m' 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 TALKS 
 
 LffiBOR+TROUBLES. 
 
 REV. C. O. BROWN. 
 
 CHICAGO : 
 F. H. Revell, 148 AND 150 Madison Street, 
 
 PuSlisher of Evangelical Literature.
 
 COFTBiaHT, 1886, BT F. H. BeVELL.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following Talks were delivered to an 
 audience composed largely of workingmen, one 
 each week, last Spring, prior to the Anarchist 
 outbreak in Chicago. The series had been 
 sometime in contemplation, and preparation 
 had been partly made before the recent indus- 
 trial disturbances began. Those disturbances 
 therefore were not the cause, though they 
 hastened somewhat the delivery of the TA.LKS. 
 They were printed week by week in the Du- 
 buque Times as they were delivered. The 
 public interest which they aroused, indicated 
 by editorial comment, newspaper extracts and 
 communications addressed to the author ; the 
 present great importance of the theme, and the 
 request of prominent persons who heard the 
 Talks, constitute my apology for consenting 
 to the publication. 
 
 CHAS. O. BROWN. 
 
 Dubuque, July, 1886. 
 
 145895'1
 
 CDNTENTS. 
 
 I. The Danger. 
 
 II. The Laborer's Grievance. 
 
 III. The Laborer's Foe. 
 
 IV. The Laborer's Fallacy. 
 V. The Laborer's Hope. 
 
 VI, Mind and Muscle — Co-Laborers.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DANGER. 
 
 Industrial commotions and other signs of 
 the times all point to some social reformation. 
 If we are wise in meeting the question it need 
 not be along the track of fire and destruction 
 to a goal where all rights shall be overthrown 
 as the wild fanatics of communism desire. The 
 result may be reached through pain and disas- 
 ter, even as the overthrow of slavery was ac- 
 complished, only by a bloody war. But the 
 results when reached will not be a pandemo- 
 nium, where murderers and cut throats shall 
 rule, and where they who have succeeded in 
 life shall be the only criminals. The new ad- 
 justment, if one is to be made, will be toward 
 greater righteousness, not toward lawlessness; 
 toward peace, not toward anarchy; toward 
 brotherhood, not toward hatred. It will bring 
 the world to a new understanding of the heart 
 ache and scrimping want of millions who are 
 willingly bearing its burdens, and it will find 
 some way of applying the world's surplus
 
 6 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 wealth to feeding the hungry and clothing the 
 naked. It will bring the laboring man to a 
 better understanding of the fact that all great 
 affairs require leadership, and authority; and 
 it will inspire a new sense of respect and sym- 
 pathy on both sides. The employer has his 
 burdens as well as the employe. Any just re- 
 form will recognize the fact that these two 
 classes must always exist, and it will not seek 
 to embitter one against the other; but it will 
 seek for some common ground where each 
 may have a better understanding with the 
 other. 
 
 The time has fully come when such questions 
 must be discussed. We shall only injure our- 
 selves by seeking to avoid them. They who 
 would avoid the trouble and annoyance of such 
 matters, are only imitating the wisdom of the 
 ostrich who sticks her head in the sand and 
 fancies that she is hidden from danger. 
 
 Numerous indications tell us that whatever 
 may be our personal opinions, the time has 
 come when discussion can no longer be de- 
 layed. Our legislators see it and are making 
 haste to introduce bills in state and national 
 legislatures to remedy the evils of which the 
 laboring classes complain. Some of these bills 
 are extremely crude and imperfect, but they
 
 THE DANGER. 7 
 
 show the tendency of the times none the less. 
 They show that the need of reform is felt and 
 conceded by our legislators. They show, too, 
 that the demand of laboring men for some 
 change is a just demand. It is not for me to 
 point out how far these demands are just and 
 where they are not. But that something is re- 
 quired becomes evident when the demand is 
 so universal and the attempt to satisfy it is so 
 general. 
 
 Another sign is significant. The great cap- 
 italists of the country, men who control a net- 
 work of railroads, which affect the commerce 
 of the entire nation, are already acknowledg- 
 ing the power of the laboring man, in a way 
 which would have astonished himself ten years 
 ago. It is not so long since Wm. H. Vander- 
 bilt dismissed a reference to the will of the 
 people with a profane sneer which showed his 
 utter contempt of the peoples' rights. One 
 whose power in the railroad world is only sec- 
 ond to that of Vanderbilt finds to-day that the 
 demands of his laborers cannot be dismissed 
 in that way. 
 
 The laborer has awakened to the fact that he 
 has power also. Let him be just in using it, 
 if he would have his cause command respect. 
 If any number of Mr. Gould's employes do
 
 8 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 not choose to work for him it is their right to 
 quit. But they must remember that other 
 laboring men have their rights. Suppose that 
 a corporation desires to employ 10,000 men, 
 and that ten thousand men are ready and anx- 
 ious to work for that corporation. They are 
 poor men and their families need the bread 
 that they can thus earn. Suppose, however, 
 that several capitalists should employ a suffi- 
 cient force of men to keep these 10,000 men, 
 who want to work, out of employment and 
 should actually do so? Wouldn't the laboring 
 men all over the country cry out against the 
 injustice of such conduct? Wouldn't they say 
 this was another evidence of the grinding op- 
 pression of the capitalist against the laborer? 
 Yet that is just what 10,000 laborers are now 
 doing against their fellow laborers. That is 
 not the oppression of capital against labor; 
 but of one set of laborers against their broth- 
 ers. The laboring men of this country cannot 
 afford to oppress each other, just at the time 
 when they are demanding a reformation of the 
 oppressions of capital and corporations. There 
 is a spirit of justice in this country which will 
 in the long run respond to any rightful demand 
 of the laboring man. But it must be remem- 
 bered that the spirit of justice loves one labor-
 
 THE DANGER. 9 
 
 ing man as well as another, and one body of 
 laboring men as well as another. And the 
 spirit of justice will see to it in the long run 
 that no body of men shall be permitted to keep 
 otheis from laboring, while their families are 
 suffering for bread. 
 
 Another sign of the times is significant. No 
 book of the present century, except Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin, has sold like Henry George's 
 Progress and Poverty. In less than three years, 
 according to Mr. Mallock, it passed through 
 more than an hundred editions here in Ameri- 
 ca, Since then its sale in England and on the 
 Continent has been quite as wonderful. This 
 is not the place where I shall discuss Mr. 
 George's views. I only mention the significant 
 fact and say that while he is a most intelligent 
 gentleman, and at heart a friend of the labor- 
 ing man, his views are revolutionary and ex- 
 treme. They propose an entire change in the 
 relations of capital and labor, and a revolution 
 in the ownership of real estate. It matters not 
 that these views are extreme; it matters not 
 that they seem to many utterly unreasonable; 
 they are being read as a new social gospel by 
 hundreds of thousands of people and they are 
 affecting the views of millions. You will find 
 the book in laborer's cottages, where new
 
 10 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 books rarely go; you will hear its doctrines 
 preached in laboring men's clubs throughout 
 this country, in England and France and Ger- 
 many. But further, they have affected also 
 men of learning. In England and Scotland 
 learned bodies of college professors have dis- 
 cussed them, and in some instances accepted 
 their teachings. If we think that these facts 
 are not significant it may be well for us to re- 
 member the influence that Uncle Tom's Cabin 
 exerted in the abolition of slavery. 
 
 You will not understand me as advocating 
 Mr. George's ideas. I am only affirming that 
 they can no longer be ignored by those who 
 would avert some such revolution as they ad- 
 vocate. 
 
 These are matters which are of vital impor- 
 tance to the whole land and to every hearth- 
 stone in it. We must no longer shrink from 
 looking at the facts. We have too long been 
 silent on these matters. Too long the blatant 
 socialists, like those who address the crowds 
 who flock to hear them in Chicago, have been 
 permitted to monopolize the discussion of these 
 themes. They have posed as the laboring 
 man's friend. They have abused the churches 
 until many believe that the churches are some- 
 how the enemy of the laboring man. They
 
 THE DANGER. 11 
 
 have abused everything in the name of order, 
 and openly declared their intention to destroy 
 everything connected with the present ordering 
 of society. Do we realize that every Sabbath 
 day, while we enjoy the quiet of our homes 
 and the worship of our sanctuaries, there are 
 many mouthing orators in different cities tell- 
 ing audiences aggregating many thousands 
 that the time has come for the poor to rise 
 against the rich, the laborer against the capital- 
 ist; that the time has come for the torch and 
 dynamite — for tearing down and dividing up! 
 Such mouthings would be entirely harmless 
 except to those who utter them, were it not 
 that in every great city, and in a growing de- 
 gree throughout the land, there is an impres- 
 sion that there are real wrongs which need to 
 be righted. There is a feeling that in some 
 way in this free land every honest man who is 
 willing to toil from sunrise to sunset, should be 
 able to earn at least a trifle more than a bare 
 subsistence for himself and his family. 
 
 Some time ago I clipped the following item 
 from one of the Chicago papers. It was 
 headed: 
 
 HEATHENISM IN CHICAGO. 
 
 " How can a man who earns $ i a day pay 
 $6 a month rent, clothe, feed and care for a
 
 12 - TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 sick wife and six children? We hate to see a 
 horse pull until he falls under the whip. What 
 about a man tugging at such a load, year in 
 and year out, with no one to lend a hand? But 
 the women — the curse always falls most heavily 
 upon them. On the south side the other day 
 a woman was found on the floor beside her 
 sewing machine in a fainting fit. She had been 
 trying to finish a job of 26 cloaks, for the mak- 
 ing of which she was to receive $26 — $1 a 
 cloak! A poor neighbor helped to bring her 
 to, and got her on the bed, and then finished 
 the cloaks for her. Did the sick woman get 
 the $26, to pay her rent and buy food, for lack 
 of which her strength had given way? Not 
 one cent of it. The firm refused to pay her 
 anything because the finishing was not done 
 by herself. 'The Lord have mercy upon them,' 
 said the visitor, 'I never saw a human being so 
 full of bitterness as was that poor sewing wom- 
 an.' At last she gave a great lurch of soul, 
 to get out of the trough of the sea, and keep 
 her little craft from going straight to the bot- 
 tom. 'Well,' she gasped, 'God lives, and He 
 is just — and He cares — even for me.' " 
 
 There are hundreds of thousands in this 
 country who are willing to work, and who do 
 work hard, year's end to year's end, who do 
 not and cannot succeed in laying up a dollar. 
 In such a city as Chicago there are many thou- 
 sands of such. They make no complaint. They 
 silently endure their sufferings. But as they
 
 THE DANGER. 13 
 
 see other men enjoying fortunes which never 
 cost them a day's honest toil — fortunes which 
 have been won by speculative gambling in an 
 hour, they have a sense of wrong and a feeling 
 that things need re-adjustment. Their sense 
 of wrong and injury is not lessened when, as 
 is often the case, the very speculation which 
 makes one man worth a million or ten million 
 dollars — compels the poor man who gets a dol- 
 lar and a half a day to pay ten or twenty cents 
 more for every sack of flour he buys. These 
 people, thousands of them, have no sympathy 
 with communism; they would shrink with hor- 
 ror from any contact with the vile wretches 
 who talk about murdering every rich man, and 
 applying the torch; but it is that sense of 
 wrong in the hearts of honest laboring men 
 which gives to socialism or communism all of 
 the real power which it has in this country to- 
 day. 
 
 The men who make the noise at socialistic 
 meetings are mostly ruffians and blatherskites, 
 who are not earning now, and never have 
 earned, an honest day's living. They have lived 
 by their wits, and they want a better living 
 than they have been able to get that way. 
 They want to divide what they never helped to 
 earn. The blatant utterances of these men
 
 14 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 would never accomplish anything to be feared 
 by the country at large if there were not an- 
 other class whose alliance they seek, and who 
 feel that they are justly earning more of the 
 world's wealth than they get. There is a large 
 class of persons who feel that, under the present 
 order of things, they have a great grievance. 
 I am not now saying whether they are right or 
 wrong; I am speaking of the facts. It is this 
 strong undercurrent of feeling, in bosoms of 
 honest toilers, which constitutes the real strength 
 of socialism in this country to-day. Socialisic 
 orators, as a rule, have no genuine grievance, 
 although they prate so much. A man who has 
 earned nothing has no right to complain be- 
 cause he gets little. But his hope lies in being 
 able to kindle this feeling of grievance which 
 thousands of honest toilers carry in their bo- 
 soms, into a flame of hatred against capital, 
 and of anarchy against, the government. He 
 appeals, therefore, to that feeling. He pre- 
 tends to be the friend of the laboring man. He 
 commisserates his sufferings; he strives by ev- 
 ery means to create the impression that the 
 laborer earns everything, and that capital gets 
 the most of it. He sets forth what he claims 
 to be the greed, the avarice, the selfishness, 
 the heartlessness of the proud capitalist, rolling
 
 THE DANGER. 15 
 
 in luxury, and the misery of the laborer, who 
 has earned his wealth for him, living on a crust, 
 and his children clothed in rags. 
 
 Thus, by every means, he seeks to inflame 
 the passions of the honest laborer, and kindle 
 his hatred not only against his employer, but 
 against the whole order of things which has per- 
 mitted one to be rich while the other is poor. 
 
 And, my friends, the danger of socialism lies 
 just there. The danger is that its long-contin- 
 ued and frequent appeals may secure the alli- 
 ance of, thousands who have the feeling that I 
 speak of, but who, as yet, would abhor the 
 thought of being socialists. Socialism has not 
 yet secured the alliance of any great propor- 
 tion of the laboring classes. The laboring 
 classes constitute the bulk of our population, 
 and it will be an unhappy day for this country 
 when any great numbers of them become 
 "fire and blood" socialists. But many things 
 in these days are driving and drawing them that 
 way. Everything which has a tendency to in- 
 crease what many laboring men regard as the 
 grievance of their class helps in that direction. 
 Everything which tends to class separation and 
 to alienation of employer and employe; every- 
 thing which breeds a feeling of discontent and 
 hatred in the hearts of the laborers of this coun-
 
 16 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 try; everything which deepens the feehng that 
 society at large is wilhng to enjoy his toil with- 
 out rendering a fair recompense; everything 
 which leads him to think that his cause is just, 
 and that none are willing to listen to him — ev- 
 ery such thing drives him a step further in the 
 direction whither the socialist is trying to draw 
 him. 
 
 It is time for society at large to recognize 
 these facts, and adjust itself to them. The 
 people should recognize the fact that there is a 
 danger here which can be averted; not a dan- 
 ger that the great proportion of the laboring 
 classes will ever become socialists. No! We 
 have too much confidence in the intelligent self- 
 respect of American laborers for that. But 
 there is danger that enough of them may be 
 infected to make serious trouble for this land. 
 What if every tenth laborer should be carried 
 away with this horrid infection, and thoroughly 
 filled with the notion that the time has come 
 for the torch and dynamite? Wouldn't that 
 make trouble enough? With more than twenty 
 thousand armed socialists in the city of Chicago; 
 with thousands in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pitts- 
 burgh, and in every great city of this land, is 
 it not time that we were inquiring for some 
 means of checking this growth? We are not
 
 THE DANGER. 17 
 
 afraid that the great body of workingmen in 
 this country will ever become socialists of the 
 extreme type. But suppose that one-tenth of 
 them should become anarchists, with organiza- 
 tions in all our great cities. The railroad prop- 
 erty ruined at Pittsburgh in 1877, the burnt 
 court-house at Cincinnati, and the smouldering 
 foundries of Cleveland, are only incidents to 
 what might then transpire. 
 
 The country at large would be horrified to 
 see, in plain English, the utterances which are 
 daily circulated by socialistic journals among 
 the laborers of our great cities. Often these 
 papers are printed in a foreign tongue, as 
 that v/hich circulates among the Bohemians of 
 the city of Cleveland. In a recent Century 
 article, Washington Gladden advocates the plan 
 of translating and circulating these precious 
 documents throughout the country, that the 
 people at large may understand what is being 
 said, and may be properly aroused. 
 
 But in these days there are other tokens than 
 the noisy threats and appeals of the socialists. 
 The laboring men of this land have awakened 
 to the power of organization. They have be- 
 gun to assert where recently they only com- 
 plained, or were silent. When the traffic of a 
 great railway system, controlled by one of the
 
 18 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 railway kings of the country, can be stopped 
 in a single day, and all of the dependent com- 
 merce greatly deranged or paralyzed, it is cer- 
 tain that some power is at work which can no 
 longer be ignored, however much some would 
 like to ignore it. A new power, which dares 
 to measure swords with a railway millionaire 
 like Jay Gould, has suddenly sprung up. We 
 may regret the formation of any class into a 
 society, by itself, as tending to still further 
 broaden the breach already existing; we may 
 fear that the organization of one class will lead 
 to another, and that between these classes rival- 
 ries and hatreds will spring up; we may fear 
 that when we have organized classes we shall 
 have something like caste, with all of its hate- 
 ful brood; or we may fear what one writer has 
 recently called "the battle of classes through 
 secret organizations;" but all of our fears will 
 not change the facts. One large class organ- 
 ization is already in the field. It is growing. 
 It declares its purpose to continue to grow. 
 Moreover, it has already made its power felt 
 in various parts of the country. And all of 
 this, we are told, is only the beginning. 
 
