this objection was founded is perfectly correct, because if there are three, ten, or fifty people capable, without any extraordinary sacrifice on their own part, ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 05 of rendering services worth many millions of dollars to their fellows, it is perfectly jnst that they should be made to compete with each other until their compensation is brought down to its lowest point. If then there were twen- ty or fifty men able and ready to do what Yanderbilt did, it would have been perfectly right that society should have commanded their services on the cheapest terras it could. But let us now look closely at the matter and see how what may seem to us at first sight a most insignificant fact may have very important consequences. The reason why Yanderbilt was able to collect so large a sum from the public for services rendered was not merely that nobody else could have rendered these services at any time, but that he was the only man in the field at the moment ready and willing to go ahead with his enterprises. Now let us calculate the money value to the public of this mere willingness to go ahv ad, coupled with the ability to see further than his fellow-men did. At a moderate calcula- tion there were, fifty oi sixty years ago, ten millions of people to whom a railway system connecting Ne\Y York with what was then the West would have been worth ten cents a day ill ;i.is is lit ; IT 1 I- :ll 1' ' M '' ■ ' 1 t n i'M i l:n 98 A PLAIN MAN S TALK each, or say thirty dollars a year. This being the case, if Yanderbilt's enterprise did nothing more than get each section of the road and each step in its management into operation a year sooner than others would have done, he rendered his fellows a service worth three hundred millions of dollars, merely by his foresight and courage, to say nothing of his organizing abilit3\ Successful capitalists are for the most part the sharpest business men of the community. This goes almost without saying, for otherwise they would never have amassed wealth, or, if they had amassed it, would have lost it when they went into business. What do we mean when we say that some prominent man is a sharp man of business? Judging from the newspapers and the addresses at labor assem- blies, we should suppose this to mean that the man had learned the art of cheating other peo- ple out of the results of their labor. I have shown in previous talks how groundless this notion is, and so instead of discussing it further shall try to find the ti'ue answer to the question. A sharp man of business on a large scale — I mean one who successfully manages new and great enterprises — is one who is quick Si'MI ON THE LABOE QUESTION. 97 to SCO what large bodies of people want, and expert in the rare art of building up organized systems to supply that want. We are so ac- customed to organized systems thus built up that we seldom think how much more they in- volve than the men and appliances concerned with them. Take a railway for example. Of material things it includes a road-bed, the rails, the station, the engines, and the cars. Of men it includes engineers, brakemen, conductors, and other employees to the number of thousands. But much more than all this was necessary in order that the railroad might perform its func- tions. Before a single tie was laid, before a man was engaged to dig out the road-bed, it was necessary to decide where the road should start from, through what towns it should pass, and whither it should end. Here the business qualities of the capitalist come in. The man who decides these things successfully is one who knows what thousands of his fellow-men want, not only now, but for the future ; where towns are likely to grow up, and what prod- ucts will be wanted. at the terminus of the road. The labor of thousands of men is to be employed for one or more years in laying the 7 i?n n n f ^•;i Hi'.. 98 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK m road, making the rails, and building tlio en- gines and stations. It depends upon the talent and sound judgment of the originators wheth- er this labor shall be in great part wasted by being of little service to anybody, or whether it shall supply a hundred thousand people with just the means of transportation that they most want. Now, if every man was born with the talent necessary for deciding where the road should run, for knowing where to find the best engineers to lay the road out, and to calculate the excavations necessary; how and where to get the engines built, and how to find the men to run them, and then how to organize their work, the case would bo entirely different from what it is. As a mat- ter of fact only one man out of ten thousand can do all this successfully, and only one out of a hundred thousand can do it in the most ef- fective way. If we could value men by the services they render we might say of the best organizer in the United States : Here is a man who can so organize railroads through popu- lous districts as to save a million of his fellow- men a dollar a year each by securing them cheaper transportation than they can other- wise get. He is therefore worth to them a million dollars a year. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. Then, after the road is built and in opera- tion, it may be worth a million dollars a year to its owners and to the men who use it to have it managed in the very best way. You may have the road completed, with the en- gines and cars and men all at work, and yet the result may be a failure. Men are contin- ually leaving or changing their occupations, and new ones must be got to fill their places. Some one must decide what duties every man shall perform and must see that he is trained in their performance. There must bo a sys- tem by which every one of the thousands of employees shall do the right thing, in the right place, and at the right time ; if he does not, accidents will happen, passengers will be killed, and freight will be lost or delayed. Now this is something which does not happen of itself, but requires a body of managers of rare qualities, to do everything in the best way. I hope I have justified my definition that the sharp and successful man of business is simply one who can render great services to all the people who make up thp state. What have such men done ? The question will an- swer itself if wo will only look around us. ill m Sii fj: p 100 A PLAIN MAN S TALK They have promoted everything that is good in this nineteenth century. They have not only built railways from the Atlantic to -the Pacific Ocean, and set them going, but they have founded schools and colleges and built churches. Had no one ever got rich we should have had no colleges except a few miserable ones supported by the state ; we should have had no railways ; flour would have been worth ten dollars a barrel and upward in all cities ; labor organizations would have been unknown, because no laborer could ever have spared the time to organize or have saved the money necessary to make his influence felt. ii'iiiiiii ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 101 XL WHAT CAPITAL If AS DONE FOR THE LABORER, "We have all heard a great deal of talk about the great conflict between labor and capital. "We have discussed this conflict so ardently as to forget all about the actual facts of the case ; and, indeed, I doubt if one man out of twenty who engages in the discussion ever stops to think what capital really is. If one would only stop to study out the question he would see that no such conflict could have any sound reason for going on, and, in fact, could hardly arise among sensible men. In saying this I do not deny that there is always a kind of contest in progress. Laborers want, and right- fully want, the highest wages they are able to command. Employers want, and rightfully want, to induce them to work as cheaply as possible. But the efforts to which the two parties are thus led do not differ, in their orig- inal nature, from those which have been go- ing on ever since men began to make prog- i 'f w^ I i < '.if ;- I •iiiii 102 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK rcss, and which must continue as long as hu- manity exists under its present conditions. Everybody who sells goods wants to get as much as he can for them, and everybody who buys wants to get them as cheaply as he can. Sellers are on the search for good buyers, and buyers arc on the lookout for good bargains. In the same way, laborers are on the lookout for good employers, and employers are seek- ing for cheap and efficient laborers. To call a contest thus arising a conflict between labor and capital is as great a misnomer as it would be to call a higgling and dispute between a man and his butcher a conflict between money and beef. It is not the beef the man is quarrel- ing with, but it is the owner of the beef. It is not the money the butcher is dealing with, but the man. In the same way the laborer is deal- ing, not with capital, but with the owner of capital. This misuse of words is, really, a source of great drawback to clear thinking, because it leads people to mistake the interests of society, and to engage in efforts which can do nothing but harm to all. To avoid this evil, let us see how capital and capitalists arose. In our colonial times there was very little that we should now call capital; only such ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 103 things as the horses, ploughs, and farm-build- ings, the implements of the farmer, tlie stock in trade of the shop-keeper, and the tools of the mechanic. How does it happen that we have any more capital now than in colonial times? We can readily imagine everything to have gone on, up to the present time, just as it did in those times, without railways, steaui ma- chinery, great warehouses, paved streets, fine furniture. Why did things not continue so? I reply, it was because certain people were not satisfied with what they had, but wanted to get rich, and knew how to do it. Now, when a man wanted to get rich, how did he have to go to work? Robbery and gambling aside, there was but one possible way ; he must do something that his fellow-men wanted to have done, and which they wanted so badly that they were willing to pay a great deal of money to get it done. No man could earn a dollar except by doing something for his fellow-men which they were willing to pay a dollar to have done, and hence something which they valued at more than one dollar. Such, I say, was the problem presented to every man who wanted to make money. Now, if a man was only a common laborer, and could Tf 104 A PLAIN man's talk Ml: ! !■: ' I, I V. do nothing more for his fellow-men than hun- dreds or thousands of fellow-laborers could do, he could not possibly get rich very fast, although he might make a comfortable living. Hence, in order to attain his end, the man who wanted to get rich must make, buy, or borrow some kind of appliances, implements, or machinery which would enable him to do more work for his fellow-men than he could do without the appliances. For example, some of these men found that, by establishing a line of stages between two towns, they could render valuable services to hundreds or thou- sands of their fellow-men who wanted to trav- el, or to send goods from one city to another. So they bought horses and stage-coaches, built houses of entertainment, and set to work car- rying passengers, materials, and goods. The horses, coaches, stables, and houses of enter- tainment were then the capital of these men. By the aid of that capital they rendered their fellow-men services many times greater than they could have rendered without the capital. If they planned their work with judgment and skill, so as to take people just when and where they wanted to be taken in the greatest num- bers, they made money, and thus many of tliem got rich. i«ii n ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 105 i,; Now notice certain necessary conditions of these enterprises. It was impossible to get the money to buy the horses and coaclies and build the stables unless some one saved up money which he could have spent had he cho- sen to do 80. A man who spent all his in- come in food and clothing could never have got money to buy a coach. True, he might have borrowed the money from his neighbor. But then the neighbor must have saved the money up, and not spent it on food and cloth- ing, else he never would have had any to loan. Possibly the owner of the coach might have bought it on credit; but, in this case, the maker of the coach must have been able to save the money necessary to buy the material and pay the wages of his workmen. We thus reach two great conclusions : Firstly, without capital we should all now be in as poor a condition as our forefathers were in colonial times. Secondly, we would never have had the cap- ital unless men had wanted to get rich, and had saved up money to expend in making or buying things with which to render greater services to their fellow-men than