 Whatever we may wish were the case, and 
 however much many may regret the existence 
 of such powerful organizations, they are already
 
 THE DANGER. 19 
 
 in the field. Cool-headed men, who are not 
 carried away by prejudices or by fears, con- 
 cede that henceforth, and with increasing de- 
 gree, the demands of the laboring classes must 
 be encountered in organized form. 
 
 How are the facts to be met? It will not do 
 even those who have the disposition any good 
 to denounce. Denunciation never accom- 
 plishes much; and, in the present attitude of 
 things, it would be simply idiotic, if not sui- 
 cidal. The socialists would rejoice in nothing 
 so much. How it would please them to have 
 the pulpit and press join in a general tirade of 
 abuse, and so drive the laborers of this coun- 
 try into their ranks. 
 
 There is a better course. Let it be seen that 
 society at large is the laboring man's friend. 
 Let us not leave the organized enemies of so- 
 ciety and government to pose as the only friends 
 of the laborer. Let society at large show a 
 disposition to hear his cause fairly stated; to 
 listen to his complaints, if he has any to make, 
 and to remedy the difficulty, if any remedy can 
 be found. Let the churches show, in more 
 practical ways, that they are the friends of the 
 laboring classes, and that the laboring man in 
 plain garb is just as welcome as his employer 
 who wears broadcloth; let them show that the
 
 20 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 wants and woes of the toiling millions can find 
 just and fearless expression in every pulpit in 
 the land. Such an utterance from the pulpits 
 of this country, just at this time, would go a 
 long way toward solving the existing difficul- 
 ties, especially if it were seen to be supported 
 by the pews. It is asserted that the fine cush- 
 ions of our churches were never meant for the 
 poor, and so the masses are being prejudiced 
 against our churches. Multitudes stay away 
 from them, and, deserting the teachings of the 
 gospel, they are the more open to the appeals 
 of socialism. It would go far toward mutual 
 understanding, and toward a better adjustment, 
 if the pulpit and pew should conspire to make 
 the laboring man welcome, and to give a fair 
 hearing to his case. I fully believe, my friends, 
 that such an attitude at this time would tend to 
 the mutual benefit of the laborer and the em- 
 ployer; I believe that it would tend toward that 
 charity of judgment and that brotherhood of 
 man which the gospel commends; I believe 
 that nothing would go so far toward restoring 
 the laboring masses to the church which they 
 have deserted; and I believe, therefore, that 
 no duty of the hour could be more sacred, or 
 more according to the will of Him who worked 
 in a carpenter-shop at Nazareth,
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LABORERS GRIEVANCE. 
 
 I RECOGNIZE at the outset that the present 
 is a time of anxiety and disturbance. Labor 
 troubles oppress the atmosphere as never be- 
 fore in the history of this country. Fifty thou- 
 sand men, it is said, are now out of employ- 
 ment, not because their employers have turned 
 them out, but because they make demands 
 which their employers are not willing to con- ..^^ 
 cede. In most of these cases, they could have 
 work to-morrow, and wages which would make 
 the laborer of Italy or of England feel that he 
 had lived to see the day of true labor reform. 
 During a visit to Chicago last week I learned 
 of one large class of skilled laborers who have 
 been earning from $2 to $5 a day, their work 
 being paid for by the piece. Not one of them 
 had been receiving less than $2 a day, and the 
 better workmen had been receiving $5 a day 
 in that establishment. Yet those men are now 
 out on a strike for higher wages. What would 
 the poor Italian laborer think of $2 a day!
 
 22 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Would he not think that the millenium had 
 dawned if his employer were to hand him $5 
 for a day's work? 
 
 I promised to state, this evening, as fairly as 
 possible, the laboring man's grievances as set 
 forth by their representative men. No person 
 ought to take exceptions to a fair hearing. In 
 times of excitement, nothing can tend so much 
 to produce the desired settlement, as a spirit 
 of fairness to hear the whole matter. When 
 labor organizations are already in the field and 
 are claiming that they have complaints to make 
 in behalf of the entire wage-earning class, it 
 is too late to refuse them a hearing. The true 
 way to conciliate is fairness; and fairness is 
 willing to hear both sides. While, therefore, 
 I do not hold myself responsible for the views 
 of such men as Mr. George, and others who 
 in this day speak for the laboring man; while 
 I believe that no greater calamity could befall 
 the laboring men of this land than to have Mr, 
 George's views prevail; and while I purpose in 
 the future talks of this series to show that the 
 tendency of those views would be to reduce 
 labor to a condition worse than that of Russian 
 serfdom, I yet hold that the laboring classes 
 have a right to be heard. If they had been 
 accorded a wider hearing years ago, the pres-
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 23 
 
 ent differences between them and capital 
 would never have appeared in the present war- 
 like aspect. If the pulpit and platform gener- 
 ally had been willing to discuss these themes 
 ten years ago they would never have accepted 
 Mr. George's views so widely as they have; 
 and especially would the blatant socialists have 
 been without a hearing among them. It is 
 our own fault, friends, if we have permitted 
 the unreasonable and anarchist element to ob- 
 tain such an influence among laboring men. 
 No man shall excel me in horror of all that 
 goes by the name of socialism or communism 
 to-day. The man who talks about burning the 
 property of the rich or about murdering his 
 more fortunate neighbor, is a vile wretch, too 
 ignorant to appreciate, or too wicked to im- 
 prove, the opportunities which this free coun- 
 try offers to the laboring poor. Such men 
 should be sent back to the countries where des- 
 potism crushes every aspiration, and where a 
 titled aristocracy forbids the hope that a poor 
 man may better his condition and become the 
 owner of an estate. 
 
 The anarchist is at heart the worst kind of a 
 despot. He would, on his own confession, if 
 he dared, commit greater acts of despotism and 
 oppression to-morrow, than were ever co'mmit-
 
 24 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 ted by Nero; for while Nero burned one city, 
 he would burn every city. He has no appre- 
 ciation for the freedom to which he has come. 
 Such a man has no business in a country, 
 where it is possible for a poor tanner to become 
 the greatest commander of his century, and for 
 a rail splitter to become the greatest ruler and 
 the noblest liberator of all time. 
 
 While, therefore, I shall at this time give a 
 fair statement of the laborer's grievances as I 
 understand his claims in reference to them, I 
 will not be understood as uttering one word in 
 favor of any scheme which a socialist would 
 approve. I have but small confidence in mush- 
 room schemes of any kind. I do not believe 
 that any quack remedy can change the condi- 
 tions of society in an hour, however desirable 
 certain changes may be. He who would en- 
 courage the laboring classes to suppose that 
 economic arrangements, which are the results 
 of centuries of growth, can be changed in a 
 day or a year, is the worst foe that the labor- 
 ing man has; for he would only excite hopes 
 which are doomed beforehand to certain dis- 
 appointment; and he would be in danger of 
 exciting a revolution which could only end in 
 disaster and famine for the laboring classes. 
 
 The condition of laboring men in this coun-
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 25 
 
 try is far superior to that of the laborers in the 
 old world. I believe also that the condition of 
 laboring men in this country will be relatively 
 far better a century to come than it is to-day. 
 The tendency of things is in that direction. 
 Right minded men of all classes would regret 
 to see laboring men led by blatherskites into 
 rash acts, which shall set back the wheels of 
 progress and destroy their own prospects for 
 years to come. That is why I want the com- 
 munity at large to talk this matter over with 
 him. Let not the laborer start out with the 
 belief that any new reform can change his con- 
 dition from that of toil to affluence in a single 
 day Honest fortunes are not made in that 
 way; and surely honest laborers do not want 
 dishonest fortunes. If they ever get fortunes 
 they want them to come honestly. If any 
 change is to be made, it must be in the way of 
 helping the laboring man to new and more de- 
 sirable conditions of earning the fortune which 
 he seeks. It will not come by any scheme 
 of riot on the one hand, or of quack legislation 
 on the other, which shall give ever to him in 
 fee simple the property which other men have 
 earned. The laboring man of the future as of 
 the past must earn a fortune before he can en- 
 joy it.
 
 26 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 On the other hand, it is his privilege to 
 hope for and strive after such reforms as shall 
 help him, by all lawful means, to increase his 
 opportunities and alleviate his burdens. Let 
 no man say that such reform, though it must 
 be gradual, is impossible. This old world has 
 moved along the road of human progress too 
 grandly hitherto to halt nov/. Thousands of 
 years ago monarches were everything, and the 
 masses were nothing. Millions of men could 
 be herded to fight the battles of a king, or to 
 pile the pyramid which should be his tomb. 
 The lash was over them; they could only obey. 
 They might wail; it was nothing! They might 
 die; there were other millions to take their 
 place beneath the burdens and the lash. But 
 God lived then, as he lives now, and presently 
 the heart of slumbering humanity and the 
 sword of divine justice awoke. Down went 
 kings, at whose nod millions had trembled — 
 down to an oblivion so deep that you search in 
 vain for the paltry record of their names; down 
 went empires, whose corner-stone was oppres- 
 sion and whose palaces were built by slaves; 
 down went hoary systems of abuse before the 
 throbbing heart of reform, whose pulses were 
 thunders of terror to tyrants, but a music of 
 love to the weary and the oppressed; down
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 27 
 
 went Rome, leaving her record of imperial 
 cruelty to be spelled out from the inscrip- 
 tions of a few crumbling marbles; down went 
 the feudal system, about which men talked in 
 their day as we talk about our little systems 
 now, and when it went down it left only a few 
 crumbling castles on the hill-tops, to be covered 
 by charitable ivy, and to be admired by those 
 Vi'ho dote on ruins; down went British slavery 
 in the colonies; down went the colossal system 
 of slavery in America. What! Am I to be 
 told that the world has, in any direction, 
 reached the limit of reform? — I, who can re- 
 member the days when the fugitive slave used 
 to creep into that station of the undei ground 
 railway which was in my father's garret; I, 
 who can remember that, and have been per- 
 mitted to see an ex-slave standing among his 
 peers on the floor of the United States Con- 
 gress? No! Tell that to the moldering dust 
 of men who submitted to the tyranny of Nero 
 or the persecutions of Diocletian; tell that to 
 the musty mummies of men who permitted 
 themselves to be driven in human herds to the 
 task of carving sphinxes and piling pyramids; 
 but do not tell it to me, for I have had the honor 
 of living in the days of Ulysses S. Grant, the 
 conqueror, and Abraham Lincoln, the liberator.
 
 28 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 The true solution of all existing labor trou- 
 bles must come through a more general appli- 
 cation of the law of human brotherhood. That 
 is the gospel law: "We that are strong ought 
 to bear the infirmities of the weak;" "Bear ye 
 one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
 Christ." A more general acceptance of this 
 law of human brotherhood would tend imme- 
 diately to the relief of distress, and the adjust- 
 ment of difficulties between capital and labor. 
 It is the lack of this principle which is at the 
 bottom of much of the present bitterness on 
 the part of the laboring man. It is not alone 
 the present sufferings of one who is out of em- 
 ployment, which lead to a feeling of riot and 
 revolution; but still more is it owing to the 
 feeling that the more favored portions of soci- 
 ety are indifferent to the sufferings or the im- 
 provement of the laboring poor. There is a 
 feeling that the favored portion of society is too 
 willing to accept the statement that the condi- 
 tions of classes are determined by fixed laws, 
 and so to dismiss all thought and responsibility 
 in the matter. The laboring classes hold that 
 the wealthy are too willing to accept the theo- 
 ries of Malthus and Adam Smith, without ask- 
 ing whether their theories are correct. When 
 Malthus first set forth his theory that this world
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 29 
 
 was not big enough for all whom God sends 
 into it; that there could not be food and cloth- 
 ing enough to make everybody comfortable; 
 that there must, therefore, always be a degraded 
 and suffering class, he was hailed as the apos- 
 tle of the titled nobility, and pensioned by the 
 rich. I have only put in plain words his doc- 
 trine that "population in a continually increas- 
 ing degree presses on the means of subsist- 
 ence. " Have we any right to accept such a 
 doctrine as that with complacency? Ought 
 there not to be a new and careful review of the 
 facts year by year and then extreme reluctance 
 before accepting such a theory? But those who 
 speak for the laboring man claim that the Mal- 
 thusian doctrine has been not only accepted, 
 but hailed by the aristocracy as a scientific 
 principle which relieves them from all responsi- 
 bility for the woes and the wants of their less 
 favored neighbors. If Providence has decreed 
 that "population shall press on the means of 
 subsistence;" if, consequently, there must be 
 a large class crying for bread and shivering be- 
 cause they are thinly clad, what's the use of 
 kicking against the decrees of Providence? My 
 friends, no man ever talked that way whose 
 stomach was empty, and whose body was shiv- 
 ering for want of good clothing. It may be
 
 30 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 easy for some who have a full wardrobe and a 
 bursting larder to talk that way, but, God 
 helping me, I never will. I will not kick 
 against the decrees of Providence; but I will 
 kick with all my might against the theory of 
 Malthus. And, moreover, I will do all in my 
 power, by voice and pen, to arouse society 
 from the selfish composure which that false doc- 
 trine is responsible for. So long as there is, in 
 any land, a large class of honest toilers whose 
 families are liable to suffer for bread, 
 while there is plenty of bread in the land to 
 feed all, no people should rest content in 
 any theory or any so-called economic law, but 
 should apply themselves earnestly to the prob- 
 lem whose known factors are the open mouths 
 of hunger, and whose unknown factor is how 
 to fill them. 
 
 There is a law older than political economy 
 which was venerable with the hoar-frost of 
 centuries before Malthus was born, which de-' 
 clares that man is his brother's keeper, that we 
 ought to bear one another's burdens. As long 
 as there are burdens and heartaches and hun- 
 ger in this world, no dream of any theorist can 
 supersede that law, and no tenet of political 
 economy can relieve society from the search 
 after a better way which will help to lighten
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 31 ■ 
 
 the burden and relieve the hunger. In a so- 
 called "journal of civilization" one teacher tells 
 us that "the saving words for society is that 
 each shall mind his own business." That may 
 be a pleasing doctrine for some who are well 
 fed and who have goods in plenty laid up for 
 years to come; but those who look around on 
 their poverty and forward to the poor house, 
 cannot be so easily satisfied. The thing which 
 more than any other is demanded for the solu- 
 tionof existing difficulties, is the sentiment of 
 human brotherhood, made warm and effective 
 by sympathy for human suffering. 
 
 The most general grievance of the laboring 
 man then is this: He claims that he has burdens 
 for which some remedy ought to be found; but 
 he claims also that whenever he has sought to 
 present the facts he has been met by the state- 
 ment that these matters are controlled by 
 economic laws, and that if his case is a hard 
 one the laws of trade are to blame and not 
 society. His claim is that society is more 
 ready to quote a theory than it is to examine 
 the facts, and exert itself to change them. In 
 making these statements I am only seeking to 
 give what I understand to be the laboring 
 man's position.
 
 32 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Another element of his grievance is the 
 fact, as he claims, that unless some new factor 
 is introduced, there is nothing which promises 
 him relief in the future. The present century- 
 has witnessed such a revolution by labor-saving 
 machinery as almost excels that of all which 
 has gone before it. Steam and electricity are 
 harnessed to machines which can do everything 
 but think. We used to say, "everything but 
 think and talk," but we have machines ihaitcan 
 talk in these days. Machines make our boxes 
 and barrels — a score or a hundred, where man 
 unaided could scarcely have made one; they 
 turn out our boots by the case, and our coats 
 by the boxful; they draw our wagons and drive 
 our diamond-pointed drills through the heart of 
 the mountains; they reap our harvests, and lay 
 them down on the sea-coast in thousands and 
 millions of barrels of flour. Surely one who, 
 a century ago, could have foreseen all of this 
 mighty improvement in the appliances for get- 
 ting at and rendering the stores of nature in the 
 markets of the world, would have been justi- 
 fied in expecting that all classes of society 
 would reap the benefits; that while the rich 
 would go richer, the poor would at least ad- 
 vance into conditions of comparative comfort, 
 and the laboring man would share the general
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 33 
 
 prosperity in largely-increased pay for nis toil. 
 The complaint is (I say not how just) that this 
 is not the case, and the inference drawn is 
 that there must be something radically at 
 fault, which interferes with what would other- 
 wise be the natural result. 
 
 No living man would probably be more gen- 
 erally accepted than Mr, Henry George as the 
 spokesman of the laboring classes. I will there- 
 ifore quote his own words (written in 1879 and 
 often re-issued since), setting forth the labor- 
 er's grievance: "It is true that disappointment 
 has followed disappointment, and that discov- 
 ery upon discovery, and invention after inven- 
 tion, have neither lessened the toil of those who 
 most need respite nor brought plenty to the 
 poor. * * » \ye are coming into collision 
 with facts which there can be no mistaking. 
 From all parts of the civilized world come com- 
 plaints of industrial depression; of labor con- 
 demned to involuntary idleness; of capital 
 massed and wasting; of pecuniary distress 
 among business men ; of want and suffering and 
 anxiety among the working classes. All the 
 dull, deadening pain, all the keen, maddening 
 anguish that, to great masses of men, are in- 
 volved in the words 'hard times,' afflict the 
 world to-day." After showing that this state of
 
 34 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 things prevailed in lands where there are stand- 
 ing armies, and where there are none; in lands 
 where there is a protective tariff, and where 
 there is free trade; in countries where gold is 
 the exclusive money standard, in others where 
 bimetalism prevails, and in others where the 
 money is almost exclusively paper, he goes on 
 to say: "Where the conditions to which mate- 
 rial progress everywhere tends are most fully 
 :«*ealized — that is to say, where population is 
 densest, wealth greatest and machinery ■* * 
 most highly developed — there we find the deep- 
 est poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence 
 and the most enforced idleness:" ("Progress 
 and Poverty," Ch. I, pp. 9 and 10.) 
 
 In contrast to this, we are shown that in 
 newer communities the great differences of con- 
 dition are almost removed. None aic very 
 rich and none very poor. There is no luxury 
 and no destitution. No one makes an easy liv- 
 ing; but every one can make a living, while no 
 one able and willing to work is oppressed by 
 fear of want. But communities grow out of 
 the new into the old and settled condition. 
 And, strange to say, just as they realize what 
 all communities are striving after, then they 
 have not only wealth and luxury on the one 
 hand, represented by palaces, parks and pave-
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 35 
 
 ments, but they have also, and invariably with 
 these things, destitution and want, represented 
 by the proletariat and the pauper. In England, 
 where the causes have been much longer in op- 
 eration than in this country, every twentieth 
 inhabitant is a pauper, for which statement I 
 have the authority of so able a writer as Mr. 
 Fawcett. According to the poor-law reports, 
 at least one-fifth the community in England is 
 insufficiently clad; and medical reports to the 
 Privy Council affirm that the agricultural labor- 
 ers and large classes of working-people in towns 
 are too poorly fed to save them from what are 
 known as starvation diseases; while ? large 
 proportion of the population leads a life of in- 
 cessant toil, with no hope for old age but pen- 
 ury and the poor-house; and that one third or 
 one-half of the families of the country are hud- 
 dled together, six in a room, in a manner ut- 
 terly detrimental to health, decency and morals. 
 (Rae, "Contem. Soc," pp. 57 and 58.) 
 
 The laboring man claims that the same 
 causes are operating in this country, and that 
 the tendency is in the same direction. Indeed, 
 he complains that the same result in thousands 
 of cases has already been reached. The com- 
 plaint, then, is that the progress of society thus 
 far has been partial to certain classes. The
 
 36 TALKb ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 wealth of the country is increasing, but the 
 condition of the laboring classes is not improv- 
 ing with this increase of wealth — a statement 
 which I think altogether too strong. They 
 affirm that this vast increase goes not in small 
 sums to benefit the many, but in large fortunes 
 to swell the number of millionaires and the 
 wealth of powerful corporations. They only 
 reiterate the doctrine of John Stuart Mill when 
 they complain that "the rich are growing richer, 
 and the poor poorer. " "What hop€^,--~they 3sk, 
 "is there for the laboring man as leng-as-^tlxese 
 conditions remain?" 
 
 Such, in brief, are the complaints which the 
 laboring classes make in reference to the inad- 
 equacy of employment and wages. The words 
 of Mr. George, though first written in 1879, 
 have been repeated by him at various times 
 since, and the report of every labor-meeting 
 shows an acceptance and repetition of those 
 views as the standard doctrines of labor agita- 
 tors to-day. 
 
 One of the foremost representatives of the 
 laboring men of this country, in a recent ad- 
 dress, sets forth another and distinct grievance. 
 He complains that the tendency of real estate 
 in this country is toward large holdings, which 
 place it further and further away from the
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 37 
 
 reach of poor men. He complains that the 
 many small farms are being united to make 
 "bonanza" farms; that immense tracts of land, 
 equal in themselves to empires in extent, are 
 held by syndicates and corporations on titles 
 which are utterly unjust, while the people need 
 this land for the establishment of homes and 
 the production of bread. He sets forth the 
 fact that aliens, living in foreign countries, 
 many of whom have never set foot on our soil, 
 already own twenty-one million acres of Amer- 
 ican lands, and that they are constantly adding 
 to their purchases. During a lecture on Col- 
 orado, by Professor Marshall, which I recently 
 attended, he threw on the canvas a picture 
 of that wonder of nature, the beautiful Estes 
 Park, hemmed in by mountains which kiss the 
 clouds, and set with evergreens like emerald 
 gems on its broad lawn — trees which were 
 planted by the hand of Almighty God. And 
 while we were still gazing with wonder and 
 admiration, Ave were all made happier, I sup- 
 pose, by being told that the entire park, emer- 
 ald-studded lawn and snow-capped mountains, 
 is the exclusive property of a foreign noble- 
 man. While I was in Colorado, less than two 
 years ago, my attention was called to an im- 
 mense system of irrigation here, and to lands
 
 38 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 there, and mines yonder, all of which, I was 
 told, belonged to alien noblemen and the like, 
 until I began to wonder how much they would 
 kindly leave for Americans! Down in New 
 Mexico I visited one cattle-ranch containing 
 three million six hundred and eighty-two thou- 
 sand (3,682,000) acres, and was told that the 
 ranch which joins it on the east contained over 
 four million (4,000,000) acres, and was owned 
 by a Scotch nobleman! Each of these tracts 
 is larger than the State of Connecticut! In 
 some parts of the West foreign owners have 
 alread)' introiluced their tenants and tenant sys- 
 tem from across the sea — the same system 
 which has brought Ireland to penury and En- 
 gland to the verge of revolution, as she is 
 this day. 
 
 The speaker to whom I have referred com- 
 plains that these causes and others have oper- 
 ated to close the unoccupied millions of acres 
 of our Western domain against thousands of 
 poor men who are not able to pay the prices 
 which speculators already demand. He com- 
 plains that this cause is already turning the 
 tides of immigration back upon the labor cen- 
 ters in our great cities, where laborers are now 
 so numerous that wages are reduced to the 
 point of bare subsistence. Such is the claim.
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 39 
 
 And we must all allow that in some particulars 
 his statement is too true. If not, why should 
 there be such pressure on the Government for 
 the opening of a few remaining Indian reser- 
 vations, which are so small as to be only dots 
 on the map? There is land in plenty which 
 is not occupied by settlers, or improved, but 
 any person who takes trouble to investigate 
 will find that the greater part of this land is 
 closed to actual settlers, except at speculators' 
 prices. Thus, thousands of men who would 
 go West, make for themselves homes, and be- 
 come food-producers, are turned back to be 
 only food-consumers and competitors in the 
 crowded labor-markets of our country. The 
 authority who thus voices the grievance of la- 
 bor affirms that it can no longer be said: 
 
 "To the West, to the West, the land of the free, 
 Where the mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea; 
 Where a man is a man if he's willing to toil, 
 And shall have for his labor the fruits of the soil." 
 
 He complains that most poor men who now go 
 West must labor for others, and that the fruits 
 must largely go to strangers. 
 
 These are the leading complaints of the la- 
 boring masses to-day. In this statement of them 
 I have wholly ignored the fiery and revolution- 
 ary utterances of many orators and writers,
 
 40 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 who think that the world is about to turn over 
 the wrong way at their bidding. The sentiments 
 to which I have given a hearing in this discus- 
 sion are entertained and advocated by cool- 
 headed, far-seeing and scholarly men, who are 
 already gaining' the attention of the thinking 
 classes. Only a short time ago Mr. George, 
 who is a Christian gentleman, was invited to 
 address a large and influential convention of 
 the Episcopal Church, held in the city of De 
 troit, which he did, advocating sentiments 
 such as I have this evening quoted from 
 him. When any body of men come, through 
 such representatives, to ask a respectful hear- 
 ing, we are bound to listen, and if we are 
 to answer them in an effective way, it must 
 be by more polite arguments than denuncia- 
 tion. You cannot any longer dismiss them by 
 the bare statement that "population tends to 
 press on the means of subsistence," and that 
 they who are crowded in that way must be con- 
 tent with being crowded. While the laboring 
 classes are being instructed by such writers as 
 Mr. George, you will have to look up some 
 more reasonable argument. 
 
 You can never make the millions believe that 
 "population is pressing very hard on the means 
 of subsistence," while the great elevators are
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 41 
 
 bursting their sides with last year's wheat, and 
 while dealers in all sorts of food are complain- 
 ing that the market is overstocked. At the 
 very time when the great grain-dealers of the 
 world are asking, "What on earth shall we do 
 with these extra millions of bushels of wheat?" 
 there comes, borne on the wings of lightning 
 across the sea, a bitter wail of thousands of out- 
 cast poor, who are asking in despair, "O God, 
 where shall we get bread for our hunger?" 
 And it comes not alone from the shiftless who 
 will not work, but from 50,000 hungry men 
 who meet in the open squares of the world's 
 metropolis and unitedly say, "We are willing 
 to work; we want to work; give us work and 
 we will earn our bread; but bread ^ BREAD, we 
 must have — BREAD for our wives and our 
 children." 
 
 Now, my friends, I am free to say that I be- 
 lieve that the time is coming when there can- 
 not be, in any great city, ware-houses full of 
 wheat, and in the same city, 50,000 honest 
 men, willing to work, but compelled to be idle 
 and to suffer hunger, hearing their children cry 
 for bread, as those were a few weeks ago in 
 London. I should have a poor opinion of hu- 
 man nature and human genius for progress if I 
 could not beheve that some honorable way will
 
 42 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 yet be found to apply the stored-up bushels of 
 grain to hungry mouths and empty stomachs. 
 The world has seen too many great reforms 
 accomplished to stop in dismay and despair 
 before this demand of common humanity and 
 benevolence. I believe that the result will be 
 accomplished by lawful means. But as surely 
 as God is just, and as surely as He has declared 
 Himself the Friend of the poor, so surely will 
 this righteous reform be accomplished. 
 
 The reform will not come in one day or one 
 year — perhaps not in many years. But that 
 does not relieve the world's responsibility to 
 search for it with all diligence, and be dissatis- 
 fied with ourselves until we have found it. He 
 who broke the bread for hungry thousands, by 
 the side of a Galilean lake, has breathed too 
 much of His spirit of divine love and compas- 
 sion into this old world to permit men longer 
 to sit idly and indifferently in the presence of 
 any suffering. We are not yet afflicted, as En- 
 gland is, by an overwhelmingpauper class, who 
 send forth their "bitter cry of the outcast poor" 
 to the ends of the earth; but wherever any suf- 
 fering exists we are bound, in the name of a 
 noble humanity and a Christian civilization, to 
 do all in our power to relieve it; and, above 
 all, are we bound by wise foresight to prevent,
 
 THE LABORER'S GRIEVANCE. 43 
 
 if possible, the causes which have operated to 
 the pauperizing of large classes in the old world. 
 Why should we not? Why should not our 
 generation rise once again to a loftier plane of 
 ennobling love for all mankind than any gener- 
 ation which has preceded it? Why should not 
 the noble vision of the philosopher, John Stu- 
 art Mill, become a fact? He says: "We yet 
 look forward to a time when society will no 
 longer be divided into the idle and the indus- 
 trious; when the rule that they who do not 
 work shall not eat will be fully applied; * * * 
 when the division of the produce of labor, in- 
 stead of depending, as in a great degree it now 
 does, on the accident of birth, will be made, by 
 concert, on an acknowledged principle of jus- 
 tice; and when it will no longer either be, or be 
 thought to be, impossible for human beings to 
 exert themselves strenuously in procuring ben- 
 efits which are not to be exclusively their own." 
 (Biog., p. 231.) Mr. Mill did not profess to be 
 a Christian, but he never would have uttered 
 such a sentiment as that if he had not lived all 
 his life in an atmosphere made fragrant with 
 the love and the teachings of Christ. The world 
 never heard such a sentiment before Christ 
 came.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE laborer's FOE — SOCIALISM. 
 
 Any inquiry into the labor troubles which 
 afflict society throughout the civilized world 
 to-day, must take account of the teachings of 
 socialism. The laboring man has had some 
 great grievances, especially in the old world. 
 He has suffered there under wrongs such as 
 are fit to turn a stone to tears. Read the labor 
 reform speeches of that noble philanthropist, 
 the late Earl of Shaftesbury, before the British 
 Parliament; and if your heart does not respond 
 with commingled pity and indignation at the 
 pictures he draws and the appeals which he 
 makes for the oppressed, then your heart is not 
 made like mine. The love which the laboring 
 masses of England cherish for the memory of 
 that man stands out in striking contrast to the 
 hatred they feel for many of the British no- 
 bility. 
 
 Next to these grievances socialism is at fault 
 for the labor troubles of the world to-day. 
 Fichte, the German philosopher (1762-1814),
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 45 
 
 taught socialism as a part of his speculative 
 system, and even incurred the suspicion of the 
 German government by endorsing the French 
 Revolution. But Ferdinand Lassalle (1825- 
 1864) and Karl Marx (18 18-1883) were the 
 pioneers of organized socialism in Germany. 
 Both made their appeals directly to working- 
 men, they sought to organize workingmen 
 to inflame them with hatred and to hurl 
 them as a destructive force against society. 
 This fact appears throughout their writings and 
 may be seen in the very titles of their books and 
 speeches. The theme of one of Lassalle's most 
 famous lectures was: "The Present Age and 
 the Idea of the Working Class." His most fa- 
 mous volume was, "Der Oekonomische Julian; 
 oder Kapital und Arbeit" (Berlin, 1864). 
 
 Marx undertook to transform every work- 
 ing-men's association into a socialistic lodge. 
 His famous communistic manifesto, issued in 
 1848, is a statement of what he claimed to be 
 the revolutionary situation into which the 
 course of industrial development had brought 
 modern society. It affirmed that class distinc- 
 tions of rich and poor, and wage labor, must 
 be swept away. He says, "The communists 
 do not conceal their views. They declare 
 openly that their purpose can only be attained
 
 46 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES, 
 
 by a violent overthrow of all existing arrange- 
 ments of society. Let the ruling classes trem- 
 ble at a communistic revolution. The prole- 
 tariate have nothing to lose but their chains; 
 they have a world to win. Proletarians of all 
 countries, unite!" Marx's idea was commun- 
 ion of property, state control, and state dis- 
 tributation, to which I shall refer more at 
 length presently. But there were those in the 
 "International Workingmen's Association," 
 with which Marx had so much to do, who saw 
 that such state control would mean the most 
 refined and exacting tyranny. They took up 
 the tradition of Prondhon, who held that "the 
 true form of the state is anarchy. " (Rae; 'Con- 
 tem, Soc, p. 141.) The whole attempt from 
 the outset has been an appeal to the working- 
 men of the world. This is seen throughout 
 Marx's famous work "Das Kapital," which is 
 the sacred book of socialism to-day. In that 
 he first clearly states and elaborates the theory 
 on which modern socialism rests its claim, that 
 "all wealth comes from labor and that there- 
 fore to the laborer it all belongs." From the 
 teachings of Marx and Lassalle American so- 
 cialism has sprung. Their ideas have come 
 among us not only in books and pamphlets, 
 but in thousands of living men who beheve
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 47 
 
 them. Herr Most is an extremist of this class. 
 They hope for a better opportunity in this free 
 country than they found in the old world for 
 the spread of their pernicious views. 
 
 In his address to the graduating class of 
 Amherst College last summer President Seelye 
 uttered the following significant words: "There 
 is one question of our time toward which all 
 other questions, whether of nature, of man or 
 God, steadily tend. * * No one will be 
 likely to dispute the affirmation that the social 
 question is, and is to be, the question of your 
 time. " Before this question all others even 
 now are-fading into a secondary place or the 
 deeper shadow of obscurity. For the spirit of 
 'jnrest and turmoil which now pervades the 
 laboring masses of this country, the teachings 
 of socialists like Mr. George and Karl Marx 
 are largely responsible. For that spirit of 
 lawlessness and bold rebellion to rightful au- 
 thority which appears here and there, among 
 them, these socialistic teachers, and others like 
 Herr Most, are chiefly to blame. I recall very 
 well an article which appeared first some 
 twelve or fourteen years ago in a Chicago 
 paper. The writer foresaw what we are now 
 experiencing. He had by some means come 
 into possession of facts and theories promul-
 
 48 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 gated at the early socialistic meetings of 
 that city. He predicted that socialism, unless 
 promptly attended to by the government, 
 would grow and presently have its organiza- 
 tions throughout the country; and that it 
 would become first a menace and then a serious 
 danger to society and our free institutions. He 
 gave facts and figures; told of places where or- 
 ganizations were being formed, and of red flag 
 doctrines which were being taught. But the 
 writer was treated as an alarmist and his article 
 was laughed into insignificance. 
 