they could render without them. ■* I ■ : If r 106 A PLAIN man's talk If, from these small beginnings of capital, we come down to the present time, we shall see that exactly the same principles are now at play as were at play when the first line of stages was set agoing. Our great railway man- agers were the successors of the early stage- drivers; but, instead of dealing with a few hundreds of men, they are dealing with mill- ions. They could never have built their rail- way unless the stockholders had saved up money to invest in the shares or bonds, which money was necessary to pay the wages of the men who built the road. Another important point is, that they did this of their own free will, and not because any law compelled them. No law could ever have been passed compel- ling Mr. Yanderbilt to build and run steam- boats, or requiring the builders of the great railways to invest their capital in such enter- prises. What, then, is capital? I answer, capital means the houses we arc living in, the farms and farming implements which produce our food, the cattle on the plains from which wo get beef, the warehouses which hold our great stocks of food and clothing, the machinery which makes us clothing to wear, and the raib i!f# ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 107 ways which bring things where we can get them. Talking about the oppressiveness of capital is the same thing as talking about the oppressiveness of food, clothing, machinery, and locomotives ; that is, it is pure nonsense. All that capital can possibly do for us is to supply our wants. It can no more be used to oppress the masses than a wagon-load of bread can be used to starve them. It is impossible for the capitalist himself to get any benefit from his capital unless he uses it to benefit his fellow-men. I now fancy the reader to ask. Do you then claim that we are in no danger at all from the powers of great corporations, Avhose operations extend over the whole country? Can the whole population of a city or a state afford to depend upon a few powerful and compact or- ganizations for its supply of the necessaries of life? If the consolidation of capital goes on for fifty years as it has for the past twenty it is possible that a few great establishments will do nearly all the manufacturing for the land. Can we afford to leave them entirely unrestricted ? To all this I reply : Firstly, granting that we arc going to sub- ject these corporations to legislative control, !!!!' (■■1 ■ i' 1 * if ' 5 11^ -■) \ 108 A PLAIN man's talk the very first prerequisite of such action is a clear perception of the functions of the capi- talist and of his relation to tlie rest of the community, as I have tried to set them forth. Hence, if you choose, you may consider me a believer in some such control, and you may consider that I have u^^tered these talks in order to promote intelligent control. At the same time I freely admit that I am not wise enough to plan any system of state regulation of industry, nor to foresee what form such a system will take if it is wisely adopted. To repeat once more what I have already said, I am no theorist, have worked out no system, and make no pretension to doing anything more than apply the common-sense of a com- mon man to the study of the subject. Secondly, as things just now look, it seems to me that the interests of the public, and therefore of laborers, who make up the greater part of the public, are in greater danger from labor organizations than they are from cap- italists. Whatever may be the faults of the latter, their influence is essentially conserva- tive. It will always be directed towards keeping the mills, machinery, and railroads on whicli wc all depend in good working order. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 109 h. a I III That these appliances should be kept in good working order is as important to ns as that a ship in which we are crossing the ocean should be kept properly trimmed. Thirdly, I think that whatever restrictions may be placed upon great corporations will come by judicial decisions, following each other so slowly, and each looking so small in itself, that the public will hardly notice them. I doubt whether we shall get much effective legislation either from Congress or the states ; but on this point I am not at all dogmatic. I am willing to let the future keep its secrets. ! * I iii ,f i \ i f f m PART III. THE LABOEER AND UIS WAGES :fil ill ^f i XII. VISION OF A PURITAN DEACON. How interesting and instructive it would be if we could get some Witcli of Endor to raise from the dead the spirit of one of our ancestors, that we might show him our mod- ern life and see what view he would take of it. I am sure if the reader could bring be- fore him a New England deacon of a hundred and fifty years ago, to show him our houses, and hear his comments, he would feel himself a wiser man. Unfortunately, witches of all kinds disappeared from the face of the earth more than a century ago, so that we cannot call them to our aid. But I find there is an- other method of getting at the deacon's thoughts, which we shall have no difiiculty in putting into operation. All who have read *' Paradise Lost," know that the Archangel Michael once paid a visit to Adam in Para- dise. By purging Adam's eyes with certain rare plants, which have remained in existence 8 m ■ :\ III 114 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK to this day, the archangel was enabled to show him events many centuries in advance of their occurrence. In accordance with this ancient precedent, I propose to bring Michael down to the house of Deacon Samuel Oush- ing, a well-to-do farmer, a God-fearing citizen, and a pillar of the Church, who resided in Cambridge, New England, in the year 1727. The object of the visit is to show the deacon the interior of a skilled laborer's dwelling, as we find it in this generation, and to listen to his remarks as the wonders of modern life are unfolded to him. So he is taken up into the world of visions, carried a century and a half into the future, and wafted into a little house, such as we now see in all our cities. The vision of the cosey little parlor strikes him with wonder. The paper on the walls, exceeding in richness of coloring everything he had before seen ; the pictures, the softly cushioned chairs, the finely painted woods, the family photographs on the mantel, the clock ticking in their midst, the gaudy chan- deliers, the melodeon in the corner, with its polished case and ivory keys, are all objects of splendor, such as he had never before seen. The extravagance of the window cur- ON TUE LABOR QUESTION. 115 tains, which seem to him of the finest and costliest lace, might well call down his con- demnation. Looking into the next room, he sees a lady dressed like the governor's wife, wearing an apron of the finest muslin, making tea with an apparatus wholly new to his eye. The snow-white sugar, the China cups, the costly table-cloth, the wonderful white bread, all excite his curiosity. Yet more incredible are the objects in the bedroom. Such a pile of pure white linen apparel, such gaudy bed- quilts, such finely made shirts, arc quite new to his eye. But before he gets through his examination a sound is heard in the direction of the parlor. He returns to it and sees two beings enter, whom he, at the first glance, takes for fairies. They are two little children dressed in a profusion of needle-worked mus- lin garments of so singular a shape that he cannot tell whether they are girls or boys. His first impulse is to condenm such extrava- gance. " Is it possible," he says, " that the rich men of our posterity will be allowed to make such a display of their extravagance ?" Michael (who has forgotten how to talk poetry, and knows only plain English prose) : " Who do you think lives in these rooms f ' I'S i'J m m 110 A PLAIN man's talk lii :i!jl ■ II ma f ■ jDeacon, " I suppose soiiio governor ; or, more likely yet, it is some wealthy nobleman, who will come over here from England to corrupt our people by his ostentation and ex- travagance." Michael. " Not at all, my good fellow. The man who lives in this house is a bricklayer." Deacon, " A bricklayer I" Michael. " Yes ; he is just coming in. See him." Surely enough, a bricklayer appears, carry- ing his kit and dinner-pail, and walks into the parlor with the air of a man who owns it. He goes up to the bedroom, washes the mor- tar off his plebeian hands in a splendid earth- en basin, puts on one of the line linen shirts, and soon goes down again, dressed as finely as the governor. lie takes his seat at the table and commences his meal. The lady pours out his tea, into which he puts a profusion of the priceless white sugar. Deacon. " A bricklayer at home in such a little palace, sitting on such finely cushioned chairs, and eating such food off such a table. How can it be ? And what quantities of but- ter ho is putting on his bread ! A bricklayer eating butter with white bread, wearing shoes It 'W ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 117 all sninmcr, and putting on fine shirts ! llow can it be? Do toll nic what a bricklayer is doing in such a house, and who is that line lady waiting on him ?" MichacL " That fine lady is his wife, at- tending to her every-day duties." Deacon. *' Where are her spinning-wheel and loom ?" Michael, "They have neither spinning- wheel nor loom in the house." Deacon, " And those extravagant little be- ings; I thought they were fairies?" Michael, " They are his children, two little girls who have jnet come in from hearing mu- sic in the public park." Deacon. "But how can a bricklayer ever have such wealth, such a house, such a wife, and such children ?" Michael, " There is nothing uncommon about it. All men sober and industrious enough to learn a trade will be able to have such a house, such a wife, and such children in these coming days." Deacon. " But how can all this be brought about? Why there is a year's work in tho curtains to that man's window, and another year's w^ork, I should think, in making these 1 i m 1 IBB- B V |H '■ ''%'' i f V ' f ;• ' i: ' ;• :| ■| 1 ; , , ^^ 1 ^ 1 'i 118 A PLAIN man's talk 1i dresses of his wife and children, to say noth- ing of all the pictures, ornaments, and furni- ture in his house; and yet you say they have no spinning-wheel and no loom. How did they make such clothes ?" Michael. " It would be a long story to tell you in detail ; but I will try to give you some idea of the process. All the cunningly wrought things you have seen are hardly made by hands at all, but by ingenious ma- chines, one of which will turn out in an hour more work than a man can do in a year. These machines will be worked by engines more powerful than a thousand horses. They will turn out such quantities of goods that their owners will hardly know what to do with them. Then great leaders will rise and show men how, by working together in thou- sands, they can build roads and lay rails from one end of the state to the other, and from one end of the continent to the other. Then they will invent engines which will carry a hundred wagon-loads of the goods you have seen across whole colonies with the speed of a race-horse. Thus with the machine mak- ing the goods and the engines transporting them to every part of the country, everybody ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 119 will be able to buy thera. As an example of this, look at the bricklayer once more and see what he is doing." Deacon. " He is eating grapes ; but such luscious grapes I never dreamed of. Where did they come from ?" Michael. " They came from the coast of the Pacific Ocean. One of these railroads will extend all the way across the continent and bring fresh grapes from the Pacific Ocean to this bricklayer's home in Massachu- setts." Deacon. "How the people will bless these machines, as they get to work. Even if they will be, as you say, inanimate objects, I do not see how they can help crowning them with garlands of flowers." Michael. " Nothing of the sort. The in- troduction of the machines will be cursed at every step, and great numbers of them will be destroyed by the indignant multitude." Deacon. " That is the most incomprehen- sible thing you have yet said. How can it be?" Michael. " When the machines go into operation they make goods so cheaply that human hands cannot compete with them, and 120 A PLAIN man's talk 11 uM thus laborers will find their work taken away from them. Thus the nail -makers will op- pose the introduction of machinery for mak- ing nails, the cloth-maker will oppose the in- troduction of machinery for making cloth, and so on through the whole range of trades and occupations." Deacon. " Then how will the machines ever get introduced at all ?" Michael. " Through the persistence and self- ishness of the men who make and own them. They will force their machines into use in spite of all opposition, and make money by underselling everybody who has not got the machinery, and thus the machine itself will triumph in the long run." Deacon. "But these great leaders of men, who show them how to make a railroad from one end of the continent to the other ; they, if not the machines, will be crowned with gar- lands of flowers and received like heroes wherever they go." Michael. " There again you are mistaken ; they will be looked upon as the most selfish of mortals, and people will taunt them with their inability to take their railroads with them when they die." ON THE LABOK QUESTION. 121 Deacon. " Is all gratitniie, then, to disap- pear from the breast of man within one hun- dred and fifty years? What possible object could these men have had in showing how the railway was to be built, if they got noth- ing but hard words in return ?" Michael. ^' Their motives will be purely selfish, as men suppose selfishness to be. They get their roads built in order that they may have the pleasure of owning them, and thus of being very rich men." Deacon. " But how will that give them pleasure V Michael. "I cannot explain it, except by saying that such will be the propensity of human nature. Men will go to great labor in building roads, canals, and machinery of no more use to themselv^es than to their millions of fellow-citizens just from the innate impulse of their nature. That is all I can tell you about it." Deacon. "What happy beings they will all be. I fear they will no longer believe in tho fall of man nor in total depravity, and will indeed be so well satisfied with this world as never to want another." Michael. "On the contrary, the year 1887, I; ■(' 122 A PLAIN MAN S TALK ;, 1, i'l ''Ir, !ii :!!' whicli I am now showing you, will be an era of such dissatisfaction with their lot on the part of skilled laborers as the world never be- fore saw." Deacon, " Dissatisfaction ! At first sight I should hardly believe it possible. But I suppose it must always be true that wealth alone cannot make a man perfectly satisfied. After he has got all his wants supplied and is rolling in luxury he still finds that he needs something which wealth cannot give. Please tell me, then, what the laborers will want be- sides wealth." Michael. " Dear Deacon, tliey will be dis- satisfied because they think they do not get their fair share of riches. Orators and pub- lic speakers will tell them that the whole efiEect of railroads and machinery has been to make the rich richer and the poor poorer; and that laborers have a harder time to get along than they ever had before." Deacon, " Then will all intelligence, all knowledge of the past, disappear from among men in that nineteenth century?" Michael. " Not in their own opinion. They will boast that intelligence, virtue, and truth never reigned as they will then." hrn ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 123 Deacon, " But you surely do not mean to say that any one can persuade that bricklayer, who has just finished such a supper as no governor of Massachusetts ever ate, that he is a suffering and abused man." Michael. " I do say that very thing. More- over, there is a side of the case which we have not yet seen. Neither the fine clothes of his wife and children, nor the delicious food which he eats, nor the ornaments which decorate his house, take all his wages to buy. He still has some surplus income which he puts into the fund of a great organization of men like him- self, extending over the whole country, and called Knights of Labor." Deacon, " I hope the money is wisely ex- pended. But what you have said about the machines and other matters makes me fearful on the subject." Michael, "I will let you judge for your- self. You see that great news-letter which the man has before him ; can you see what ho is reading ?" Deacon, "No; nothing but the heading. I see in big letters the words * The Great Boycott,' but I do not know what that means. ») 124 A PLAIN man's talk ■ 1 r i; ir ■ I ■ w •i ■^il^ Michael. " I will tell yon. You have seen the luscious grapes which the man was eating, and which I told you came from the Pacific coast. Well, the way he happened to have those grapes was that a great number of Chi- nese sailed all the way over the Pacific Ocean to California, and went to work for very low wages in various occupations, among them that of raising grapes, some of which were brought over to Massachusetts by the railway. Now these Knights of Labor, to which this bricklayer belongs, get very angry with these Chinese because they cultivate the grapes so cheaply; and last week they all put their heads together and decreed that no products of Chinese labor should come from California to Massachusetts. So the order was issued last week that not a man should run a train with California grapes on it ; and the latter are rot- ting on the road between Massachusetts and California. While they are rotting the men who would have been transporting them are out of employment, and this man is paying money to support them while they stand idle and let the grapes rot." Pro ion. " You are reversing human nature i'A ' wuy that is perfectly incomprehensible. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 125 You say this bricklayer is angry with tho Chinese for raising him snch luscious grapes for almost nothing ; and yet while he is pay- ing money out of one pocket to get them, he is paying money out of the other pocket to keep them from coming ? What does it mean ?" Michael. " I can only tell you that sucli will be the plan on which a large part of the ac- tivity of labor organizations will be directed in the future. For example, the only time that the family of this bricklayer whom we are now visiting really suffered for the neces- saries of life was last winter. The suffering happened in this way : The miners in the in- terior of Pennsylvania and along the Alle- ghany Mountains, where most all the coal for future use is to come from, had a quarrel with their employers about their wages, and refused to work. Many thousand members of other labor organizations, among them this very bricklayer, paid every shilling they could spare from their wages to support the miners, and enable them to hold out against their employ- ers. The consequence was that coal enough was not mined to supply the whole popula- tion, and the price was so high that this brick- U: . N s f'J ^1 '; If 130 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK : Si 'm I i 1 : t in M I If a i: - 1 1 f, , S3 T 11 ^ layer could not buy enough to keep his cliil- dren warm. Just as he pays money out of one pocket to buy grapes, and out of the oth- er pocket to keep them from coming, so he contributed money out of one pocket to keep miners from digging coal, and, in consequence, did not have money enough in the other pock- et to buy coal with." Deacon. " But, surely, intelligent. God-fear- ing men will rise to point out to these deluded Knights the folly of their action and the falla- cies of their arguments?" Michael. "Perhaps so. But many other learned men will rise and tell the Knights that they have studied all history ; that the labor- ers are very much abused men, and are just learning a little about their rights ; and will do all they can to make them discontented with their lot, and encourage them in all the foolish devices by which they are working their own hurt." Deacon. " If common-sense is to disappear from mankind in this way, what is to become of them? Cannot you let me see another hundred years ahead ?" But our time is now up, and we are not al- lowed to listen further to the conversation. ON THK LABOR QUESTION. 137 XIII. THE ACCOUNT CURRENT. Every man of business must keep an ac- count of his receipts and expenditures in or- der to learn whether he is gaining or losing by the various enterprises in which he engages. When, tracing out the effect of any policy, he finds a greater outgo than income, he knows that he is losing ; and in the opposite case he knows that he is making a profit. This is what every one of us should do when possi- ble, in order to learn whether we gain or lose by our enterprises. Hence I propose that the laboring classes at large shall keep an account current of their gains and losses by the labor movement, because in that way, and in no other, can they learn how they stand. They want to gain benefits which will counterbal- ance all their expenditures, and it is only by putting down the losses and gains that they can decide whether they are succeeding. i '• '^ i m ■Hi: f.'- 1^ A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK 1 am now going to present one side of such an account current to the best of my ability. I do not pretend that it is a perfect account, and therefore I desire the reader to correct it wherever he finds it wrong. The principal items of debit have been given in the preced- ing chapters, thougli not always stated fully in amounts. When they are all collected the account may be made out in the form which I am now going to give. I must also disclaim any special knowledge of the exact amounts which should be charged. Of course, such evils as we have shown to flow from certain phases of the labor movement do not admit of exact measurement in dollars, and therefore the amount of the damage will be differently estimated by different men. If the reader thinks I have either underestimated or overestimated the money values, he is at perfect liberty to correct them. All I ask is, that he will carefully weigh the matter, put down the items just as he thinks they ought to stand, and draw his own conclusions. ?if ON THE LABOK QUESTION. 120 THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN ACCOUNT WITU THE LABORING MAN. Dr. To amounts contributed to support strikers upon tliG Missouri Pacific road, and to stop tlic trains on tliat road from bringing coal, leather, beef, and many other necessaries of life to the laboring men in Eastern cities $50,000 To higher prices which the laborers of St. Louis had to pay for coal in consequence of the above stoppage 40,000 Damages suffered by twenty thousand laborers who could no longer send their children to school in consequence of the loss of employ- ment through the strike ; damages assessed at three dollars for each family thus suffering. . 60,000 To ten millions of laborers having to pay on the average one cent more for a pair of shoes in consequence of the same strike 100,000 Assessments to support strike of coal-miners in Pennsylvania Unknown Increased price which laborers had to pay for coal in consequence of said strike, amounting to twenty cents each for five hundred thou- sand families 100,000 Contributions to support strikers on the Third Avenue Railroad in New York city 20,000 Loss of time suffered by twenty thousand labor- ers who wanted to ride on that road and could not; assessed at fift}'- cents each 10,000 "Wear and tear of shoe leather suffered by these same people because they had to walk, at ten cents each 2000 Privation and suffering undergone by three thousand employees deprived of employment by the said strike at $50 each 150,000 Etc., etc., etc. 9 130 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK ■rf ■II: ; ,1 I 8C0 that, in making out this account, I have undertaken a task which is far beyond my powers. I cannot possibly enumerate the thousands of cases in which large bodies of working people have been ordered away from their employment, or found their establish- ments boycotted since the beginning of 188G. These strikes have every one caused priva- tion and suffering to scores, hundreds, or thou- sands of people. They have also caused indi- rect loss to all laborers in the country through their having to pay higher prices for the nec- essaries of life. They have also done injury to the rising generation of little children of laborers, whose parents could no longer give them the necessary quantity of wholesome food and send them to school to be educated. They have deprived thousands of poor seam- stresses of regular employment because those who employ them fear to do so, owing to the derangement of business caused by the labor movement. Nor is the end yet reached. Next winter the distress thus caused will be yet more se- verely felt; and it may be that the poorer classes in our cities will suffer from want of employment, and hence of food and fire as they 'if: ON THE LABOR QUESTION. lai liavo never before suffered in our time. All who have carefully studied the preceding talks will see that it is impossible for business to bo deranged as it has been without every laborer in the land suffering. And why all this? Ue- cause a large body of laborers in regular em- ployment, railway employees, operatives in fac- tories, drivers and conductors of street cars, and men engaged in nearly every branch of industry, with astonishing unwisdom, gave up their personal liberty, and pledged themselves to abandon their employment and see their families suffer whenever their irresponsible leaders chose to give the order. I can scarce- ly recall anything in human history so unwiso as this. We read of men having inflicted great damage upon their neighbors and upon their enemies; but I hardly know where we should look for an instance in which men have thus made war upon themselves and upon their own means of living, by joining to- gether in a movement to stop each other from manufacturing the necessaries of life and from earning the wages necessary to the support of their families. That any movement conceived in such folly can lead to good is contrary to reason and sound sense. • V. W wv li fwR 1313 A TLAIN man's TALK 'I'M t| m i i.. * M' r Mr But, before winding up the account, we should ascertain what is to be put down on the credit side. I confess I find it difficult to do this, because I cannot think of anything belonging on the credit side which it would not seem almost ridiculous to put down. The laborers have had seyeral pages of good ad- vice from Mr. Powderlj, which they may es- timate at one hundred dollars per word. They have had the pleasure of being patted on the back by scheming politicians desirous of buy- ing their votes by pandering to their folly. I would like to know just at what price they value this gratification. Certain of their leaders have had the satisfaction of showing their power by ordering thousands of men to quit their employment at a moment's notice, without reason. That any general good has been done I am quite unable to conceive. I fancy I hear a Knight of Labor replying to this : You mistake the object of our order, if you suppose it to be the encouragement of strikes and boycotts. The fact is the con- trary. One of our great objects is to do away with the necessity for either strikes or boy- cotts ; and you should give us credit for what ever good we may thus attain. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 133 I am going to consider the platform and work of the Knights of Labor in the next two talks. At present I remind you that the fore- going current account is made out in the name of labor organizations in general, and not in that of the Knights of Labor in particular. At the same time I have a word to say in re- ply to the foregoing remark. Not long since I read an article by a supporter of the labor movement, in which he complains that people talked about and condemned this movement, when they really knew nothing about the ob- jects of the movement, and had never read the platform of the Knights of Labor. In reply to all this I make a statement which may sound almost paradoxical — to wit, that it is not at all necessary, in discussing this sub- ject, to inquire what the objects of the labor movement are. So far as I have seen, the ob- jects of all socialistic movements are most ex- cellent, and I freely admit that the same is true of your objects. But it is not the objects which we are concerned with, but practical results. If any movement is productive of bad results, we should condemn it, no matter how pure and philanthropic the motives of its promoters may be. 1 E IP 134 A PLAIN man's talk Your order, and perhaps other labor organi- zations, want to make radical changes in the constitution of societ3\ As a matter of fact your efforts have done and are doing untold harm and very little good. The activity and power of the Knights of Labor have so far been directed towards the promotion and not towards the suppression of strikes, and it was their assemblies which introduced the boycott into this country. You know that all the dis- turbances which now threaten the industries of the country, and which are going to be productive of such unheard-of distress among all laboring classes next winter, have been, to a great extent, engineered and carried through by assemblies and leaders of the Knights of Labor. This plain fact is an answer to every objection that can be made. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 135 XIV. A TALK TO A KNIQUT OF LABOR. Talking to a Knight of Labor, I would say : A great many men are now talking to you, at you, and about you. These talkers consider you from two quite distinct points of view. One class look upon you as little children in wisdom, whose favor is to be gained, not by telling you what is true, but by telling you what they think it is most agreeable to you to hear. They pat you on the back, tell you what smart little boys you arc, and offer you candy in order that you may think well of them and vote for them. They say it is of no use to reason with you, or do anything but humor and cajole you. The other class look upon you as mature men of sense, animated by motives as high as those which move men in general, ready to do what is for the greatest good to the greatest number; but not so thor- oughly trained in history, technology, finance, and other branches of knowledge that you have ill i 'if ■ i^ i 1 ■ 5? i'. I/ if !l 136 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK fl nil the facts which ought to guide you at your linger ends. If you have read iny preceding chapters you will see that I belong to this sec- ond class ; and you will bear me witness that I never offered you a single stick of candy to vote for me. I now want to talk to you very plainly about your platform, your work, and your objects. Your platform begins by claiming that " the alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and corporations, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperiza- tion and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses," and then adds : " It is imperative, if we desire to enjoy the full blessings of life, that a check be placed upon unjust accumula- lation and the power for evil of aggregated wealth." You yourselves are supposed to belong to these " toiling masses " whom pau- perization and hopeless degradation are star- ing in the face. Now I submit that to talk of men who contribute as much time and money as you do to printing, publishing, holding meetings, and supporting public speakers, strikers, and unemployed members, being pau- perized and degraded, is a contradiction in terms. It is like a body of sturdy men walk- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 137 ing through the streets and crying aloud : " We are sick and prisoners, and so weak from starvation that we can scarcely speak or move." Men who are really pauperized and degraded cannot combine as you have done, and cannot raise the moneys which your order commands. You will see the contrast in its strongest light by inquiring how it comes that you are so suc- cessful in your efforts. Two or three hundred years ago the forma- tion of any such organization as yours would have been utterly out of the question ; and that for two reasons. In the first place, the laws did not recognize the equal right of men of all classes to combine together for promoting their objects. Had it then been attempted to form an order of the Knights of Labor for the purpose of doing what you have done in this country, the leaders would have been brought into court and punished by fine or imprison- ment. It is because our ideas of human rights and human liberties have advanced, and have found expression in our laws and political institutions, that you are now allowed to be- come Knights of Labor at all. In the next place, the formation of such an order in former times was impossible because I t'l III 1 ' 111 i - mm E M 188 A PLAIN MAN'S TALK laboring men could not possibly spare the time, money, or thought to engage in such business. In order to make a bare living they had to work from twelve to sixteen hours a day. Not only grown people had to work, but as soon as a child acquired the muscular ability to perform any regular labor it had to help earn a living, instead of going to school as your children do. The result of this was that peo- ple had neit i'jr C\^ time nor the ability to edu- cate themselvoti iruu our modern ideas. After working twelve or sixteen hours children were too tired to learn, uiid ^Vxnvn people were too tired to think. Every hour which a laborer gave to the formation or management of a great organization would have been so much out of his means of living. This is no longer the case. Evidently when laborers can make a living with from eight to twelve hours' work, can spare the time, the money, and the thought to engage in organiz- ing, and can let their children go to the public schools, there has been a very great change in their condition. Now let me ask you why this change. I want you to ask it yourself and to ask all your fellow-knights, and not to be satisfied until you get an answer which is perfectly satisfactory to you. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 139 I will tell you my answer. It has all been done by capital, capitalists, and corporations. Yon are now able to make a living with such comparative case through the introduction of machinery, and the building of raih'oads to make and bring within reach of you the necessaries of life. In modern society capital means railroads, steamboats, and machinery. And capitalists mean the men who know how to build railroads and steamboats and run ma- chinery, and who are willing to apply their wealth-producing powers to such enterprises. To say that such men and such things lead to your pauperization is like saying that the bread you eat leads to starvation, and that the house you are in is the cause of your exposure to the weather. It is as near to a contradic- tion in terms as anything well can be. You probably know that the great question which has divided men during the last two hundred years is whether you, the laboring masses, can safely be trussed to guide your own destinies. The old conservative party thinks you cannot. It says that the manage- ment of public affairs requires the highest wisdom, and as you do not possess this wis- dom you should not be allowed to exercise 140 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK :i,i'i ■;:(' ■III' ili m power. The other side claims that though great wisdom is required in public aflFairs, it is not necessary to the exercise of power, be- cause men who are not wise themselves may choose wiser men to act for them. It seems to me that the present is the most critical time the world has ever seen for these two theories to be tried. There is nothing in history to correspond to the im- provement in the laboring man's condition ; I mean the condition of that class of laborers who join the Knights, during the last twenty years. For the first time in the history of the world millions of toiling laborers have been able to collect hundreds of thousands — I sup- pose, indeed, millions — of dollars, for the pur« pose of giving effect to their views of society and government. Thus the conservative and progressive parties have before them the very men whom they have been disputing about, just getting ready to act, and the whole ques- tion is whether they will use their newly ac- quired power wisely or foolishly. I have no hesitation in saying that if you use it as indi- cated in your platform, and as it has already been used, you will use it foolishly and in a way that will ultimately lead to its loss and to inmiPi'l ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 141 your own degradation. Let us see if this is not true. In the first place, if 3'ou read the preced- ing chapters carefully, and study out the con- ditions on which your welfare depends, you will see as plain as day that you have been en- gaged in attacking the very instrumentalities which have given you the power you now wield. It is capital, as embodied in railways and machinery, which has given you all these benefits, with the power they bring, and capi- tal is one of the main objects which you at- tack. Perhaps you may say that it is not the capital itself, but the owners of it, which you attack. But if you will read carefully what I have said you will see that the owners are nothing more than the managers of the capital, and that, if you do not allow them the privilege of managing the capital they have acquired, the capital itself will disappear with them. But this is not the only foolish thing you are doing. You are rejecting something which more than anything else makes life worth liv- ing, and which lias cost your forefathers more toil and bloodshed than anything else in the world — namely, individual liberty. The other day a mechanic w^as asked why he engaged in f'mt ■I 1 il ' m II ^' 1 II' Sam 1 ^m i i ^m jH;::;- 142 A PLAIN man's talk the strike when he was perfectly satisfied with his employer and when the strike would proba- bly subject his wife and children to distress. He replied that he was ordered to do so, and must obey at whatever cost. If asked to justify his course, he would probably have said that he had voluntarily given up his own individual rights for what he supposed to be the benefit of his class. Now what I wish to impress upon you is this — that the position of a man who thus gives up his individual liberty is worse than the position of the meanest subject of the greatest tyrant of modern times. When a man receives the order, "Do not go to work to-day," it is the same to him whether it comes from a czar, a satrap, or a master workman. Our laws do not even recognize the right of a man to sell himself in slavery, and, except as a matter of sentiment and feeling, this giving up of lib- erty is not a whit better than an involuutary slavery. You not only surrender your own natural rights, but you encroach upon the rights of such of your fellow-laborers as will not or cannot join your ranks in the most cruel manner. If there is any one natural right of humanity ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 113 which the most heartless tyrant never dared to deny it is that of every man to make an honest living in his own way, by any reputable pursuit he chooses to follow. But one great object of labor organization is to prevent any skilled laborer from making a living unless ho will join a labor union. The man may not be able to earn union wages ; he may have such ft sense of his rights that he will not become the subject of a tyranny ; he may not be will- ing to contribute money for the support of strikers; he may have a family of helpless children dependent on him for support. In every case your members are required to re- fuse to work with him, and to do all in their power not only to secure his pauperization and degradation, but the starvation of himself and his race. Never was a tyrant, never was a public enemy, seldom was an invading army, engaged in greater cruelty than this. f! r 144 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK S-ii.' -;! 