 We all know enough of the doings of social- 
 ists to make it certain that there was truth in 
 what he wrote. But the trouble with society 
 at large is that it is content with only a surface 
 view of the evils which threaten us from this 
 source. Tens of thousands of those to whom 
 the socialists appeal, in and out of organiza- 
 tions, are reading incendiary books and pam- 
 phlets on theories of labor, capital, and society 
 at large. Hundreds of thousands in this coun- 
 try to-day have definite theories of labor and 
 finance, which are more or less tinged with 
 socialism. These theories are all the more 
 dangerous because they are set forth not only 
 by godless blasphemers, like Herr Most, but by 
 men of religion and morals like Henry George.
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 49 
 
 A socialistic unrest is nothing new in the 
 world. It has existed wherever great masses 
 of men have for any cause deemed them- 
 selves oppressed by those who were more 
 fortunate in life. In various forms it has reap- 
 peared; at one time in the masses who surged 
 through the streets of Rome and demanded 
 bread of some imperial Caesar; at a later in 
 the fermenting throngs who made the streets 
 of Paris run red with the blood of riot and de- 
 manded the head of Louis XVI; and in our 
 own days in the hungry thousands who press 
 upon the statue of Lord Nelson in Trafalgar 
 Square, demanding bread for the present and 
 legislative reform for the future. 
 
 But the dangerous element of the socialism 
 of our day is in the fact that the socialists have 
 found advocates like Mr. George of this coun- 
 try and Mr. Hyndman of England who have 
 reduced the demands of socialism to a political 
 science. They have given to the socialism of 
 this day what it has never had before — a feel- 
 ing that socialism is the true political economy. 
 Hitherto socialism has been dominated only by 
 desire and confined to mob-like outbursts of 
 passion. But to-day, all through the world, 
 thousands are persuading themselves that the 
 prime features of socialism arc based upon
 
 50 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 scientific principle and eternal right. Willing 
 ears are being taught that the whole social 
 fabric is constructed upon false principles. 
 They are rapidly persuading themselves that 
 "all wealth comes from labor;" that therefore 
 "to the laborer all wealth belongs." And 
 workingmen who are sensitive about being sus- 
 pected of socialism should be careful how they 
 quote that sentiment, for it was first taught by 
 Karl Marx the great socialist, as the very bed- 
 rock of his system. That is the recognized 
 corner-stone of socialism to-day. That is the 
 grand principle of their socialistic economy. A 
 second goes with it. They teach that all pri- 
 vate ownership of land is unjust; that the gov- 
 ernment should own the land and lease it to 
 individual tenants as their needs require. In 
 this way they hold that the evils of land mon- 
 opoly would be overcome, and our great do- 
 main would be saved for the people to whom 
 it belongs. These two cardinal principles are 
 drawn out at great length and supported by 
 ingenious arguments, easily understood, readily 
 remembered, and difficult to answer. The dan- 
 ger lies in the fact that laboring men generally 
 are reading this doctrine, either in the books 
 mentioned or in some labor document which 
 is a dilution of them, And the evil will cul-
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 51 
 
 minate if the laboring masses are ever per- 
 suaded that socialism is based on principle. It 
 is the moral element which constitutes the 
 strength of any fanaticism. Once persuade 
 the restless masses that ownership of land is as 
 wrong as the ownership of air would be; once 
 persuade them that confiscation and division 
 of property are right, and the world will wit- 
 ness such an uprising and overturning as no 
 fanaticism ever produced before. If it were 
 not for this feeling of confidence that the cause 
 is somehow just, which the economists of so- 
 cialism are exciting, there would be no great 
 danger from such men as advocate dynamite 
 and the torch. 
 
 While it is true that in thousands of clubs 
 and labor organizations these doctrines are be- 
 ing taught, what are the people at large doing 
 to meet these perverted views? Are the peo- 
 ple informing themselves, and preparing to 
 answer wrong theories with the truth? You 
 cannot meet a man who has a well defined 
 theory, by simply saying that his theory is 
 wrong. You must understand it and be able 
 to point out wherein it is wrong. Then you 
 must be able to give him the truth in its place. 
 
 If, as Milton says, "Childhood shows the 
 man as the morning shows the day," would it
 
 52 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 not be well for us to be enquiring what sort of 
 a child this socialism is, which is here among 
 us. It wasn't born here, to be sure. But it is 
 here, as surely as any troublesome waif was 
 ever laid on the marble steps of a palace. 
 
 With the feeling of which I have spoken, 
 existing so widely, the utterances of the an- 
 archist wing of the socialists become horribly 
 significant. 
 
 Professor R. T. Ely in the CJiristian Union 
 for April and May, 1884, gives an able expo- 
 sition of Socialism. In it he sets forth the 
 doctrines of "The International Workingmen's 
 Association," which are violently socialistic. 
 They demand "common property, socialistic 
 production and distribution, the grossest ma- 
 terialism — for their god is their belly, — free 
 love, in all social arrangements perfect individ- 
 ualism; or in other words, anarchy. Nega- 
 tively expressed. Away with private property! 
 Away with all authority! Away with the state! 
 Away with the family! Away with religion!" 
 
 A scientific paper published in San Francisco 
 called Truth says: "When the laboring men 
 understand that the heaven which they are 
 promised hereafter is but a mirage, they will 
 knock at the door of the wealthy robber, with 
 a musket in hand and demand their share of
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 53 
 
 the goods of this Hfe now." Herr Most's filthy 
 and blasphemous paper is filled with sentiments 
 like this: "Religion, authority and state, are all 
 carved out of the same piece of wood — to the 
 devil with them all!" He calls for a "public 
 and common up-bringing of children in order 
 that the old family may completely abandon the 
 field to free love. " Listen to a resolution 
 adopted by the "International Workingmen's 
 Association" at its Pittsburgh meeting, "Agita- 
 tion for the purpose of organization; organiza- 
 tion for the purpose of rebellion. In these 
 few words the ways are marked, which workers 
 must take if they w^nt to be rid of their 
 chains. * * * There remains but one re- 
 course — force!" Again says the Truth: (and 
 never did that poor word suffer a greater 
 abuse) "War to the palace, peace to the cot- 
 tage, death to luxurious idleness. We have 
 no moments to waste. Arm! I say to the 
 teeth! for revolution is upon you," 
 
 A socialistic meeting in Chicago, shortly after 
 the explosions in London Tower, declared: 
 "This explosion has demonstrated that social- 
 ists can safely go into large congregations in 
 broad day light and explode their bombs. A 
 little hog's grease and a little nitric acid make 
 a terrible explosion. Ten cents' worth would
 
 54 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 blow a building to atoms. Dynamite can be 
 made out of the dead bodies of capitalists as 
 well as out of hogs. All Chicago can be set 
 ablaze in a minute by electricity. Private prop- 
 erty must be abolished, if we have to use all 
 the dynamite there is and blow ninety-nine 
 hundredths of the people off the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 The railroad riots of 1877 cost many lives 
 and over one hundred million dollars' worth of 
 property; and ten states, reaching from ocean 
 to ocean, called on the President for troops to 
 quell them. The socialists plainly declare that 
 they are getting ready for other and greater 
 riots of the same kind. Their publications are 
 full of such phrases as these: "Get ready for 
 another 1877;" "Buy a musket for the repeti- 
 tion of 1877." "Organize companies and drill 
 to be ready for another 1877." A writer in 
 New Englandcr, (Jan., 1884,) says there are 
 200,000 members of organizations in this coun- 
 try who are more or less socialistic. That is a 
 very moderate statement, indeed; 400,000 or 
 500,000 would have been nearer the truth. 
 
 Rev. Josiah Strong (author of a recent book 
 entitled "Our Country," to which I am in- 
 debted for many of the facts of this lecture,) 
 was present in a meeting at Cincinnati which
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 55 
 
 was addressed by Herr Most. This socialistic 
 demagogue, expelled from Germany on account 
 of his advocacy of "assassination as a means 
 of progress," has been strangely welcomed in 
 this free country. His subject on the evening 
 in question (just after the Cincinnati riots) was 
 "The Coming Crisis of the World and the So- 
 cial Revolution." Although it was a rainy 
 night the hall was packed with a sympathetic 
 audience, who applauded to the echo, every 
 bloodthirsty utterance. He declared that if 
 the socialists had arisen in their might, during 
 those riots, they would have attacked the pal- 
 aces of the rich, instead of the jail and the 
 court house. 
 
 Such, my friends, are the two prominent 
 features of socialism as it exists in this country 
 to-day. On the one hand you have teachers 
 who are seeking to persuade the masses that a 
 world-wide confiscation of property is just, 
 and based on principles of true political econ- 
 omy. On the other you have incendiary an- 
 archists who are striving to inflame the poor 
 and excite them to deeds of destruction and 
 bloodshed, regardless of right. These two 
 classes of writers and speakers make a very 
 dangerous team. I have sought also to place 
 before you some idea of the strength and head-
 
 56 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 way, which these ideas have already gained in 
 this free country. 
 
 When sociaHsts are asked what they propose 
 to do if, unhappily for the peace of mankind, 
 their schemes of destruction should ever suc- 
 ceed, they are not so ready with an answer. 
 They say, "Our first thought is to pull down; 
 time enough to think of the rest when we get 
 that done. " But evidently the thought upper- 
 most in the mind of prominent socialists is 
 common ownership of property, and state 
 regulation of manufactures and all commerce; 
 state supply for all wants; state control of all 
 systems of travel and freight. There will be 
 no need of gold and silver money; but labor 
 checks will secure everything necessary in 
 stores which shall contain the produce of labor 
 and be managed by government agents. Mr. 
 Groveland (in his "Co-operative Common- 
 wealth" p. 79, quoted by Washington Gladden 
 in March Century^ tells how the thing is to be 
 done: 
 
 "Suppose, then, every distinct branch of in- 
 dustry, of agriculture, and also teachers, phy- 
 sicians, so to form each trade and profession by 
 itself, a distinct body, a trades-union (we sim- 
 ply use the term because it is convenient), a 
 guild, a corporation managing its internal af-
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 57 
 
 fairs itself, but subject to collective control. 
 Suppose further that for example the 'heelers' 
 among the operatives in a factory at Lynn come 
 together and elect their foreman; and the 
 'tappers,' the 'solers,' the 'finishers' and what- 
 ever else the various operatives may be called, 
 do likewise. Suppose that these foremen as- 
 semble and elect a superintendent of the fac- 
 tory, and that the superintendents of all the 
 factories at Lynn in their turn elect a — let us 
 call him — district superintendent. Again we 
 shall suppose these district superintendents of 
 the whole boot and shoe industry to assemble 
 themselves somewhere from all parts of the 
 country and elect a bureau chief; and he, with 
 the bureau chiefs of related industries, say the 
 tanning industry, to elect a chief of depart- 
 ment. However, we do not want too many of 
 these chiefs, for we mean to make a working 
 body, not a talking body, out of them. We 
 mean that these chiefs of department shall 
 form the national board of administrators, 
 whose function it shall be to supervise the 
 whole social activity of the country. Each 
 chief will supervise the internal affairs of his 
 own department, and the whole board control 
 all those matters in which the general public is 
 interested. "
 
 58 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 I have not time this evening to enter upon 
 the answer to the various positions held by so- 
 ciahsts. I must leave that for another talk. 
 But my object this evening has been to state 
 these facts as clearly as possible, for a clear 
 statement is the first requisite of an adequate 
 answer. And it has been my desire to help 
 arouse the law-abiding portion of society to 
 the need of putting forth some more adequate 
 and organized effort to meet the pernicious 
 doctrines which are being sown broadcast by 
 the propaganda of socialism. After all of the 
 facts which I have this evening mentioned, 
 (and I assure you they are only samples of a 
 great number,) probably most of you settle 
 back comfortably to the soothing thought 
 that all of these matters will take care of them- 
 selves: that in this free country all such things 
 have a tendency to work themselves out. Such 
 an attitude is of all things the most to be 
 dreaded. There is an ironical aphorism which 
 altogether too well represents the general feel- 
 ing when it says that "God takes care of chil- 
 dren, idiots and the United States." There is 
 too strong a disposition to leave, for God to 
 do, the work of prevention and cure which He 
 has committed to us, and which will not be 
 done unless we do it. Oliver Wendell Holmes
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 59 
 
 may have been right when in answer to the 
 question, "When should the training of a child 
 bcc^in?" he said, "A hundred years before he 
 is born." Certain it is that influences set in 
 motion a hundred years ago affect every child 
 of the present generation. A hundred years 
 ago our forefathers fought for us immunity 
 from foreign oppression, paying for it the best 
 blood of this Continent. They laid the founda- 
 tion of a mighty republic upon the corner- 
 stone of human justice and equality. They 
 did not dream that any just complaint of the 
 masses could ever be brought against it. They 
 did not dream that any socialistic or anarchist 
 ferment could ever threaten an uprising of the 
 people. They thought they had forever pro- 
 vided against all such discontent by commit- 
 ting the government itself into the hands of 
 the people. But we find to-day that they 
 failed to provide for the illegitimate offspring 
 called "Socialism," a hundred years before it 
 was born. It remains for us to meet the emer- 
 gency as best we can, Hke wise citizens, wilHng 
 to face the facts and to provide the best rem- 
 edy. We ought no longer to ignore this 
 movement. While we sleep the laborers of 
 this country are being taught, by book and 
 pamphlet and fiery speech, that they are like
 
 60 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Samson, shorn and sightless, grinding the un- 
 requited grist of the Phihstincs. And unless 
 we look well Samson's locks will grow while 
 we sleep, and his relentless arms will shake the 
 two pillars of our American civilization. There 
 ought to be in this country to-day a well direct- 
 ed movement, to place before the workingman 
 of this country such literature as will answer 
 the arguments which are seeking to subvert 
 him. The socialists are scattering hundreds 
 of thousands of documents. How are the 
 friends of law and order meeting this activity? 
 I am well aware, as I have already said with 
 emphasis in these talks, that the great body of 
 working men in this country are loyal and true. 
 All honor to them. They are no socialists; 
 they would scorn the name and the imputation, 
 as a certain labor advocate has recently set 
 forth. He is indignant that any number of 
 laboring men should be thought to be in dan- 
 ger of yielding to socialistic principles. His 
 indignation does honor to his heart, but not to 
 his information. Such an one should be met 
 with a spirit of candor and kindness. Many 
 are already under the influence of socialistic 
 notions who do not know the proper name for 
 ideas which they advocate. The hour of dan- 
 ger does not wait for majorities. A majority
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 61 
 
 of the laboring men of this country were no 
 socialists in 1877, and yet the few who were, 
 wrought great mischief, when they joined the 
 mob. I do not wonder that they feel annoyed 
 at any word which seems to classify honorable 
 laborers with socialists. No word of mine 
 shall ever do it. Is there not the most press- 
 ing need that honorable working men should 
 be prompt in every way to disavow and rebuke 
 the socialists who profess to speak for them ? 
 Then too, our brother, cannot be ignorant that 
 socialistic ideas have made great progress 
 among laboring men in this country during the 
 last ten years. "He cannot be ignorant that 
 the appeals of socialists are being addressed 
 especially to the laborers of the land. He 
 cannot be ignorant of the fact that those ap- 
 peals are receiving great encouragement from 
 some source. Whence? Who bought the hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand copies of Henry 
 George's book already sold in this country? 
 Who are reading it to-day? Is he ignorant 
 that thousands of laboring men sympathize 
 with that book? Then, he has not studied 
 the problem with the care which becomes an 
 intelligent laborer. But just to the extent 
 that any man sympathizes Vv'ith the aims of 
 that book, he is a socialist. Let us not dis-
 
 62 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 guise it. Mr. George is a socialist, who would 
 have the real property of the people confiscated 
 by the government. The cause of socialism is 
 one throughout the world. The socialists of 
 America rejoice over the riots in Belgium, and 
 those of Berlin send their leader to help them 
 on. Who are the rioters? Are they not 
 workingmen who have been converted to so- 
 cialism? Who elected the twenty-four avow- 
 edly socialistic members of the German Reich- 
 stag in 1884? Did not the socialistic working 
 men of Germany! Is it a matter of no alarm 
 that the socialistic vote of the German empire 
 has advanced as follows: In 1871, 123,975; 
 1874,351,952; 1877,493.288; 1878,537,158? 
 In 1884 the avowed socialists of Germany in 
 electing those twenty-four members, cast 700,- 
 000 votes, making an advance of nearly 600,- 
 000 votes in thirteen years. ("Our Country," 
 p. 92.) 
 
 But if you say that it is too far away, let us 
 come nearer home. Who are the members of 
 the "Socialistic Labor Party" and the "Inter- 
 national Workingmen's Association" of this 
 country? Those societies are avowedly social- 
 istic in their constitutions. Who compose their 
 thousands of members? Who elected the four 
 socialistic aldermen of Chicago in the year
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 63 
 
 1878? Who compose the 25,000 Socialists of 
 Chicago, who are already organized there? 
 Three members of the Illinois House of Rep- 
 resentatives and one State Senator were elected 
 the same year (I878), on a platform little short 
 of socialism. Who did it? What leads a man 
 of President Seeley's known conservatism, can- 
 dor and information to declare that "there are 
 probably 100,000 men in the United States to- 
 day whose animosity to all existing social insti- 
 tutions is hardly less than boundless?" Come, 
 brother, tell me why I find stanzas like the fol- 
 lowing in a labor sheet published in Chicago 
 last week? — 
 
 "Toiling millions now are waking — 
 See them marching on; 
 All the tyrants now are shaking, 
 Ere their power is gone. 
 
 Chorus. — Storm the fort, ye Knights of Labor, 
 Battle for our cause; 
 Equal rights for every neighbor — 
 Down with tyrant laws !" 
 