111,,!' XV. ANOTHER TALK TO A KNIOHT OF LABOR. I ESTEEM it the duty of a good citizen to promote every movement that is good, and to oppose every movement that is bad in its ef- fects. Most great movements like that which you are now inaugurating have a good object, but, as I have ah'eady said, it does not follow that, because the object is good, therefore tho effect will be good. The efforts of large bodies of men like yours are very apt to be productive of effects the very opposite of those which it is desired to attain. It is also the case that men do not always act in accordance with their avowed principles. I therefore ask leave once more to call your attention to some utterances in your platform. I find the first object at which you aim to be expressed in the follow- ing words : I. "To make industrial and moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness." ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 145 I think this looks in tho right direction. True, it implies that wealth is something en- tirely disconnected from either industrial or moral worth, and if you have carefully read the preceding chapters you will see that this is a mistake. But I do not now insist upon this point. The great question I have now to put to you is this : What does your order of Knights of Lahor do to promote industrial worth ? To answer this question we must in- quire what industrial worth is and how it is to be measured. It is very clear to me that industrial worth is to bo measured by the amount of good which a man does by his labor, bodily or men- tal. For example : The industrial worth of a bricklayer is to be estimated by the number and quality of the buildings, the walls of which he erects. The industrial worth of the miner is measured by the quantity of coal which ho gets out of the ground. The industrial worth of the engine-driver is determined by the ef- fectiveness with which he performs his duty, and the certainty and safety with which ho brings his train into tho station at the ap- pointed time. In a word, the industrial worth of every man is measured by the products of 10 'I 146 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK his Inbor, and the more useful these products tlic greater is his worth. If, then, you really held industrial wortli to be one of the great standards of individual and national greatness, and if you acted consist- ently with this view, you would do all you could to increase this wortli by increasing the products of every man's labor. You would discourage the eight-hour movement, because it is perfectly clear that the industrial worth of a man who only works eight hours is less than that of a man who works ten hours. You would oppose all the regulations of labor unions which require their members to refuse to work with men who do not belong to the union. You would oppose strikes, because a man on strike has no industrial worth at all. You would encourage the boys now growing up in idleness to learn trades. You would do a great many other good things to promote industrial worth in the community at large. If you were seriously attempting to carry out these objects I should so far heartily sym- pathize with you. But are you really doing so ? I think not. At least I never heard of any assembly of Knights of Labor opposing any of the restrictive rules of the trades-unions or ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 147 'I trying in any way to increase the industrial worth of its members. Now, when any person wants the public to adopt his principles, the very first step is to show that he believes in them himself. Hence you cannot expect to take any step towards making industrial worth a standard of great- ness so long as your acts show that you your- selves place so low an estimate upon your own industrial worth. I am very sorry for this. I think every man ought to be proud of his work. He benefits his fellow-men by his work, and he ought to be proud of rendering that benefit. I may be mistaken, and if I am I shall want to be cor- rected, but I fear thai very few skilled laborers at the present time are proud of their work. This ought not to be. It seems to me that every man who does good work should take the same delight in it that authors take in writing books, and merchants in directing com- merce. I remember that when a boy of four- teen I made a clock-reel, an instrument to wind yarn upon, which snapped a spring once in forty turns to show that a knot had been wound. I do not think I have ever done any- thing since of which I was prouder than of 'f .f rr 148 A PLAIN man's talk If-' 'f having made that clock-reel. I mention this merely to show that an ordinary boy, if not a man, can be proud of doing a very simple job. If I am right in thinking that you do not take pride in your work, then there is certainly something wrong. But I do not by any means wish to imply that the fault is all, or principally, on your side. The real fault is to be found in the theories which run through society. You have so long and often been told by word and action that you are condemned to a hard fate ; that other men reap the fruits of your labor ; and that labor itself is a mark of degradation, that although you would rather not believe these things, you cannot help accepting them as in some sort a necessary result of the pre- vailing opinion of labor. Hence the first plank in your platform, which I have just quoted, is not a theory which you believe and act upon, so much as it is a theory which you would like to have believed and acted upon, if society only took the same view of the case. I also fear that labor organizations have had a bad effect in making the workman under- estimate the value of his labor, and look upon it as pure drudgery. How could it be other- wise when all the rules and regulations of I ON TUE JiABOR QUESTION. 149 such organizations imply that the greater the quantity of work done by its members or by others, the worse it is for them? jN^ow, no man can be proud of that which it is unde- sirable to do. Hence the first step towards the better state of things called for in your platform is to get rid of the theory that real industrial worth is something to be discour- aged, and to adopt the theory that it is some- thing to be promoted. The second object at which you aim is also so good that I shall here quote it in full : II. " To secure to the workers the full en- joyment of the wealth they create; sufficient leisure in which to develop their moral and social faculties; all of the benefits of recrea- tion and pleasure of association ; in a word, to enable them to share in the gains and honors of advancing civilization." I say this is an excellent object. The way to attain it is to increase the industrial worth of the laborer by training every boy who has the skill to learn a trade into a good workman, so that there shall be plenty of everything for everybody's use. There are many other good things in your platform. But there are at least two things I '^1 V 150 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK ■ - 'm' which are so bad as to more tban offset at)y good which could be possibly done by an or- ganization like yours. One of your demands is for an issue of gov- ernment paper money. Now, if there is any one instrumentality invented by Satan to cheat the laborer out of his earnings, it is what is called " fiat money." It cheats him because it continually pretends to pay more than it really does pay. He agrees to work for " dol- lars," and when he gets his dollars they are not real money at all, only little paper pict- ures stamped " one dollar " by Congress. You may ask. If one of them will buy me as much as a gold dollar, why is it not just as good as a gold dollar ? I answer it would be as good if it were redeemable in a gold dollar ; but the supporters of fiat money do not want it so redeemed. Kow all history and rea- son show that unless an issue of this kind of money is greatly restricted, more restricted, indeed, than a believer in it would admit of, it is sure to depreciate, and no longer to buy a dollar's worth. The more it depreciates the more anxious people are to get it, and the more anxious they are to get rid of it when they get it, and the result of this is a contin- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. .51 or- ual increase in the price of everything we eat, drink, and wear. It is hard to imagine what labor organizations could have proposed worse for themselves than this. It is like petition- ing Congress to allow them to be cheated out of their wages. Yet another plank which shows as little practical wisdom is that which demands the purchase of all telegraphs and railroads by the government. If you had stopped at tele- graphs it would not have been so bad, be- cause the management of a telegraph system is not 80 complex a matter as that of a rail- road system, and, besides, private corporations have not managed our telegraphs so well as they have the railroads. But to ask that the government shall take possession of the rail- roads and run them shows a woful lack of practical knowledge. Such a demand could never have been proposed by any one having an intimate knowledge of the way in which government business is managed. It is most fortunate for the laboring man that there is so little chance for carrying out this plank of your platform. 152 A PLAIN man's talk n I ^^ * XVI. HOW CAN ALL GET BETTER WAGES f All of us want to earn higher wages and are trying to do so. It is a good thing for all of ns that we should try to do so, because, if we go about it in the right way, we shall ben- efit other people as well as ourselves by earn- ing higher wages. The right way to get bet- ter wages is to render more and better ser- vices to our fellow-men, and thus induce them to pay us more for our services. But what are the real wages we are trying to earn ? The common answer will be ; wages are so many dollars and cents per day or week. This answer is perfectly correct, so far as the receipts of money are concerned. We are all working to get dollars. But having got the dollars, are our wants then supplied ? By no means. We cannot eat the dollars nor sleep upon them, nor hold them over our heads to protect us from the sun and rain, nor put them to any useful purpose whatever. Then why ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 153 '4 do we care for them at all ? Because with them we buy the things we want — food, cloth- ing, and shelter. The real wages which we earn in the course of the year are, not dollars, but so many suits of clothes, the privilege of living in a certain house, and so many barrels of flour, meal, and pork. These, and these alone, are the real wages ; the dollars are the mere symbols which we use to get our real wages. You will reply to this : " Yery true, but the more dollars I earn the more and better food and clothing I can buy for myself and my family." Here I join issue with you. It does not follow that you can get more of the necessa- ries of life whenever you earn more money in the course of the year. If prices rise in the same proportion with your wages then you gain nothing. The man who gets double wages and has to pay double prices for every- thing he gets is no better ofE than before. The real problem of getting higher wages is either to earn more money without making prices any higher, or to adopt such a policy that the prices of the necessaries of life shall be lower, without people in general earning li T 154 A PLAIN man's talk any less wages. Either of these results will amount to an increase of wages. But you may think that it is quite excep- tional if more wages do not buy more food. To see how far this is true, let us climb up to our old standpoint and look c ice more at the interests of the country at large. The organization of the Knights of Labor has one very wise and liberal feature, in that it recognizes all men who work for their liv- ing as being laborers, and therefore makes them eligible to its ranks. If I am rightly informed, gentlemen of leisure, capitalists, great managers and employers of labor, and liquor dealers, are the only classes who are deemed ineligible. These form a very small fraction of the adult population. I call atten- tion to this fact because it enables us to agree that the laborers, whose interests I have all along been considering in these talks, form, with their families and dependants, nearly the whole of the population. A very little consideration will show us that they do the larger part of the eating and wearing out of clothes, and occupy most of the houses. The richest man in the coun- try eats little more beef or flour than the ON THE LABOB QUESTION. 