 We have no "tyrant laws" in this free country, 
 brother, and we call those who talk about 
 overthrowing our laws " Socialists. " If you do 
 not, then we disagree in definitions only; for 
 you certainly cannot dispute the facts. Tell 
 me, brother, why do we find such head-lines as 
 these in representative labor journals? I clipped
 
 64 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 them from a Chicago paper, printed in the in- 
 terests of laboring men (March 26, 1886): — 
 "The Labor Crisis;" "An Impending Social 
 Revolution, Involving the Question of Mastery 
 Between Capital and Labor, Manhood and 
 Dollars, God and Satan, Heaven and Hell." 
 Tell me, brother, how docs that talk differ from 
 such as we find in avowedly socialistic organs? 
 Don't the socialists talk just that way? You 
 say "a few crazy cranks have advocated this 
 doctrine. " Could "afcw crazy cranks" accom- 
 plish all of these results? Are the members of 
 the "Socialistic Labor Party" and the "Interna- 
 tional Workingmen's Association" a few crazy 
 cranks? "Crazy" and "cranky" you may call 
 them; but they are not "few." I do not blame 
 you for disavowing any connection with social- 
 ists. Honor to you for that. But look well 
 into the facts before you say again that social- 
 ism is not spreading among American work- 
 ingmen. We must speak of these things, and 
 in the light of facts we must ask the attention 
 of intelligent workingmen. 
 
 "America holds the future," says Matthew 
 Arnold. But it is equally true that the future 
 holds something for America. What shall it 
 be? We have here resources capable of sup- 
 porting one billion human beings. Glad-
 
 THE LABORER'S FOE. 65 
 
 stone was right when he said, "America has 
 a base for the greatest continuous empire 
 ever established by man." Who can contem- 
 plate such statements without emotions of na- 
 tional pride? But, on the other hand, who can 
 witness the progress of ideas which are now 
 among us without serious misgivings? He who 
 sees an immigrant train unloading its newly-ar- 
 rived hundreds on our Western prairies gets a 
 new view of the lines of the poet: 
 
 "I hear the tread of pioneers, 
 Of nations yet to be; 
 The first low wash of waves, where soon 
 Shall roll a human sea." 
 
 It is worth something to live in such a time, 
 but the responsibilities of living are correspond- 
 ingly great.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE laborer's FALLACY: 
 
 "rich, richer — POOR, POORER." 
 
 "There never was and there never will be a 
 nation permanently great, consisting for the 
 greater part of wretched and miserable fam- 
 ilies." So said William Cobbett in his "Cottage 
 Economy," more than half a century ago. 
 The world has not discovered anything since 
 which would disprove that utterance. "Miser- 
 able families" make a miserable nation. Wit- 
 ness the pauper dependence of Egypt, crawling 
 before England's bond-holders, and trembling 
 before the Krupp guns of her sea-armament. 
 Witness the waning glory and vanishing power 
 of the Turkish Crescent in Europe. Depend 
 upon it, Mr. Cobbett is right. He has echoed 
 a decree of Almighty God in those words. No 
 nation can at the same time write "misery" on 
 the homes of its masses and "mighty" on the 
 dome of its Capitol. The dome of any nation's 
 power will be decayed by the dust and damp
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 67 
 
 of general poverty. We cannot, therefore, as 
 loyal citizens, be indifferent to the statement 
 so often made in these days, that "the rich are 
 getting richer, and the poor poorer. " If that 
 statement is true, in all respects, then it ought 
 to cause the deepest solicitude, not only in the 
 heart of every Christian and every philanthro- 
 pist, but in the heart of every patriot as well. 
 If any law is operating toward the impoverish- 
 ment of the masses and the enrichment of the 
 few, we must check it or die. The spirit of the 
 gospel is no more certainly arrayed against 
 such a law than the testimony of history. Every 
 crumbling marble of Baalbec or Palmyra, 
 every decayed wall of Babylon or Nineveh, 
 and every broken column of imperial Rome, is 
 a chapter of warning to those who would pan- 
 der to the few and pauperise the many. In 
 view of such truth no thoughtful person can 
 hear unmoved the wail of want and misery 
 which breaks forth now and then from the 
 crowded tenement barracks of our great cities. 
 When one of those ten-story death-traps goes 
 down, carrying with it thirty or sixty victims 
 to their death, we are for the moment aroused; 
 and in view of such revelations, as are then 
 made, we do not wonder that some, whose 
 range of vision is narrowed to a few facts, are
 
 68 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 impressed that "the poor are yearly growing 
 poorer." If the laboring men of this country 
 were to look only at such scenes, where pov- 
 erty herds its thousands and misery rules as a 
 queen, they might easily lose heart. Such 
 facts are the stock in trade of agitators, under 
 whose manipulation the facts, which are bad 
 enough, lose none of their horrors. But, my 
 friends, the statement which we are this even- 
 ing examining is a very broad one. It under- 
 takes to tell us that, as a general rule, from 
 Atlantic to Pacific, "the rich are growing richer 
 and the poor poorer. " Evidently no few facts 
 gathered from certain quarters of our great 
 cities, can settle so broad a question. One 
 who has a theory to establish may easily con- 
 trast the poverty of some "Five Points" with 
 the wealth of some " Fifth Avenue " or " Euclid, " 
 and say, "Behold the misery of the poor and 
 the mockery of the rich.'' But such declama- 
 tion is not proof that the tendency is toward 
 a despoiling of the poor for the benefit of the 
 rich. 
 
 The formula of theorists which we are this 
 evening examining contains two statements: 
 "the rich are becoming richer," and "the poor 
 are becoming poorer.'' We may at once and 
 without argument admit the first part of the
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 69 
 
 formula. Our country has grown with aston- 
 ishing rapidity. At the opening of this century 
 the United States had only four and a quarter 
 millions of people (4,306,446). In i860 the 
 population had increased to nearly twenty- 
 seven millions (26,922,537). At our last cen- 
 sus (1880) we had over fifty millions of people 
 
 (50,155,783). 
 
 Such prodigious growth, unparalled in the 
 history of the world, involves, of necessity, 
 mighty industries and corresponding growth of 
 wealth. The development of natural resources 
 in like degree, combining with the capital which 
 has been brought over from Europe, means that 
 this country has been increasing in wealth; and 
 under our system the country grows wealthy 
 only by the increasing prosperity of individu- 
 als. It must be admitted also that many for- 
 tunes have been dishonestly amassed. It is true 
 that many have grown rich by means which 
 are oppressive and outrageous. When the op- 
 erators of some Board of Trade "corner the 
 market," force up the price of wheat, and make 
 millions on their "deal," they are robbing the 
 poor. Every poor man who is thus compelled 
 to contribute to a millionaire's palace, by pay- 
 ing more than he ought for the bread with which 
 he feeds his family, has a just cause of com-
 
 70 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 plaint. You and I have all been assessed to 
 help pay for the marble fronts of the grain- 
 gamblers in Chicago. Against that sort of thing 
 I protest. I sympathize with every word which 
 condemns it. Every additional dime which 
 these "operations" have compelled me to pay 
 for my flour has been stolen from me. The law 
 may shield the men who do it, but the blight 
 and mildew of God's righteous curse is on such 
 wealth as that. "I have watched this thing a 
 long time," said a gentleman of Chicago to me; 
 "the man who moves into a marble front on a 
 'kicky deal' is only waiting his turn to be closed 
 out by the sheriff. I could take you to some 
 of the finest residences in the city which have 
 changed hands four or five times, in the ups 
 and downs of wheat operations. " The extent 
 to which the evils of this legalized gambling 
 have grown are causing many anxiously to in- 
 quire how the country is to protect itself. "One 
 bushel in seven of the wheat crop of the United 
 States is received by the Produce Exchange of 
 New York, and its traders 'buy' and 'sell' two 
 bushels for every one that is grown in the en- 
 tire country." The cotton plantations yielded 
 one year less than six million bales; but the 
 New York Exchange sold thirty-two millions 
 that same year. Pennsylvania produces twenty-
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 71 
 
 four millions of barrels of oil in a year, and the 
 Petroleum Exchanges in the same year sell 
 two thousand millions of barrels! ("Our Coun- 
 try, "p. 1 17.) The country at large is assessed 
 millions upon millions every year to build up 
 these dishonest fortunes. It is estimated that 
 the South alone has lost over a billion of dol- 
 lars since the war, in wheat and cotton specu 
 lations. What the many have lost, the few 
 have won. And there would be little pity 
 wasted on the losers if they were confined to 
 unsuccessful gamblers. But no "operation" of 
 that sort ever terminates without an assessment 
 upon all who buy wheat for their bread, or cot- 
 ton for their clothing. Why should members 
 of our national Congress be sensitive when the 
 chaplain mentions such an evil in his prayer? 
 If there are men in Congress who have been 
 guilty of this thing, they ought to be weeded 
 out by the ballots of workingmen whom their 
 gambling has robbed. I have all sympathy for 
 those good laws of our land which encourage 
 every man to be frugal, and to provide a com- 
 petence for his declining years. I rejoice when 
 I witness the success of honest industry and 
 honest business. "My boys," said a dying 
 man, "I leave you a little money, and there 
 isn't a dishonest dollar in it. " If all the wealth
 
 72 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 of this country had been accumulated on that 
 plan, there would be less complaint than there 
 is to-day. 
 
 Such is one feature of the growth of dishon- 
 est wealth. All such growth involves danger, 
 for that which is built upon dishonesty is meas- 
 uring its way to a downfall. We must find a 
 way to correct these evils. They grow from that 
 spirit of mammonism which is too predominant 
 in our times; which, encouraged by such quick 
 means as has too often attended these dishonest 
 operations, has led multitudes to seek for wealth 
 without desiring to render a fair equivalent. 
 What town so small in our day as not to have 
 its "bucket-shop," through which regular con- 
 tributions are made to the wealth of cosmopol- 
 itan operators? And one thing more: The 
 men who lose by gambling in a bucket-shop are 
 just as wicked as the men who get rich by gam- 
 bling on 'Change. Both have the same desire 
 and the same principles. One succeeds, and 
 the other does not. 
 
 Other dangers attend the spirit of money- 
 making which too largely dominates our times. 
 When slavery still wielded its lash, the mer- 
 chants of Boston mobbed William Lloyd Gar- 
 rison and hissed Wendell Phillips. Why? They 
 cared more for their trade with the South than
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 73 
 
 for the poor slave. When important Mormon 
 legislation was pending not long ago, certain 
 New York merchants telegraphed to members 
 of Congress: "New York sold $13,000,000 
 worth of goods to Utah last year. Hands off!" 
 When the love of wealth takes the place of 
 fidelity to principle, it will be an unhappy day 
 for this country. When any person finds him- 
 self verging toward such a disposition; it is high 
 time for him to turn to those words of Christ 
 which say, "How hardly shall they that have 
 riches enter into the kingdom of God." 
 
 Concerning the evils of great corporations, 
 which by their wealth have already and noto- 
 riously corrupted legislation time and again, I 
 have not time more than to allude. There is a 
 growing evil which is represented by the fact that 
 in 1884, when there were seventy-six United 
 States Senators, twenty of them were million- 
 aires; and of that twenty, many were million- 
 aires many times over. These twenty men did 
 not get into the United States Senate because 
 they were conspicuous for legislative ability. In 
 many cases they have proven conspicuous by 
 the lack of it. In several cases they have been 
 men whose bad and immoral character was no- 
 torious and even infamous. Now, the question 
 is, how came such men in the Senate of the
 
 74 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES, 
 
 United States? No one supposes that their 
 election was in response to popular demand. 
 But somehow they "got there." Did their 
 wealth constitute a mysterious and potent rea- 
 son? If ever the time comes when the people 
 think that seats in the United States Senate 
 are for sale to the highest bidder, they will wipe 
 it out. And if the time ever comes when they 
 have just reason to think so, it ought to be 
 wiped out. We will not have any "House of 
 Lords" in this free country. We will have no 
 legislature, nor any branch of any legislature, 
 into which the poor may not enter, if he is com- 
 petent, as well as the rich. 
 
 These are facts lying along the line of our 
 national prosperity to which we must give heed 
 lest they curse us. We need to be on our 
 guard against that spirit of materialism which 
 usually grows with wealth. We need more of 
 that kind of character which led Agassiz to 
 say: "I am offered five hundred dollars a night 
 to lecture, but I decline all invitations, for I 
 have no time to make money. " But the spirit 
 of this age, it is to be feared, can only poorly 
 understand such a man. "How much can I 
 make?" is the great question. There is an- 
 other question which ought always to go with 
 that: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the 
 whole world and lose his soul?"
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 75 
 
 I have not thought it necessary to present 
 any figures to prove that wealth has been in- 
 creasing. The fact is manifest. The rich have 
 grown richer. I have thought it rather suffi- 
 cient to point out some of the dangers which 
 accompany an increase of wealth, and especial- 
 ly some of those dangers which are more prom- 
 inently connected with our present line of 
 thought. 
 
 But the real significance of the formula 
 which we are examining lies in the statement 
 that the "poor are growing poorer." When 
 tlie laboring poor come to believe such a doc- 
 trine they begin to regard their case as hopeless. 
 When they believe that, they are filled with 
 that "keen, maddening anguish" which prepares 
 the evil-disposed for deeds of riot. That is 
 why the socialists harp so persistently on this 
 one string. Any man who has no grace in his 
 heart and who believes that there is nothing in 
 the present order for the poor man, but to 
 grow poorer still, will be ready, presently, for 
 any lawless deed, which promises relief. 
 
 Now the fact, important to be known just at 
 this time is this: the poor are not groiving 
 poorer. I put that statement squarely over 
 against the statement of socialism. In some 
 isolated localities the poor are growing poorer.
 
 76 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 There always have been such cases; there al- 
 ways will be until the characters of men are 
 changed. No clap-trap panacea of socialists 
 will change the condition of things against 
 which they complain so bitterly. But setting 
 aside special cases, and drawing our general 
 statement from a wide induction of the facts 
 over the whole field it can be truly said that 
 the poor are not growing poorer — but are ad- 
 vancing into new conditions of comfort. I am 
 aware that many figures are usually tiresome; 
 but I am encouraged by the interest which you 
 have manifested in those hitherto given in 
 these addresses, to present those which are 
 necessary to our present inquiry. 
 
 In England the causes which produce pov- 
 erty and wealth have been much longer in op- 
 eration than here. The problem is worked 
 much nearer to a solution there than here. If, 
 therefore, "the poor are growing poorer," an 
 examination of any certain period of English 
 history ought to discover that law in full opera- 
 tion. Let us take, therefore, for our compar- 
 ison the years 1843, 1851, 1864 and from 1880 
 to 1883. Let us say they are poor in England 
 who have less that;^i50 or $750. For such 
 families in England the average income in 1843 
 was ;^40, a family; in 1851 the income of the
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 77 
 
 poor had increased to ;^58, a year; while be- 
 tween the years 1880 and 1883 the income of 
 the poor had increased to an amount between 
 £gS and ;^ioo per year. That is from the year 
 1843 to 1883, a period of forty years, the 
 average income of the poor of England, by 
 families, increased from about $200 to $450 a 
 year — an increase of 130 per cent, in forty 
 years. (See Mallock, "Property and Progress" 
 pp. 201-204.) When the socialists of Eng- 
 land succeed in setting aside these figures and 
 the facts on which they are based, they may 
 consider themselves in a fair way to success- 
 Things are bad enough yet among the laboring 
 poor in places of England. But the facts are 
 not hopeless. They do not match with the 
 philosophy of despair. On the contrary, they 
 are full of hope. If the income of the labor- 
 ing poor of England has made an average in- 
 crease of 130 per cent, in forty years, then 
 certainly the "poor are not growing poorer" in 
 that land. The total income of the poorer 
 classes of England to-day is equal to the total 
 income of all classes in 185 1 , and exceeds by a 
 hundred millions the income of all classes as it 
 was in 1843. ("Property and Progress," 219.) 
 In other words, the laboring classes of England 
 to-day are in the same condition as they would
 
 78 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 have been in 185 1, if the entire income of the 
 rich had been divided among the ])oor pro rata. 
 Is there nothing encouraging in these facts? 
 Do they not bid the laboring men of England 
 and the world to hope for and expect a better 
 day? Do they not tell the toiling millions that 
 the brighter day is surely coming by the opera- 
 tion of causes which will not blot it with the 
 eternal disgrace of red-flag socialism? If even 
 in England, where the Manchester doctrine is 
 in freest operation, these things are true, then 
 surely it is time to dismiss Ricardo's "iron law 
 of wages" from the accepted truths of political 
 economy. If it is true that in forty years the 
 average annual income of England's poor in- 
 creased 130 per cent., then it cannot be true 
 that "wages tend toward the lowest point of 
 human subsistence. " 
 
 If there were time it would be extremely in- 
 teresting to examine the facts in relation to the 
 increase of wealth in England. I can state 
 only this: The increase has not been anything 
 like 130 per cent, in forty years. The facts 
 are ample which prove the statement beyond a 
 question. Any doubter can satisfy himself by 
 examining the figures given on pages 199-202 
 in Mr. Mallock's "Property and Progress." 
 While therefore "the rich have been growing
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. -79 
 
 richer" in England, it is also true that the poor 
 have been advancing into conditions of greater 
 comfort. It is also true that this advance of 
 the poor into comparative comfort has been 
 more rapid than the increase of wealth, even 
 in England. Remember this whenever }'ou 
 hear the oft repeated statement that "the rich 
 are growing richer and the poor poorer." If 
 any person is so unhappily constituted that he 
 prefers to believe that everything is tending to- 
 ward darkness rather than light, he shall be 
 welcome to his gloom; but if he comes forward 
 to dispute my statements, he must in fairness 
 answer the facts which I have given. The ten- 
 dency is not toward darkness and despair. It 
 is toward hope and good cheer. 
 