155 day laborer, and he probably eats less corn- meal and pork. He does not wear out nouch more clothing. For, although he spends more money in clothes, he does not wear them until they are used up, but soon passes them over to some poorer man, to be worn out by him. He does, indeed, live in a much bigger house than the poor man, and has much more costly furniture, and a greater variety of pict- ures and books. It is only in this way that he consumes much more of the good things of life than the poor man does. Now a very little thought will show you that it is physically and mathematically im- possible that higher wages should enable the great masses of people of the country to get more or better food or clothes, unless more or better food and clothes are made. Doubling the wages of farm hands will not increase the crop. Increasing the wages of operators will not add anything to the horse-power of the engine, and so on through the list. What, then, would be the consequence if everybody could, from and after January 1, next, have his weekly wages exactly doubled ? The re- sult would be that everything he wanted to buy would be just twice as dear as before. It f I 166 A PLAIN man's talk would have to be bo, because it is rnathemati- cally and physically impossible that everybody should be able to buy more things than he did before. He cannot buy more than are made, and no more are made than before. True, the rise of prices might not occur immediately. There might be a few days, weeks, or months, during which everybody could buy more flour, beef, and clothing with the increased wages. But, in so doing, we would be merely drawing upon the stock in hand of these articles which is stored away in the great warehouses, and the result would be a future scarcity, which again would more than double the prices. You reply to this : " But we do not want a policy which doubles everybody's wages. We do not want the rich man, the capitalist, the great managers, to have any larger incomes than before. Now, suppose we could adopt a policy which would leave their incomes un- touched, and only increase those of the labor- ing masses ; what then ?" The answer to this I have already given in Chapter lY. I there pointed out that no rise in price diminishes the consumption of the necessaries of life by the rich. The latter consume just as much flour, beef, and clothes ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 157 when the prices go up as they did before. Tiierefore it would still be mathematically im- possible for the poorer classes to buy any more of these necessaries than they did before, no matter how much you increased their wages. Do I mean, then, to say that if the carpen- ters all got double wages they could not buy more than before? Not at all. If carpenters had their wages increased, while all other la- boring men got the same wages, it is quite true that the carpenters would be able to buy and consume nearly twice as much of the necessaries of life. But what would be the consequence ? With no increase of produc- tion there would be just so much less of the necessaries of life for all other laborers, and thus all the other laborers would suffer more or less by the carpenters earning higher wages. Prices would be higher, while the wages would be the same as before. In what precedes I have talked as if it were a very simple and easy matter to get an increase of money wages. This is a wrong notion, be- cause the amount of money which any person or corporation can pay in wages is limited by its or his means of payment. If a factory can produce and sell fifty thousand dollars' worth .4 .; a ' ^ 1 n m M H i| ji H||ll M 168 A PLAIN man's talk of clotli in a year, then $50,000 is the sum total which it could possibly pay out to employees of all kinds in the course of any year. It can, perhaps, pay one half this sum to its own operatives. A portion of the other half will bo paid for material, such as wool or cotton, and the owners of this material can pay just that much and no more in wages for produc- ing more cotton and cloth. Another portion will be paid to its stockholders and managers, and these men will then have just so much to pay directly or indirectly in wages to those who supply them with the necessaries of life. Suppose, then, that the factory is compelled to pay higher wages. Then it must either lessen its force or it must charge a higher price for its products. In the latter case it will be bad for everybody who has to buy cloth, especially for laborers. In fact, the chances are that fewer people will buy the cloth, and thus the result will be, in the end, a diminu- tion of production. What is true of this fac- tory is true all the way through society. All other conditions being the same, one cla cannot get an increase in money wages excej at the expense of other classes. Please re- member that I say, "all other conditions ON TUE LABOR QUESTION. 108 being equal." If with an increase of wages the laborer makes a better article than before, or a kind of article that serves a better pur- pose, then his incre.ise of wages will not bo at anybody's expense. But if everything he does is to go on just in the same way as before, the only result will be that everybody who has to buy the things he makes will have to pay more for them. The inevitable conclusion is that, taking the laboring classes at large, and considering their general condition, that condition cannot be im- proved by mere increase of wages, unless larger and better houses are built for them to live in, better food obtained for them to eat, nicer clothes made for them to wear, better beds made for them to sleep on. The country at large must make so many hair mattresses and soft blankets that there shall be enough to go all round, supplying the poor as well as the rich. We must build plenty of houses, so that every- body shall have plenty of house-room. This requires that we shall make more bricks, get more timber, and employ more men in learn- ing how to build houses. Inventors must de- vise improved machinery for making furniture, f ^ that our factories shall turn it out in such . V 160 A PLAIN man's talk n ■ U quantities that there shall be cushioned chairs for everybody to sit upon, and handsome china plates for everybody to eat o£E of. Conversely, if all these improvements are made in production we are sure to get the advantage of them, no matter whether our wages are increased or not. The good things will all go begging rather than remain year after year unsold, and will be sure to find pur- chasers. If the Knights of Labor will turn the great power of their organization towards the stir- ring-up of everybody to carry out these objects, by inducing young boys to learn all sorts of trades, instead of idling about the streets, by encouraging rich men to invest their money in machinery, and by insuring everybody who shall take part in the enterprise the secure en- joyment of all his rights, then they will render a benefit to themselves and their fellow-labor- ers of the country and of the world. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 161 XVII. CHEAP LABOR AND ITS EFFECTS. If the reader has carefully studied the pre- ceding chapters he will see that there must be something wrong in the theories on which labor organizations are generally based. At the same time it may seem to him that every effort which the labor movement is engaged in is a perfectly natural result of sound rea- soning. Such being the case, the thinking man who desires to have none but correct theo- ries will not be satisfied with the mere sus- picion that the labor theories are wrong. He may say to me : " What you have said seems quite plausible. At the same time the course of thought by wliich I have been led to favor the labor movement seems to me still more plausible ; at least I do not see anything wrong in it. I feel, therefore, a certain amount of con- fusion and doubt on the subject, because two ways of looking at the subject, both of which seem sound, lead to contradictory results." 11 162 A PLAIN man's talk I now have to clear up this difficulty by showing what is wrong in the popular theories on which the labor movement is based. To the common mind some of these theories look so plain and simple that they cannot be doubted, while all seem to have much in their favor ; yet I hope to show you that they are entirely unsound. I shall try to put these principles in the clearest ligh*, so that every promoter of the labor movement will recognize them as being the embodiment of his own ideas, and as I eing what he would himself say if called upon to defend his position. I state them as follows : Firstly, when one man competes with an- other by underselling him in the market or working for lower wages than the latter gets, you hold that he does him an injury by lessen- ing the demand for his goods or hm labor. For example, bricklayers in a certain tow^n are getting $4 per day. A half-dozen bricklayers come from some other city and offer to work for $2 per day. You think that they injure the home bricklayers who have been getting the higher wages, by depressing their wages either to $2 a day or to some intermediate point, say $3 or $3.50. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 163 Secondly, carrying out this principle, you claim that unlimited competition is an evil, in that men who compete with each other to fur- nish labor or goods at the lowest price that they are able to, injure each other, and hence injure society at large. Hence you want to limit competition. Thirdly, if called upon to defend these prin- ciples you would probably say that the man who worked more cheaply than another took work from that other man. I might ask you, w^hy fo ? If one man is drinking water out of a river and two or three other men come and drink water from the same river, they do not take water from the first man, because there is enough for all of them and a thousand times more. You would probably reply to this, that al- though there is water enough in the river for everybody and a thousand times over, there is not work enough in the country, even for the people already in it, and, therefore, to get a parallel I ought to take a case where there is not waterenough to go around. Then, of course, the three new men would take water from the first. You would claim in the same way that competing laborers took work from each other. ■: '1 I* ' ::i 164 A. PLAIN man's talk. Now I wish to point out to you that theso principles are, to a great extent, fallacious. When I siy that they are fallacious I do not mean that they are all the reverse of truth, as if they had claimed that black was white and white was black. What I mean is that they are true only to a limited extent, and on one side, as it were, and that it is not this true side of them which is put into practice. To begin with the third principle. I think you can see without doubt that you are wrong in thinking that the work to be done is lim- ited. Millions of farmers in the Western states and territories are calling loudly for railways to be extended to their neighborhood in order that they may send their products to market and get back the manufactures which they are in need of. Thirty millions of people within these United States want their houses improved. They would like to have better walls, and roofs that would never leak, and new stoves or furnaces to warm them in win- ter. That same number of people want newer and whiter table-cloths, war ler and nicer cloth- ing, better beds, the means of sending their children to school in winter, books and papers for them to read, and, indeed, an unlimited ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 165 supply of good things of all kinds. Yon know perfectly well that all these things require labor to produce them, and that the reason that everybody is in want of tliem is that all the labor of the country is not sufficient to supply them, unless people do more work than they are accustomed to. If you will follow up this train of thought by spending some five minutes in thinking of everything you would like to have, and five minutes more in thinking of everything your neighbor would like to have, and then calcu- late how much labor it w^ould take to supply all these wants, you will see that the amount of work to be done is really unlimited. Why is there any obstacle to this work be- ing done ? Why has not everybody got all the work he wants ? The answer is : People have not money enough to pay for it. Ah ! Here is the rub. There is work enough to he done^ hut people have not the money to pay for it If you are a carpenter and earn $3 a day for 250 days in the year you have just $750 to buy the products of other people's labor with, and this makes up all the wages you can pay to others. Thus we reach the first great modification which your principle re- i il I'^Kif 11 ■■1! ■ 1 ii iiS 7 ^r- 166 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK * ■ i r i' il { JKn. M^Bin d I^BIl; « Br ^ Ht I ^^Hvi 8 Hpf 1 'Wsr ^w *HR i j^£ ■f .IbR, 'Wi' ' W i^s 1 'S' 1 ^^utiti qnires : It is not the work to be done which is limited, but it is the wages which people can afford to pay for that work. And here you must not forget what I pointed out in a preceding chapter, that the real wages are not the money, but what tlie laborer buys with the money. Let us now go back to our first example. A hundred bricklayers are at work in a town at $4: a da3\ Ten new ones come in and of- fer to lay bricks at $2 a day. Will not the wages of the hundred bricklayers then be de- pressed ? Are people going to pay $4 a day for work when they can get it done for $2 a day? Before we can fully answer this ques- tion we must look carefully into the condi- tions. Perhaps the ten new bricklayers can only do the work of live old ones. In this case they will not really be any cheaper than the old ones, and will not injuriously compete with them. If they really do a full day's work they would be fools to work for $2 per day when they could get almost $4. But, to get the strongest possible case for your principle, suppose they are just such fools, or, if you choose, such philanthropists, that they don't want more than $2 per day. Tlien many peo- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 167 pie will be anxious to get their services. To make the case as strong as possible, suppose some of the master builders who have been paying the highest wages discharge ten of their men and take the new men in their places. What will be the result ? To answer this question we must remember that before the ten cheap men came there were in the town so many people in want of houses being built that they were willing to give $4 per day to a hundred bricklayers. That is, they would rather pay these high wages than not have their work done. No doubt they would all like to have their work done at half price, but they cannot possibly get it so done, because there are only ten cheap men, whereas a hundred are wanted to do the work. The latter is worth just as much as it was before the cheap men came, so that the ninety bricklayers who were not discharged may still command $4 per day. But what will the ten men who are dis- charged do? I answer, when there are a num- ber of men willing to give $4 per day for bricklayers there are always a number of others who think they cannot afford to have their bricklaying done at that price, but who would iMii 168 A PLAIN MAN S TALK tii 11 be willing to pay some lower price, say $3.75. The ten discharged men will have no trouble in getting work at these wages. Thus it is perfectly true that the wages of the bricklayers are, on the average, slightly depressed by the introduction of the ten new men. We may suppose that in the long run the other ninety will have to submit to the same reduction, and get only $3.75 instead of $4. Up to this point you are quite right in saying that the competition of new and cheap men will depress the wages of others to a cer- tain extent. You are wrong in supposing it would depress them to any wages the new men choose to work for. If the latter demanded the highest wages they could get, then all would be employed at $3.75 per day. If this were the end of the matter then your principle would be sounder than it is, but it is not the end of the matter. I think, however, this is about as far as we can go without stop- ping to rest, so let us take a breathing-spell before showing what the end of the matter is. it i ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 169 XVIII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. In order to continue tlie examination which we started in the last chapter, it is necessary to explain a somewhat intricate principle on which the whole result turns. Let us suppose that there are ten men, James, John, William, Peter, etc., who are working in co-operation with each other, and are trying to promote each other's interests as well as their own, so as to do, on the whole, what is best for all ten of them. A party comes to them and proposes that they shall engage with him in some enterprise, 10 matter what, in which each man shall take a different part. On calculating tlie profit and loss to be expected, they find that Peter will lose three cents while the nine others will gain one cent each. Peter does not want to lose three cents, and they do not want him to lose it, so they all say, " It is too bad if we, to make one cent each, cause Peter to lose three fi m 170 A PLAIN man's talk M I ■ 11 III 1 ! I cents. Therefore we will reject this man's proposal." Next day another man comes and offers em- ployment under which John would lose three cents while all the rest would gain one cent each as before. They reject this proposal for the same reason. So they go on from day to day rejecting all proposals by which any one of their number shall lose. Then an offer is made them by which Peter would gain three cents while the other nine would lose but one cent each. "It will be very nice for Peter to gain three cents,'' they all say, "and what do we care for one cent. Let us accept this proposal for Peter's sake. By to-morrow wo shall have an offer by which William shall gain three cents, and next day one by which John shall gain three cents, and so on. We will accept all these offers, and thus we shall all get the advantages of the three cents while nobody will lose more than one cent at a time." Now it needs no liigh mathematics to see that these ten men have been rejecting the offers which, on the whole, would have been advantageous to them, considered as a single body, and accepting disadvantageous offers. ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 171 They have suffered nine cents to be lost for every three they have gained because, on each occasion, they had in view the interest of the one gainer and overlooked that of the nine losers. Thus they rejected chances of gaining a sum total of six cents and accept chances which led to a loss of six cents. This is what men are always doing, and al- ways proposing to do in their action upon economic questions. "We may take the pre- ceding ten men to represent so many classes of the leading laborers ; say railroad employees, bricklayers, carpenters, tailors, sLoemakcrs, farmers, factory hands, furniture-makers, etc. Whenever any measure is proposed by which some one of these trades may lose a little, they get the others to oppose it, no matter whether the others gain or not. When some one trade has a chance to gain it gets the others to ac- cept, no matter if they are all to lose. As a familiar example, take the case of the strike. When the street-car drivers all struck the la- borers of other trades contributed money to support them, and still others suffered for want of cars to ride in. The sum total of the loss, even to the laboring classes alone, was in all cases greater than the sum total of the gain. 173 A PLAIN man's talk ,li $ i ir Nothing can happen in tho commercial world which will not bo more or less to tho disadvantage of somebody. If there is a good crop of wlieat, the men wlio are holding wheat to sell arc losers for the time beinij:. When machinery is introduced to do the work of la- borers, the laborers wliose work they take are los. t* -'' W %0>^ "^^> \v\^ ^#^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 <" III :" III M 112.5 IM 12.2 13.6 2.0 1.4 1.8 1.6 V] ^ /a. "^ ■eg/ r> ^. CM <3> ^;i 7 >(^ Photographic Sdences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ^ \ ;v \\ lV 0^ [y..>^ % ^^ 180 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK *; the present day would not consider that life was worth living. I have abundantly shown what, in fact, every man who has intellectual eyes can see by looking at it, that the reason why the la- borer of to-day is so much better off, is that the force of circumstances have been stronger than his theory. Capitalists have persisted in building railways to bring him the products of other regions, and in making machinery to supply him with clothes and furniture ; in a word, to do for him the ver}^ thing which, ac- cording to his theory, it is disadvantageous to have done. Under these circumstances I ear- nestly hope that labor organizations will not sncceed in doing themselves irreparable dam- age by putting this old theory into operation. I hope the common-sense of society will pre- vail upon them to see that the laborer is best supplied with the necessaries of life when every man is at work at the very best wages he can get, be they high or low. Closely associated with the policy I have pointed out is the fear that one man will get along a little faster than another. I have not so low an opinion of human nature as to be- lieve that this fear can arise from mere jeal- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 187 pusy. I take it that when a labor union stops one of its members from doing more work and thus earning higher wages than the others, it is because they fear the others are injured by such a course. In a word, they think that when one man gets ahead it must necessarily be at some one else's expense. But the truth is the very opposite. The progress of society is like that of a great party of men who are trying to make their way over a rough, untrodden road, in some wilderness of the West. Such a party gets along most successfully when every man in it is allowed to use his legs in the best way he can, and to get along as fast as he can. Every man who is ahead of another has to make a better road for him ; every stone or stick he knocks out of his way makes a smoother road for all who are to follow, and thus while those who are ahead enjoy an advantage over their fellows, those who are behind have the advan- tage of a better road. Now the theory that one man should not be allowed to get ahead of another would lead to the practice of tying such a party of men together, both by their hands and feet, so that one could step only when another did. 188 A PLAIN MAN^S TALK I Another form of the same fallacy is seen in the current notion that one man is worse off because others accumulate immense for- tunes. I have shown abundantly that no man can accumulate a fortune except by beneiit- ing his fellow-men, and especially the laborer, by much more than the whole value of the fortune. Nor is this all. I have shown that after his fortune is acquired he cannot do much with it except employ it for the benefit of his fellow-men. I have written these talks because the sin- gular spectacle was presented to me of a large body of men organizing and contributing money to do themselves all the injury they well could. What suffering they have thus caused themselves you all know. What pri- vation the poor will endure next winter in consequence of the agitation thus brought about yon will see when next winter comes. I hope you will not then forget the cause of the distress. ON THE LABOK QUESTION. 