 But how about our own country? What are 
 the facts here? Do the facts warrant any man 
 in saying that "the poor are becoming poorer?" 
 We may well be puzzled to know just what 
 this question means. Does it mean that the 
 vagabond and pauper classes are becoming 
 poorer? There were paupers in this country 
 from the time that the first ship load of immi- 
 grants, fresh from the debtor prisons of Eng- 
 land, were landed on the banks of the James. 
 Have these classes, who nearly three centuries 
 ago had nothing, continued to grow poorer?
 
 80 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Evidently that cannot be meant. Does it mean 
 that the wage-earners of this country receive 
 less for their labor than they did one hundred 
 or two hundred yeacs ago? Does it mean that 
 wages are growing less and less? Perhaps 
 that is meant, but it is not true. During 
 the past decade certain facts connected with the 
 great influx of foreign immigrants to our min- 
 ing and manufacturing districts have doubtless 
 lowered wages in localities. The census of 
 1880 shows a total of 7,870,493 persons en- 
 gaged in agriculture. Of this number less than 
 one million (812,829) are foreign born. While 
 the total number employed in manufacturer's 
 trades and mines was 3,837,112, of whom i,- 
 225,787 were foreign born. How long this 
 proportion shall hold we cannot tell, nor can 
 we tell what elements may soon modify it. La- 
 boring men may indeed justly complain if mine 
 owners or foundry men go to Congress, asking 
 for additional tariff, on the plea that our labor 
 will be benefitted, if as soon as they secure 
 their additional tariff they forthwith import a 
 drove of Italian padrones or Hungarian peas- 
 ants to do the work at one-half the former 
 wages. Hasn't that ever been done? Who 
 can deny it? Do you want the facts? You can 
 get them at more than one Pennsylvania mine
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 81 
 
 to-day. Such influences are doubtless degrad- 
 ing to American labor. 
 
 But, in spite of all that is discouraging, the 
 outlook is brighter for the laboring classes in 
 America than elsewhere in the world; and, 
 when all of the facts are considered, it was 
 never brighter than to-day. Mr. George 
 thinks that the cure for labor troubles must lie 
 in the increase of land-holders — in giving to 
 laboring men an opportunity to become farm- 
 ers, if they desire. Now, the encouraging fact, 
 my friends, is that just that thing is being accom- 
 plished in this country. The number of farms 
 is increasing more rapidly, in proportion, than 
 our population. Notwithstanding our unheard- 
 of increase of population, the number of farms 
 is increasing still more rapidly. In 1850 we 
 had a population of 23,000,000 (in round num- 
 bers), and 1,400,000 farms. In 1870 our pop- 
 ulation was 38,000,000, and the number of 
 farms was 3,000,000. That is, in twenty years 
 the number of farms had increased more than 
 100 per cent, while the population had increased 
 only 65 per cent. This relative increase of the 
 number of farms over the increase of popula- 
 tion is still maintained; for, according to the 
 census of 1880, we had 50,000,000 people and 
 4,000,000 farms.
 
 82 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Now, what does all of this mean? It means 
 that thousands every year are advancing out 
 of the condition of day-laborers into the con- 
 dition of land-owners and farmers. It means 
 that thousands, who last year could not afford 
 to own farms, have so far bettered their condi- 
 tion that this year they can. The additional 
 number of farms represents, in large degree, the 
 wage-savings of day-laborers. If the poor 
 were in fact becoming poorer, would this state 
 of things be possible? If some one should say: 
 "But farmers are not among the poor of whom 
 we are now talking; any one who is able to own a 
 farm is not poor, in any such sense as we are now 
 considering," I should answer: "Exactly so: 
 and that's the encouraging feature. Some who 
 were so poor that a year ago they could not 
 own land are now able to purchase it; and this 
 number is increasing more rapidly than the pop- 
 ulation, in proportion. Where did the money 
 come from? It came from the savings of wage- 
 workers, because poor people get their money 
 in the form of wages.'' 
 
 Now, these facts are well worthy of our at- 
 tention. They are drawn from the official cen- 
 sus reports of our country, and their accuracy 
 cannot be assailed. Of course, if any one is an 
 agitator, drawing his miserable living by play-
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 83 
 
 ing upon the prejudices of the poor, he can ig- 
 nore tlie facts, as that class usually does. But to 
 thoughtful laboring men these facts are full of 
 hope. Of course, the increase in the number 
 of farms does not represent the only form of 
 wage-savings. Fully as many or probably more 
 wage-workers have invested their savings in 
 other ways. What shall we say, then, of the 
 fact that, since 1850, the number of farms has 
 increased by a full million more than the pro- 
 portionate increase of population? 
 
 It cannot be said that this immense gain in 
 the number of farms has come by the subdivis- 
 ion of large farms among the children of a sec- 
 ond generation, for Mr. George especially com- 
 plains that the tendency is squarely in the 
 opposite direction — toward the concentration of 
 small farms into larger. And doubtless there 
 has been at least as much of concentration as 
 of subdivision. What then? The increase rep- 
 resents the degree of advance out of poverty 
 into comfort. The poor are not therefore grow- 
 ing poorer. Their condition is not one of hope- 
 less retrogression into darkness, but of advance 
 into the sunshine of hope and comfort. As- 
 suming that at least as many have saved in 
 other directions, as those who have purchased 
 farms with their savings, we have at least two
 
 84 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 millions of people in this country to-day who 
 are comfortably off, who would have been with- 
 out property if it were true that the condition 
 of wage-workers were not advancing. 
 
 It is not true that "the poor are growing 
 poorer." So far from true is it, that within the 
 last half century there has been a proportion- 
 ate gain of more than two millions, who have 
 advanced out of the condition of poverty into 
 that of comfort. Of course, there have been 
 vastly more than two millions in the aggregate; 
 but these two millions represent the net gain 
 over and above the comparative increase of pop- 
 ulation. 
 
 A pauper class there always will be, as long 
 as there are thousands of people who prefer 
 idleness to labor. There will be pauper people 
 as long as there are pauper dispositions. A 
 few days ago there was an advertisement in our 
 papers calling for hundreds of laborers. While 
 that advertisement was still standing, the peo- 
 ple in the neighborhood where I live were vis- 
 ited by several able-bodied men, who were not 
 ashamed to beg their bread, and who preferred 
 that way of getting their living to the pick and 
 shovel. As long as thousands are afflicted with 
 such a pusilanimous disposition, there will be 
 some paupers in the world. No scheme of di-
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 85 
 
 viding the land will help that class. They 
 wouldn't get their living from it if each of them 
 had an amount equal to all of the land of the 
 Dalrymple farms. There are other thousands 
 who are struggling manfully with their lot — 
 who are working hard to better their condition. 
 And it is my privilege to say to them that all 
 of the hope which comes from the facts at 
 which we have this evening looked belongs to 
 them. It is not a hopeless case, as so many 
 teach. Millions have succeeded in making for 
 themselves and their little ones comfortable 
 surroundings in this life. And their number 
 is proportionately increasing year by year. 
 May God bless them, and succeed them in their 
 efforts of honest toil. 
 
 I can tell you how to stop pauperism in this 
 country in just four words — "Stop the drink 
 traffic." Liquor is responsible for eight-ninths 
 of the pauperism in America. At the time of 
 the last census (1880) there were 88,665 paupers 
 in this country, of whom 6j ,06^ were in alms- 
 houses, and 22,961 were of foreign birth. In 
 that same year eight hundred millions of dollars 
 were spent for drink in this country — enough 
 to give every pauper in the land a fortune. It 
 is a lamentable fact that the poorer classes — 
 those whose condition is already on the verge
 
 86 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 of poverty — are contributing more than their 
 share to this vast sum. No scheme of any uto- 
 pist or sociahst will ever be able to relieve the 
 poverty of this class, until he finds some way 
 to check the sale and drinking of intoxicating 
 liquors. "It is impossible — absolutely impos- 
 sible'' — said the good Earl of Shaftesbury, "to 
 do anything to permanently or considerably re- 
 lieve this poverty, until we have got rid of the 
 curse of drink." According to the recently 
 issued report of the Commissioner of the Na- 
 tional Labor Bureau, there were 998,839 un- 
 employed men in this country during the year 
 1885. In round numbers, we will say a million 
 unemployed men. That represents a great 
 loss of wages. It represents a loss on the part 
 of hundreds of thousands who do not drink a 
 drop, and of others, doubtless, who do. But 
 do you know, dear friends, if those who drink 
 among laboring men would stop this habit — 
 worse than useless — they could support every 
 idle workman in the country on better wages 
 than he ever earned, and have a fine sum left 
 over? 
 
 If I could speak to every workingman of this 
 country to-night who indulges in drink, I 
 would say: "Why throw away this money? 
 Why not save it for the good of your family?
 
 THE LABORER'S FALLACY. 87 
 
 Save it, and you may soon join the number of 
 those who are stepping tip from conditions of 
 poverty into conditions of comfort. " Say that 
 one-half of the vast sum which I have men- 
 tioned is spent by laboring men for drink; why 
 pay it to the saloon-keepers? Why not save 
 it, brothers? Four hundred millions of dollars 
 would make a good many homes comfortable 
 which are now miserable; would buy a good 
 many farms for those who are not now able to 
 own an acre. And every man who drinks is 
 contributing his share to the eight hundred 
 millions which feed the saloon-keepers and rob 
 the families of the drinkers. Thus have I tried 
 to point out our perils and our hopes. I have 
 shown you that, in spite of all adverse circum- 
 stances, there is hope. There is hope for the 
 toiler who works with brave heart and willing 
 purpose. There is hope for the laboring masses, 
 and there is hope, therefore, for the future of 
 our country. The ship which was launched 
 more than a century ago is not going down on 
 the breakers of pauperism or plutocracy. God, 
 the great and just God, guides us over this 
 great and wide sea which no ship ever sailed 
 before. 
 
 "Thou, too, sail on, O ship of State! 
 Sail on, O Union, strong and great;
 
 88 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Humanity, with all its fears, 
 
 With all the hopes of coming years, 
 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate. 
 
 4f « * « • 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
 
 Are all with thee — are all with thee."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE laborer's HOPE. 
 
 The Italian patriot Mazzini uttered a great 
 truth when he said, "It is around the standard 
 of duty rather than the standard of self-inter- 
 est that men must rally to win the rights of 
 man, " And here also we have a reflected ray 
 from Him who first taught the world that we 
 should love our neighbors as ourselves. In 
 this spirit alone can we hope to solve the social 
 problems of to-day, or advance the standard 
 of progress beyond the point where we find it. 
 
 In times of heat and anger the spirit of self- 
 interest is too apt to control. Each party or 
 class selfishly demands what will advance its 
 own interest regardless of the interests of so- 
 ciety at large. Such a spirit over-reaches it- 
 self. It is sure in the end to destroy the very 
 good which it seeks; like the man in the tale, 
 who, not content with fabulous gifts of jewels 
 demanded admission to the cave whence they 
 came, and found when too late that he was a 
 prisoner in that cave. His own greed and sel-
 
 90 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 fishness were to blame. Let us hope that the 
 laboring men of this country are not about to 
 repeat that man's folly. A thousand jewels 
 have been given to every American citizen. 
 He has the priceless jewel of liberty — liberty 
 of mind, heart and body. He may think as he 
 pleases; kneel at any altar or none as he pre- 
 fers; he may go where and work for whom he 
 likes, or work for no one. If he has burdens 
 which seem uujust and oppressive, the open 
 remedy is at hand; he may demand such laws 
 as will remedy the evil of which he complains. 
 Laws are not in this country like those of the 
 Medes and Persians, which change not. They 
 can be changed whenever the people will. 
 They are constantly in process of changing 
 from year to year to year to conform to the 
 growing needs of our great republic. When- 
 ever the laboring man can get his brothers to 
 agree on such changes as will remedy his ills, 
 those changes will be made; for in this coun- 
 try we live under laws which are made by those 
 who are in a large degree elected by ballots of 
 laboring men. The American laborer has his 
 remedy by lawful means. If laboring men are 
 not yet sufficiently united among themselves 
 as to what they want; or if they are unable to 
 carry a majority of the people for their schemes,
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 91 
 
 it is certain that the time has not come when 
 any such scheme would be just. Will the la- 
 lioring men of this country throw down this 
 load of a freeman's jewels and by force or law- 
 lessness shut themselves up in a cave? What 
 if agitation and force should so paralyze trade 
 and industry that every factory should be 
 closed? Would that help to feed the hungry 
 and clothe the naked? What if the result of 
 labor organization should be so pleasing to 
 those who now control it, that they should en- 
 large its scope and tighten the reins of its 
 power until the individual laborer should be 
 nothing and the organization everything? One 
 of the profoundest students of American insti- 
 tutions, DeTrequeville, said truly that "there 
 is no tyranny like the tyranny of a democracy 
 when once its current sets in that direction." 
 Let no association of working men be the first 
 to experience and illustrate, in this free coun- 
 try, the force of that truth. The entire nation 
 is jealous of any power which threatens a tyran- 
 ny over the individual, or which undertakes to 
 dominate over classes. The laboring man has 
 it in his power to remedy every real grievance by 
 legislation, provided he does not, by rashness 
 destroy the confidence of those whose alliance 
 he must have to accomplish his purpose.
 
 92 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 In the opinion of agitators and utopists, who 
 are now seeking to arouse a war of classes in 
 this country, no one is a friend of the laboring 
 man who refuses to accept the wild notions of 
 reform which they propose. The honest la- 
 boring man has no foe so deadly as these same 
 men, who are trying to arouse him to deeds of 
 riot which would destroy business confidence 
 and inevitably decrease his wages. When busi- 
 ness confidence fails, labor is depressed and the 
 hungry increased in like degree, every time. 
 
 I have hitherto uttered my belief that labor 
 is destined to advance into more favorable con- 
 ditions than it now enjoys. The time will come 
 when the price paid to the poor cloak-makers 
 of New York, for the making of a cloak, will 
 bear a fairer relation to the price for which it 
 is sold. The time is coming when more of the 
 results of labor will go to the cottages of the 
 poor and less to the palaces of the rich in pro- 
 portion. But no human being nor any num- 
 ber of them have power to produce such 
 changes suddenly. Meanwhile it is worth our 
 consideration that every laboring man in this 
 country to-day has already certain rights and 
 opportunities which would seem like the vision 
 of Mirza to the day laborers of England or 
 Germany.
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 93 
 
 A few days ago, in company with a citizen 
 of this place, I had occasion to visit the PoHsh 
 quarter of Milwaukee. We were riding with 
 a gentleman of that city. He called our atten- 
 tion to the comfortable cottages occupied by 
 most of those people; to the fact that while 
 nearly all are day laborers and while many have 
 not been long in this country, yet a large num- 
 ber own the houses in which they live. On 
 our return ride, near the dividing line between 
 the Polish and American quarters, he asked us 
 to notice two rows of comfortable tenements, 
 one on either side. The aggregate value of 
 either row of houses with the grounds, could 
 not be less than $10,000, and might be consid- 
 erably greater. Each row of those buildings 
 belongs to a Polander. One of those Polanders 
 came to this country thirteen years and the 
 other ten years ago. Neither had anything 
 when he came. They began as day laborers, 
 working at anything they could find to do. 
 One of them began only two or three years 
 after the great panic when times were certainly 
 as hard as they are now. But somehow he 
 managed by economy to save each year a little. 
 By wise management and foresight the little 
 has become a great deal.
 
 94 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 I was well acquainted with a carpenter in the 
 city of Cleveland, who was a laboring man to 
 the day of his death. A long time he worked 
 for small wages. But his wife helped him to 
 economize and they saved a little, bought a lot 
 and built a modest cottage on one of the re- 
 tired streets of the city. When they reached 
 a point where they had no rent to pay it came 
 easier to save. With the savings they bought 
 more building materials and by working extra 
 hours they soon had a large and more preten- 
 tious house adjoining the cottage. They no 
 sooner had the large house ready for a tenant 
 than a tenant was ready for the house, and 
 moved in, paying that laboring man $300 a 
 year for the privilege of living in his house. 
 So it happened that the poor laboring man 
 blossomed into a "bloated landlord!" But he 
 was not content with that. He kept on hard 
 at work earning day wages and saving a little 
 at a time and presently a third house of his 
 own was finished and a second tenant moved 
 in. At the time of his death that man owned 
 many thousand dollars worth of Cleveland real 
 estate, although he never ceased to work at 
 his trade till death called for him. I have seen 
 him more than once returning from his day's 
 work with his laborin"- suit on and his dinner
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 95 
 
 pail on his arm, while his tenants sat, clad in 
 broadcloth and smoking their Havanas. No 
 one would have guessed which was the "bloat- 
 ed landlord," and which the poor oppressed 
 tenants. 
 
 Very recently I met, in his own neat and 
 comfortable home, a Holland tailor, who came 
 to America four years ago. For more than 
 twenty years he had worked hard at his trade 
 in his native land, and, by dint of careful and 
 scrimping economy, he had managed to lay up 
 money sufficient to pay the passage of himself 
 and family across the sea, and to one of the in- 
 land cities of Michigan. When he arrived there 
 he could not speak a word of English, and had 
 only $ioo in money left. But he went to work 
 with a will. He worked, of course, at a great 
 disadvantage among people of a strange tongue; 
 but to-day, after four years, he is the owner of 
 his home, and is daily advancing toward a com- 
 petency for his old age. Both he and his wife 
 told me in broken speech, but with looks of 
 gratitude which needed no interpreting, that 
 they were thankful to be "in this good coun- 
 try;" that they have already accomplished what 
 they could not have done in a lifetime of toil 
 across the sea, and that they had lived in greater 
 comfort, had better clothing and food, than
 
 96 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 they could ever have had there. There, as they 
 told me, meat was a luxury only for the rich; 
 here "even a poor tailor could have meat on his 
 table at least once a day." His home, which 
 has cost him $1,200 — $900 of which is paid, 
 and the rest of which will be by the end of this 
 year — would sell for $1,400 or $1,500 to-day. 
 Thus already the savings of his thrift and econ- 
 omy are increasing in value, and should that 
 man live ten or twelve years he will probably 
 be a considerable property-holder in that city. 
 He has wrought no miracles. But the oppor- 
 tunities of this free country have wrought for 
 him what would seem a miracle to his old neigh- 
 bors in Holland. It goes without saying that 
 he has not spent any of his earnings in the sa- 
 loons. He is a happy, contented laborer. 
 Other men, whom I know in the same city, 
 have received just as large pay; have helped to 
 support the saloon-keepers; have not supported 
 their families as well as he; have not laid up a 
 dollar, and are always cursing the "hard luck" 
 and "grinding capitalists" who "keep them 
 poor." 
 
 I have not mentioned these cases of prosper- 
 ity among laboring men because they are rare. 
 You all know that they are not. Some of the 
 wealthiest men in this city began as day-labor-
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 97- 
 
 ers, working for smaller pay than the men who 
 are now demanding an increase and blocking 
 the wheels of commerce because they do not 
 receive it. You all know full well that until 
 recent years there were very few fortunes in 
 this country whose owners did not work hard 
 for them in their younger days. But I men- 
 tion them to ask a few questions. Were those 
 men doing right or wrong when they were hard 
 at work earning days' wages? "Right,"' I hear 
 you say; "we believe in honest toil." Were 
 they doing right or wrong when they managed 
 to lay up a few dollars, and so get a start toward 
 a competence? "Right, "you say; "we believe 
 in compensation for honest industry. " Were 
 they doing right or wrong when they took their 
 carefully hoarded dollars and bought a piece of 
 land? "Right," you say; "we believe in a 
 home for the laboring man. " Were the first 
 two right when they built each a second house 
 on his lot, to accommodate some one else who 
 had not succeeded in laying up sufficient to 
 build his own? "Right," you say; "a man 
 who has begun so honestly and continued so 
 perseveringly deserves to prosper, as the fruit 
 of his industry." 
 
 Who can say that either of these men has 
 done any wrong against any class of society?
 
 98 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Have they not rather, by honesty, care and in- 
 dustry, done their very best to contribute to the 
 general prosperity of the entire community? 
 Yet, starting as laboring men, and as a result 
 of their labor, they became both capitahsts and 
 landlords. 
 
 Is there any one who would destroy the 
 power which those men had to better their con- 
 dition? Every one of them was a laboring 
 man. How would any agitator go at it to con- 
 demn the accumulation of wealth without also 
 condemning just such prosperity of labor? To 
 condemn them would blight the hope of every 
 laboring man in this country; for, however 
 poor a man may be to-day, he looks forward 
 to the time when he may become the owner of 
 his home — the master of one spot on earth 
 where he may rear his family and plant the 
 standard of his independence, saying, "My 
 house is my castle. " Take away that hope and 
 you would paralyze the right arm of every toiler 
 who is working for dear ones and a golden day 
 to come. The thousands of laboring men who 
 are giving willing ear to the wretched talk of 
 socialists, going to those socialistic meetings, 
 as many of them do, from their own cottages 
 and comfortable homes, do not stop to consider 
 what this denunciation of property and this
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 99 
 
 abuse of capital means. They do not consider 
 that the destruction of property rights would 
 carry down the cottages of the poor, as surely 
 as the palaces of the rich. You could not in- 
 validate the titles of one without destroying 
 the foundations of all. Such an overthrow 
 would destroy the poor man's hope that he may, 
 by careful savings and industry, rise to a con- 
 dition of greater comfort-, for be sure, when 
 you have once admitted into the world the prin- 
 ciple of forcibly distributing to some the prop- 
 erty which others, by careful industry, have 
 earned, it will rule the world with a rod of iron. 
 Ricardo's "iron law of wages" would be nothing 
 in comparison with it. When such a principle 
 becomes law, farewell to incentives to industry. 
 None would be willing to earn more than a 
 bare subsistence, and no one would save any- 
 thing; for the amount saved, however small, 
 would tempt the rapacity of those who desire 
 to divide without earning. How many honest 
 laboring men in this free country desire to be 
 bound by such cast-iron conditions? Who 
 would desire to be in a state or society in which 
 none could hope to better their condition by 
 industry and economy? Who would desire to 
 change the condition of the laboring man as it 
 is to day, in which all may hope for and many
 
 100 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 attain to something better, for one in which all 
 security should cease, and all hope for improve- 
 ment should be lost? When the doctrine of 
 Rossean, that "every man has a natural right to 
 what he needs," and that of Proudhon, that 
 "the man who has more than he needs is a thief," 
 are generally accepted, then farewell to any so- 
 ciety; farewell to the happiness of the laborer's 
 cottage, and the security of his hearthstone; for 
 there will always be sure to be some one who 
 will "need" something which he has in that cot- 
 tage. In that golden day of the socialist's 
 dream, when palaces have been leveled and 
 vested rights have been destroyed, a cottage 
 will be wealth enough to tempt the rapacity 
 of some one, and the unsatisfied anarchist will 
 still be crying out: "Down with the fortunate! 
 Down with the cottage! What business has 
 any man to own a cottage and lord it over his 
 fellows?" 
 
 When Joseph Baboeuf, the father of modern 
 anarchism (who discarded his Christian name 
 because, as he said, he had no wish for Joseph's 
 virtues) saw that his views, if accepted, would 
 produce such results, he was ready with his an- 
 swer: "Let progress cease, and civilization 
 decay! Perish the arts! Let everything return 
 to chaos, but give us equality, " Such is the
 
 THE LABORER'S HOrE. 101 
 
 bold scheme of men who have no honorable 
 record to preserve, and no future to hope for. 
 They desire and are seeking to draw the labor- 
 ers of this country into their plans. They wish 
 to secure the laborer's help in destroying the 
 only hope for advancement that the honest 
 laborer has. They want to reduce this country 
 to a state of insecurity like that which rules in 
 Arabia to-day, where all men arc wanderers, 
 and no one knows but he will be plundered by 
 the next band he meets. Only thieves and cut- 
 throats could hope to profit by a state of soci- 
 ety in which the rights of property should be 
 abolished. 
 
 I have not said that all laborers could do as 
 the three did whom I have mentioned. Of 
 course, that would be impossible. Each en- 
 counters his own difficulties, and some have 
 obstacles in sickness and low wages which con- 
 tinually keep them down. But I am now speak- 
 ing of the fact that, all along, the workingman 
 in this country has enjoyed, and still enjoys, 
 privileges which his brother of any European 
 nation would hail as the day-star of a new and 
 exalted era. Go tell some peasant on the Al- 
 pine slopes, who returns after a day's toil with 
 a little armful of hay — the sole result of his 
 labor; go and tell some English miner, whose
 
 102 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 weary hours of darkness and toil yield him less 
 than one-half as much as is paid in American 
 mines, and no hope for the future but more toil 
 and deeper darkness; go and tell some Russian 
 peasant, whose life of semi-slavery knows noth- 
 ing better for to-day than a crust of black 
 bread and a bowl of black soup, and nothing 
 brighter for the future than fear and trembling 
 beneath the rod of an imperial despot; go and 
 tell some Italian padrone, who creeps forth from 
 his miserable hovel, after a meal which would 
 be spurned by the pigs in your barn-yard, to 
 labor in the marble-quarries, sixteen hours each 
 day, for barely enough compensation to pur- 
 chase the pauper food which lengthens out the 
 dreary span of his misery — go to such men, ye 
 sons of American toil, and tell them that you 
 live in a country where labor still has some re- 
 forms to accomplish, but where it is possible 
 for a laboring man to purchase a home, and 
 where hundreds of thousands are to-day living 
 in comfortable homes which they have bought 
 with the savings of their industry; tell them 
 that thousands of those who are now accounted 
 wealthy men began their rise to competency 
 from the shops and fields of toil; tell them that 
 you know of some men who came hither, fresh 
 from the oppressed peasantry of Europe, with-
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 103 
 
 out a dollar after they landed, who, in ten or 
 twelve years in this country, are able to own 
 whole rows of houses in one of the most beau- 
 tiful cities on this continent; tell them that you 
 live in a land where laboring men are permit- 
 ted to hold conventions and pass resoluiions 
 without being dogged by the police; tell them 
 that, if resolutions are not heeded, it is your 
 privilege to nominate and elect whom you will 
 to make your laws and redress your grievances; 
 tell them all this, and you will see their look of 
 bewildered amazement as they ask, "What do 
 I hear? Am I awake, or am I dreaming?" 
 
 I do not think that all men could do as the 
 few successful ones whom I have cited; but I 
 do believe that thousands, who now spend 
 much of their earnings fooHshly, could ac- 
 complish some such thing. The difference 
 lies at the beginning, and that difference often 
 consists, not in the greater or less wages, but 
 in the ability to economize, which some exer- 
 cise and others do not. For it is a matter of 
 daily observation that men whose wages are 
 precisely the same, and whose families have the 
 same number to feed and clothe, get on very 
 differently. One of them lays up nothing, and 
 thinks that society is his enemy; the other toils 
 on, and, after a few years, has a few hundred
 
 104 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 dollars of savings — capital — which becomes his 
 friend, and henceforth helps him to earn. It is 
 no secret how the rest of the great success 
 comes. The trouble lies in the struggle to ac- 
 cumulate the first small savings. 
 
 It is not uncommon for the day-laborer of 
 the city, who is receiving from $1.50 to $2.00 
 a day, to look with jealousy upon the comfort- 
 able homes and surroundings of many farmers. 
 There are thousands of wealthy farmers in this 
 country to-day whose pioneer life was marked 
 by such privations as few in the cities know 
 anything about. Alone they made their way 
 into the heart of the forest, or far out upon 
 the prairies, where for years they had almost 
 no privileges of civilization, and only the plain- 
 est fare. Attend their pioneer meetings and 
 you will hear stories of log-cabins in the forest 
 and dugouts on the prairies; of days when 
 wheat flour was an unheard-of luxury, and 
 when a bear-hunt supplied the only relief from 
 corn-meal and potatoes. When they were sick 
 they were compelled to doctor each other back 
 to health or die. When they remembered the 
 comfortable dinners in New York or New En- 
 gland, they had only their memories and corn- 
 bread to comfort them. They worked as long 
 as sunlight showed them where the trees needed
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 105 
 
 felling, where the sod must be turned, or the 
 weeds annihilated. They didn't dream of a 
 time when labor could hope to support its sons 
 on a system of eight hours a day. They would 
 have starved to death on such a system, and 
 raised no rebellion because it was impractica- 
 ble. There were no strikes among the pioneer 
 farmers, who got their wealth by working six- 
 teen hours a day, and who are now envied or 
 hated for their prosperity by men who refuse 
 to work more than eight. In those pioneer 
 days they came West for a purpose. That 
 purpose could be accomplished only by a long 
 course of privation. This free government gave 
 them certain privileges; the rest they had to 
 win by clear grit. They won; and when they 
 won they had comfortable homes and something 
 to educate the children with. 
 
 My sympathies are with the toiling thousands 
 of earth every time. But I have no sympathy 
 with those who would tyrannize over a portion 
 of their toiling brethren, in the name of labor 
 reform. There is one little passage in General 
 Grant's life for which I admire him as much as 
 for any other. It illustrates the manly inde- 
 pendence of the man. When he was in England, 
 where coats of arms are regular parts of aristo- 
 cratic furniture, he was one day asked what
 
 106 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 device he would choose for his crest. He in- 
 stantly replied, "A pair of arms with sleeves 
 rolled to the elbow!" 
 
 I recall the days when the fires on the forge, 
 twice each day lighted up the old shop in which 
 I worked not eight hours only but from six in 
 the morning till seven or eight at night. Strikes 
 had not become fashionable in those days. We 
 were of course very ignorant; but we did not 
 dream that we were being oppressed, because 
 we saw fit to work a little longer and earn a 
 little more. Nor do I now think that I was 
 oppressed by those who had at that time risen 
 above the necessity of working as I was com- 
 pelled to work. On the contrary I thank God 
 to-night, as I have many times thanked him, 
 for the privileges of this free country, by which 
 it was possible for a poor boy to have the ben- 
 efits of a college education. None shall excel 
 me in earnest desire that everything may be 
 done to better the condition of the laboring 
 man, and according to my ability none shall 
 excel me in effort to that end; but while I live 
 and have a spark of gratitude in my heart, I 
 will not be silent when the free flag of my 
 country is traduced and its privileges slandered. 
 There are other countries which do as much for 
 the rich as this country does and more. There
 
 THE LABORER'S HOPE. 107 
 
 are countries which bestow upon them titles of 
 knighthood and nobihty, the power to retain 
 their wealth in their families forever, by the 
 law of entail, and the power to lord it over 
 their fellows by the decrees of aristocratic par- 
 liaments. But there is no country under the 
 face of heaven which gives to its laboring mill- 
 ions so fair a chance as this. This fact is per- 
 fectly known, yet imported socialists whose 
 names are too foul to mention, are trying to 
 teach the laboring man to hate his country. It 
 would be only fair to send these human vultures 
 to some place where, with people of their own 
 sort, they could show the world what sort of a 
 country they could produce. Robinson Crusoe's 
 island would be a good place for them. What! 
 Tell the laboring men of this free country to 
 hate its flag, and to look for an opportunity to 
 overturn its free institutions? Times have 
 changed within my memory if the laboring 
 men of this country are ready in any great 
 numbers to listen to such talk. It is but little 
 more than a score of years ago that hundreds 
 of thousands of the laboring men of this coun- 
 try heard its call in the hour of distress. Then 
 forth from plow, anvil and factory loom they 
 sprang, a mighty army, saying: 
 
 "We are coming Father Abraham, 
 Three hundred thousand more."
 
 108 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 They went to fight the battles of freedom 
 against slavery, of free labor against slave la- 
 bor, and they won. Surely this magnificent 
 loyalty of the laboring men of this land, will 
 not permit itself to be insulted by listening to 
 or in any way encouraging the appeals of men 
 who would destroy the government. I believe 
 the time is near at hand when thousands of 
 laborers, who have been silent, whose senti- 
 ments have not been expressed by noisy dem- 
 onstrations of socialism, will make all evil 
 agitators feel the force of their opposition.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE — CO-LABORERS. 
 