189 XX. CONCLUSION, I NOW invite the reader's courteous attention to some general thoughts about the subject wo have been discussing. I do not profess to have solved the labor problem ; I do not think it is to be solved on any system, or by any theory, which can be laid down either by a man or a body of men. I am an optimist to this extent : It seems to me that the system on which men have gradually been led to work in unison by merely following the course dictated by cir- cumstances in each individual case works bet- ter than any which human ^'ngenuity could have contrived. Studying the efiEect of govern- mental interference in the past we find that whenever it was dictated by any economic theory it retarded rather than promoted prog- ress. "We now look back with wonder upon the unwise policy of the Spanish government consequent upon tlie discovery of America. Yet it was dictated by the commercial theories 190 A PLAIN MAN S TALK ^t.' B I V M i» ' h' 'Hi .1 wliich then moved the world, though individ- uals never acted on them. We now see very clearly that the policy to which individuals were led merely by following their own inter- ests, and acting as circumstance dictated, was wiser, and tended more to the public good, than any system which had received the sanc- tion of government. I think the same thing is true at the present time. Our posterity of a century or two hence will ask with wonder how the people of the United States in this nineteenth century could have believed, in the face of reason and facts, that the condition of the laborer would be im- proved by a policy designed to make every- thing necessarj^ to his comfort scarce and dear, by levying protective tariffs upon everything he might import from foreign countries, by discouraging him from building ships and from engaging in many other forms of indus- tr}^, and by persuading him to produce as few of the necessaries of life as possible. As in the past the stern logic of facts has proved stronger than any theories of philoso- phers or people, so I think it will be in the future. The inherent tendency of the indi* vidnal to do what is for his own good, will, in ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 191 tlie long run, overpower all other tendencies. This will lead to the very best results, because, when every individual does what is best for himself the whole community will be doing what is best for the whole community. I by no means claim that neither legisla- tion nor regulation will enter as factors into the result. Our courts of law will see that no man is allowed to pursue his own selfish good at the expense of others, without render- ing them a full equivalent for all he takes from them, and that corporations shall treat all men alike. We are approaching a new state of things, which will need new laws. Each new law framed to meet an evident emergency will probably be a wise law ; if it is unwise that fact will soon be found out and the law will be changed. If, then, I hold that the logic of events is wiser than the philosophy of men, why have I penned these chapters? I reply, to set forth that aspect of the question winch seems most in need of being set forth. Our natural prog- ress towards a healthy social state is retarded by the prevalence of false theories which per- meate society and control legislation. The constant tendency towards unwise legislation 199 A PLAIN MAN 8 TALK Ifei m is the greatest difficulty society now has to encounter. It forms the only basis on which the so-called Manchester School of Political Economy can now rest, and the only obstacle to the introduction into legislation of those more liberal and philanthropic ideas which so many of our philosophers are disseminating. Is it possible to get through Congress any legislation on the labor problem which will not be inimical to the interest of laborers? Judging from the past, the outlook is not en- couraging. Let us add one more to the in- stances already given of unsound theories in legislation. Why have we not American shipping and American ship-building? Because our laws throw obstacles in the way of an American citizen building a ship, or sailing one he has bought abroad under the American flag. If Congress should merely repeal all laws which in any way abridge the right of citizens of the United States to import all the material and machinery needed to build ships with, and all laws which in any manner restrict them in the purchase of ships already built, we should in a few years have an Ameri- can mercantile marine of respectable proper- ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 193 tions. Please remember that no positive legis- lation is needed for this purpose, all we need is the repeal of adverse legislation. The question whether state regulation of great organizations will bo a feature of our coming policy turns on this very point. If wo can ever get a system of legislation which shall be based on business principles and not on erro- neous social theories, we may expect a continual enlargement of the functions of the state. There are many things which the state would do better than any corporation, could we only have it embody the wisdom of the nation. The careful reader of this little book will see that it is written entirely from the point of view of the interests of laborers. I have nowhere considered the interests, and seldom the rights, of capitalists and employers. I look forward to the time when no one will have to labor more than eight hours a day to make a living. This time will come when a few more improvements are made in machin- ery, and when every boy shall be trained in doing something useful to his fellows, and be iillowed the same rights whether he is or is not a member of a labor organization. It would approach very rapidly could we once get rid 13 1. S' Hi I "1. I "4' V I 104 A PLAIN man's talk of the theory that plenty and cheapness are evils, and high prices the only good. Notwithstanding my optimistic views, I am not unmindful of the dark side of the case. The darkest feature of all is that the maximum of discontent has come with the maximum of prosperity among laborers. Never before could the industrious laborer make a living so easily as he can to-day, never before could he spend so much time and money in disseminat- ing his views, and never has there been so nmch organized discontent the world over. I know it is sometimes said that the laborer is no better off for modern improvements in production, but this statement is so absurdly contrary to facts which anybody can know by merely opening his eyes and studying, that it can hardly be characterized as otherwise than reckless. When I walk out in the city of Washington on a Sunday afternoon I find the public parks and streets swarming with the children and wives of laborers, every one of them dressed in a style which, when I was a boy, was possible only to the rich. I sup- pose the same to be true in all our cities. In saying this I do not claim that the con- dition of everybody is improved. There are ON TIIK LABOB QUESTION. 199 in every community large numbers of people who have not been trained to follow any special pursuit, whose wants are very few and simple, who are willing to go barefoot in summer and eat the cheapest food the year round, who want nothing but a hovel to shelter them, and nothing but rags to clothe them, and who will do just what is necessary to supply these simple wants, and nothing more. Of course, such people would never be any bet- ter off under any conditions that we could devise. They stay behind simply because they do not want to take the trouble to go ahead. It is useless to smooth the road be- fore them because they will not walk upon it, no matter how smooth we make it. A pessimist might claim that progress which results only in discontent is an evil ; that the very fact of the laborer being discontented with his improved condition shows that it has improved too rapidly, that a social cataclysm is imminent which will once more reduce him to the state of coarse bread, rags, and a hovel, which was his lot in times past. All I can say in reply is, that I hope for the best. THE END. NEWCOMB'S rOLlTICAL ECONOMY. PRINCIPLES OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. By Simon Newcomii, LL.D., Professor of Mathematics, U. S. Navy, Professor ia the Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, Author of "Popular Astronomy," &c. pp. xvi., 548. 8vo, Cloth, $3 50. Nothing 80 good Is, that wu know of, to be finiul clBCwhcre. Ev- ery section, \vc might nlmoet sny every l)t»g«, aboiuulB In Instruc- tion. . . . The book ehoulil be more thnu read: It ehoiild be caro- fiilly studied, and students who make themselves masters of the problems set for them In the illustrations and exercbes Intcrs]>ersed among the chapters will know more of the subject than many of the avowed professors of the sciences In our colleges.— X 1'. Com- mercial Advertiser. It is timely, useful, and invaluable. The questions considered arc now before the citizens of the United States for their dccisiou. More valuable help than that afforded by this volume towards a complete understanding of tliese questions, and towards conclusions that will promote national prosiMjrity, la not to l>e found.— C/triij^ia/* Intelligencer, N. Y. In the present volume Professor Newcomb has directed hl3 great powers of analysis to the difficult subject of political economy, Whatever such a man says about anything he never fails to make clear. The reader of this exposition of a science little understood will never have the slightest doubt of Professor Nowcomb'* mean- ing. — N. Y. Journal of Commerce. In a broad and profound consideration of the subject on both Its ecientific and practical side ; in an engaging candor, n mathematical clearness and precision, and a weighty grasp of tlie great subject and its relations, no previous work on political economy can com- pare with this by Dr. Newcomb.— i^oston Evening Traveller. The merit of Professor Newcomb'a treatment consists in thor- ough knowledge and mastery of the subject, in its freedom from partisanship, its simple and clear logical statement and apt illustra- tion, and in its general snggestlveness to the reader to iuqnire and think for himself from what is given him. Through tliis combina- tion of essentials to instruction and independent investigation it has the power to accomplish more than any other vfovk.— Boston Globe. PuBLisnED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, N. Y. The above work sent bi/ mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. NEWCOMB'S ASTRONOMY. i!- Popular Astronomy. By Simon Newcomb, LL.D., Pro- fessor U. S. Naval Observatorj'. With one Hundred and Twelve Engravings, and Five Maps of the Stars. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50; *School Edition, ISnio, Cloth, $1 30. The great reputation which the author of this work has merfted and enjoy?, both in this country and in Europe, is a sufficient guar- antee of Its excellence. ... lie has dwelt CB{)ecialIy upon those top- ics which have just now a popular and philosophic interest, care- fully employing such language and such simple explanations as will be intelligible Avithout laborious study. Technical terras have as much as possible been avoided. Such as w«ire employed of neces- sity, and many that occur elsewhere, have bten fully explained in a copious glossary at the eud of the book. Wit.'i its abundant aid, the reader cannot fail to derive both pleasure and entertainment from the study of what is the most ancient as well a3 the most elevating and inspiring of all the natural sciences. . . . Professor Newcomb, throughout tnis whole volume, preserves his well-known character as a writer who, in treating of scientific subjects, fully understands the art of bringing them within the range of popular comprehen- sion. ... It is fully calculated to hold the attention of the general reader. — JV. Y. Times. While the professional investigator and special student will find here much to strengthen them in their researches, it is not for them that the work has been done. Its purpose is to enlighten that great mass of fairly educated people who have lost the astronomical knowledge that they once possessed. It states and explains ex- haustively and elaborately the latest methods of investigation, the latest discoveries, and the latest general development of this ma- jestic and almost infinite science. (Jrent thought and mncl» space have been given to the historical points and philosophical aspects of the science. ... In the treatment of weighty and abstruse scien- tific subjects, he never fails to bring them within the range of the average popular comprehension. — DoHton Pont. Professor Newcomb's aim has been to write a book which will present to the general reading public a condensed view of the his- tory, methods, and results of astronomical research, especially in those fields which are of most popular and philosophic interest at the present day. F»)r the accomplishment of this object he has avoided, as far as possible, the complication of the narrative and arguments with mathematical formulas and scientific technology, and has endeavored to give the reading public a book that, while being exact in its statements and dctinitio!}<3, will be popular in tho best sense of the viovd..— Cincinnati Times. \i .'■: Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, N. Y. tW The above work sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of tl^e United States or Canada^ on receipt of the price. M VALUABLE WORKS ON POLITICAL SCIEN'CE. Curtis's Constitutional History, Constitutional History of tiie United States, from their Decla- ration of Independence to the Close of their Civil War. By GKonoK TioKNOtt CouTis, Author of "Life of James Buchanan.'"' {Ill Press.) Sumner's What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. By Professor W. G. ScMNRH. ICnio, Cloth, CO cents. Ely's French and German Socialism. French and German Socialism. 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