 Several years ago I stood on one of the 
 stupendous arches of that magnificent viaduct 
 which crosses the river at the falls of St. An- 
 thony. Some of the arches were complete; 
 others were only begun while the slender frame 
 work of wood had already traced the thought 
 of the engineer in the air. Last June I rode 
 in a car of one of the numerous trains between 
 the cities as it rolled over that completed struc- 
 ture. The thought of the builder had turned 
 to solid stone — as firm beneath our rumbling 
 wheels as the earth itself. Then I fell to think- 
 ing of that law which combines matter and 
 muscle and mind to make values. How much 
 would that bridge be worth, to-day, if it did 
 not represent thought as well as labor, brain as 
 well as brawn? How many cars would those 
 arches support if they were not constructed 
 upon the most exact scientific principles? On 
 the one hand you have one or two thotisand 
 men who have bared their arms to the work of
 
 110 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 blasting the rock from the quarry, and shaping 
 it block by block for its position in the struc- 
 ture. On the other you have the thought of 
 one master mind, which marked out the shape 
 and position of every block before a blow was 
 struck. Now, friends, let us look at this illus- 
 tration a minute, for we have here, in small 
 compass, all of the elements of that vexed 
 question of values. We will say nothing now 
 of the engineering skill required to manage 
 great quarries; nothing of the thought as well 
 as labor required to build and run the railroads 
 over which the blocks of stone must be trans- 
 ported; but we will suppose the stone for that 
 structure to be quarried and transported, and 
 here now it lies in vast blocks ready for the 
 chisel of the stone cutter. Here, too, are the 
 stone cutters with their chisels, and the masons 
 with their trowels and stone-hammers. The 
 labor element is all on hand ready to build a 
 bridge and the material is here ready to be 
 built. But suppose that these hundreds of 
 laborers find after they get together, that they 
 have no plans, nor scientific drafts from which 
 to work. You know that these laborers would 
 be compelled to be idle. They could not build 
 a bridge without the plans drawn by an en- 
 gineer. Is it true then that "all wealth comes
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. Ill 
 
 from labor?" When that bridge is completed 
 will the whole value of it be due to labor, as 
 Mr. George and Karl Marx teach? Do you 
 not know that the value of every stone depends 
 as much on the thought of the architect as on 
 the chisel of the stone-cutter? Suppose two 
 cutters: one shapes his work exactly to the 
 plan; angle and curve are exact. The other 
 does not; he thinks he knows better and takes 
 an angle and curvature of his own. At night 
 one man's work is valuable; the other's is ab- 
 solutely worthless. There are as many hours' 
 work in one as in the other; and if it were true 
 that "all wealth comes from labor," one man's 
 work would be worth just as much as the 
 other's. But we all know full well that there 
 is a great difference. What makes it? One 
 man added to his work the genius of the en- 
 gineer's plan; the other did not; hence the dif- 
 ference in value. We see then that labor does 
 not create all values. Men may shout them- 
 selves hoarse with that false doctrine. Thou- 
 sands may make themselves believe it; but it 
 will not be true any the more for that. Genius 
 and leadership contribute their share to values. 
 In many cases they are quite as essential as 
 labor. The stone bridge at Minneapolis or the 
 iron bridge at St. Louis or the wire bridge at
 
 112 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 Brooklyn, could neither have been built by la- 
 bor alone. They are all very valuable struc- 
 tures and a large part of the value in every 
 case was contributed by a quality which can- 
 not, by any proper definition be called "labor." 
 To return to our illustration: If when the hun- 
 dreds of laborers assembled ready to begin 
 their work, no one could have been found with 
 the skill and genius of a civil engineer, to draft 
 the plans and direct the work, then it could 
 not have been done. The workmen would 
 have been compelled to disperse without an 
 opportunity to earn, what otherwise they might. 
 Their wages would be in that case absolutely 
 dependent upon leadership. So far from labor 
 imparting all value in such a case, leadership 
 would in fact add to, if it did not create, the 
 value of wages. What would the company 
 pay those men to work on that bridge without 
 apian? Nothing. Their work would be worth- 
 less. But the moment one appears with the 
 necessary genius and skill to plan and direct 
 their labor, it commands good wages. So I 
 say the laborers who wrought on that bridge 
 could well afford, if it had been necessary, to pay 
 the man who could plan the bridge many times 
 as much as any one of them received, because 
 their ability to earn many thousand dollars all 
 depended on his ability to plan.
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 113 
 
 Wouldn't it be a beautiful thing for laboring 
 men if socialists should succeed in leveling 
 everything? Wouldn't it help laboring men if 
 the socialists should kill off the civil engineers 
 and architects, whose genius plans the work 
 which keeps them busy? They are among the 
 men whom socialists would attack. They are 
 usually men whose talent has commanded high 
 pay, and who consequently, as a rule, have 
 comfortable homes and a little money in the 
 bank for a rainy day. In the language of so- 
 cialism, "they are robbers." 
 
 If the socialists, like Mr. George, should at- 
 tempt to answer by saying that the work which 
 a civil engineer does with his brain is labor, 
 and that therefore his contribution to the value 
 of the bridge is no exception to the rule that 
 "all value comes from labor," I should say to 
 them, "Such an answer won't do. There is 
 such a thing as architectural ability; there is 
 such a thing as genius or talent for civil-engi- 
 neering; and it is from this impalpable quality 
 that the larger part of the value, contributed 
 by engineering or architectural work, comes. 
 There are some who might spend a life-time 
 and master all the mechanical details, without 
 acquiring the spark of genius which can con- 
 ceive a great plan. There are thousands who
 
 114 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 understand the principle of the dome as well as 
 Michael Angelo, but he alone conceived the 
 magnificent plan which led him, when first the 
 thought of St. Peter's dome burst upon him, to 
 exclaim, "I'll hang it in air!" There was only- 
 one Angelo, but his one grand thought set 
 thousands of laborers to work, and has kept an 
 army at work ever since; for the annual re- 
 pairs on St. Peter's require the constant serv- 
 ices of many laborers. There was only one 
 Sir Christopher Wren, but when his genius 
 conceived the glory of St. Paul's, that thought 
 made work and wages for the thousands, who 
 changed the thought into pillar, column, pedi- 
 ment and dome. Will any stone-cutter be fool- 
 ish enough to deny that the thought of Chris- 
 topher Wren gave a great share of the value to 
 St. Paul's Cathedral? It was not the drafting 
 and planning. I am not now referring to the 
 mere geometrical details which many were com- 
 petent to work out. I am not now referring 
 to anything which can be called "labor," but to 
 that greatness of genius which made it possible 
 for the great thought to dawn upon his mind. 
 Without that, the thousands of chisels and ham- 
 mers would never have been set to work on St. 
 Paul's. St. Paul's never could have been built 
 without the thought of Christopher Wren, any
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 115 
 
 more than without the stone-cutters and ma- 
 sons. Its value is therefore the joint product 
 of genius and labor — not of labor alone. 
 
 In view of such facts, isn't it a trifle arrogant 
 and the least bit shallow for the economists of 
 socialism to claim that "all wealth is created by 
 labor?" Instead of the world's owing every- 
 thing to labor, docs not labor owe a vast deal 
 to the wealth of human genius 
 
 Suppose a thousand men — opers, we will 
 say — honest, hard-working men and excellent 
 mechanics, but with little or no skill for com- 
 bining, and with only a limited knowledge of 
 the way in which stock, when ready, should be 
 put upon the market — suppose them to work a 
 year faithfully, making honest barrels. Who 
 does not know that such a company would 
 surely make mistakes? They would make too 
 many of this sort of barrels, and too few of 
 that. They would overstock the market in one 
 direction, and be lacking when demand arose 
 in another; for all of these matters require 
 careful study, and no man can give the study 
 which such matters require while working hard 
 at a trade. 
 
 Now, suppose another company of a thou- 
 sand coopers, no more capable than the former* 
 and no more ready to work; but they are di-
 
 116 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 rected by one who has skill and executive gen- 
 ius. He understands the markets, and he can 
 combine the efforts of all the workmen to the 
 production of such goods as the market re- 
 quires. Does any man in his senses doubt that 
 the product of the latter company will sell for 
 far more than that of the former? Every one 
 knows it will. Why? One company has done 
 just as many days' work as the other, and if it 
 is true that "all wealth comes from labor," the 
 work of one ought to bring just as much as that 
 of the other. Why is it, then, that one com- 
 pany gets more for its product than the other? 
 I will tell you: It is because one company have 
 put something besides labor into their product; 
 they have put into their barrels executive abil- 
 ity and genius for leadership. Without that, 
 their barrels would have been worth no more 
 than those of the other company. We see, 
 therefore, in barrels, as well as bridges and 
 cathedral-domes, there is an element of wealth 
 which does not come from labor. It is not true 
 that "all wealth comes from labor." It is not 
 true, therefore, that "all wealth belongs to the 
 laborer," as socialists claim, and as every labor- 
 sheet in America also affirms. If everything 
 were to be leveled to-morrow, and if all men 
 were reduced to an exact equality, the laboring
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 117 
 
 men themselves would be obliged to create 
 what they now call "privileged classes." We 
 saw that this was just the thing proposed 
 by Mr. Gronlund. After everything should 
 be leveled, he proposed that the laborers 
 should elect " superintendents " and " over- 
 seers" and "bureau-chiefs." Indeed! And 
 when they are elected, pray, what will they be 
 but another set of "privileged classes?" Would 
 not their position excite the envy of men like 
 Baboeuf and Louis Blanc, who cry, "Down 
 with everything, if need be, but give us equal- 
 ity?" 
 
 Suppose everything leveled to-morrow, and 
 all those who are now regarded with envy to 
 to be killed off. That would carry off most of 
 the architects and civil engineers of the coun- 
 try — probably every one of them. Then sup- 
 pose a company of laborers to say: "Come, 
 now, we've got things our own way; let's build 
 a railroad." How far would they get? Who 
 would produce the iron for them? It requires 
 something besides muscle to manage iron-mines 
 and blast-furnaces. How would they get through 
 the first mountain they came to? It requires 
 the finest ability to tunnel a mountain. Labor 
 could never do it alone. The thousand laborers 
 would be obliged to throw down their shovels
 
 118 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 and wait till some one could be educated to the 
 profession of an engineer, before they could 
 ever get through the first mountain. And 
 when they had him educated and ready for 
 work, they would have to pay him much larger 
 wages than any one of themselves could earn, 
 because his instruments would cost much more 
 than theirs and because his training would cost 
 very much more. And when they had educated 
 him and prepared him so that he by his ability 
 could relieve their helplessness, what would 
 they have? They would have the beginning 
 of a "privileged class;" for he by a few hours' 
 work could plan enough work to keep a large 
 company busy. And before they know it they 
 would be supporting him, in a way which would 
 give him a few hours of leisure each day. 
 Labor itself would be in a certain sense abso- 
 lutely dependent on such. help as he could ren- 
 der. And in order to get it they would be 
 obliged to offer inducements sufficient to lead 
 him to prepare himself by long years of study 
 and self-denial. But the very inducements 
 which they would offer in higher wages and the 
 like, would give him some privileges not en- 
 joyed by most. In other words the demands 
 of labor itself would create a privileged class. 
 And what labor would do under such circum-
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 119 
 
 stances, it has already done, throughout the 
 world. What would the iron-molder do with- 
 out the draftsman? and what would the con- 
 tractor or the carpenter do without the architect? 
 The thoughts of these men, are the very pio- 
 neers of the great labor operations of the world 
 to-day. One man tJioiight of a cable beneath 
 the sea; then thousands of men were set to 
 work to execute his thought, and the completed 
 value was the joint product of the thought of 
 the thinker and the blows of the laborer. An- 
 other man thought of a mighty railway con- 
 necting ocean with ocean — a great continental 
 roadway. Then forthwith thousands of labor- 
 ers were set to the work of putting that thought 
 into "grades" and "fills" and "cuts;" into "ties" 
 and "tunnels" and "rails. " Presently the great 
 railroad was done. Millions of dollars had 
 been paid to laborers, which never would have 
 been paid to them, but for the thought of those 
 who planned the railroad. When done it was 
 the joint product of genius and labor. And 
 moreover millions of dollars are paid every 
 year to laborers who work in running the trains 
 on that road which never would have been paid 
 them but for that thought which was turned by 
 labor into a railroad. Is it true that "all wealth 
 comes from labor?" No; by a thousand illus-
 
 120 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 trations, the one who takes trouble to think 
 can see that there is a large element of wealth 
 which comes from thought, genius, plan. Ev- 
 ery yard of cloth from the loom; every bushel 
 of coal from the mine; every scrap of iron 
 from the foundry, represents, in its value, these 
 two elements which I have mentioned. 
 
 By a different illustration it could be shown 
 with equal clearness that, in many instances 
 capital imparts value to certain objects which 
 they never could have from labor alone. But 
 I will not enter upon that now. My object has 
 been by simple and clear illustrations to show 
 that it is not true that "all w^ealth comes from 
 labor. " And I think none who properly con- 
 sider such illustrations as are occurring every 
 day, can for a moment honestly think that "all 
 wealth is created by labor. " That is not true. 
 If it is not true, it will do nothing but harm to 
 teach it. No permanent good can come to 
 any one or to any class by teaching a false- 
 hood. The laboring man himself would be 
 the first to suffer, if that doctrine should be 
 generally accepted. If "all wealth is created 
 by labor" of course labor would have no need 
 of executive ability or inventive genius. Sup- 
 pose these elements to be banished from the 
 factories of the United States at the sounding
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 121 
 
 of the whistle to-morrow morning? How long 
 could the factories be kept running? How long 
 would it be before thousands of factories would 
 be silent as the grave-yard and hundreds of 
 thousands of operatives out of employment? 
 The laboring man would very soon find that 
 there is an element of wealth which comes 
 from some other source than labor; and he 
 would find first of all that the value of his own 
 wages depends on something besides his labor. 
 But suppose the laboring men to say, "When 
 we had dismissed the superintendents who are 
 the minions of capital, we would elect some 
 one of our own number for superintendent." 
 Very well. "A rose by any other name would 
 smell as sweet." You would still have super- 
 intendents. And in the end of such a scheme 
 the world would have more tyranny than it 
 ever dreamed of before. The civilized world 
 has never had a government of such tyrannical 
 central power as the socialists themselves pro- 
 pose to establish. They propose to have the 
 government control everything, even to the 
 kind of work a man shall do; the amount of 
 property he shall own; the stores where he 
 shall buy his supplies and all that. What 
 would the word "liberty" mean in such a gov- 
 ernment as that? Where was there ever such a
 
 122 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 grinding tyranny? Where was there ever such 
 a set of absolute despots as the "bureau-chiefs" 
 of such a government would be? Talk about 
 "equality" under such a government! The dif- 
 ference of power between Jay Gould and one 
 of the brakemen in his employ to-day is not 
 one half as great as the difference between a 
 common laborer and a "bureau-chief " would 
 be under the proposed system. Jay Gould has 
 no power to compel any man to work for him; 
 but the "bureau-chiefs" would have just that 
 power. Before the end of six months under 
 such a government, the laboring masses of this 
 country would be ready to say: Give us back 
 our former liberties and our former ills if that 
 is necessary, but let us escape from the tyranny 
 of "bureau-chiefs." Just as the people of 
 France, who had cut off the head of Louis 
 XVI and enacted the "reign of terror, " were 
 glad to take refuge in the arms of a new em- 
 pire under Napoleon I, so the socialists of to- 
 day would be glad in a few months to get away 
 from their own regime, if they should ever be 
 permitted to enact it. 
 
 A second theory of socialism is that all lands 
 should be confiscated by the government and 
 that there should be no private ownership of 
 land. The government, so the socialists say,
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 123 
 
 should periodically re-distribute the land ac- 
 cording to the needs of families and individuals. 
 If the government would only do this, requir- 
 ing all taxes to be paid in the form of ground- 
 rent, that would be a panacea for all of the ills 
 of pauperism which now afflict society. That 
 would cure all of the labor troubles. For pri- 
 vate land-ownership is responsible for all of the 
 objectionable features connected with vast for- 
 tunes and corporate monopolies. So teach 
 Mr. George, Mr. Hyndman and a host of others 
 who follow their lead. "Ground-rent;" notice 
 the word. That's a beautiful word to propose 
 to make universal in this 19th century isn't it? 
 Now there are great evils connected with the 
 loose management of our public lands. I have 
 already pointed some of them out in a former 
 lecture. These evils must be corrected. An 
 awakening public conscience declares they shall 
 be corrected. We are not going to permit 
 foreign lords and noblemen to establish their 
 effete tenant system on our soil. The "grand 
 old man" of England has dared to sound the 
 death-knell of that system in Ireland. All 
 honor to the noble premier, who has dared to 
 lift his voice for oppressed Ireland. All honor 
 to Gladstone. We may thank God that we 
 have lived to see this day. Nor are we going
 
 124 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 to permit any class of men much longer to steal 
 the public domain by the million acres, under 
 any pretext. No false claims can much longer 
 stand against the rights of those who want the 
 land for homes, and are ready to occupy it as 
 actual settlers. These evils must be rebuked. 
 But, my friends, the scheme of universal con- 
 fiscation, proposed by the socialists, would not 
 usher in the millenium, as they declare. Have 
 they stopped to consider how utterly we would 
 be at the mercy of the government if it owned 
 every foot of land, and consequently every roof 
 over our heads? What could hinder such a 
 government from being very tyrannical? What 
 a tremendous, centralized power that would be! 
 The ownership of land implies the right to turn 
 a tenant out of doors. Suppose hard times, 
 like a failure of crops, should make it impossi- 
 ble for thousands to pay their taxes, or "ground 
 rents." Along comes the government agent 
 and turns them out. What scheme can they 
 find for paying up, and so being restored to 
 their homes? They would be a kind of pris- 
 oners to the government, compelled to work 
 under its orders until the ground-rents were 
 paid. It would be morally certain that thou- 
 sands would fail to pay their rents ; for it is 
 now, as it ever has been and ever will be, a
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 125 
 
 fact, in the present order, that thousands fail to 
 pay their debts. What would the land-owning 
 government do with its delinquent tenants? It 
 could not ignore or cancel its claim. That sys- 
 tem would be ruinous to any government de- 
 pending on "ground-rents" for its revenue. It 
 would either be compelled to resort to the most 
 tyrannical measures, fastening the people to the 
 soil and compelling them to work out their 
 rents, or it would be compelled to evict them 
 on a scale which would dwarf all the evictions 
 which ever made Ireland weep and her children 
 cry for bread. Tell me, laboring men, do we 
 want a system of universal landlordism in this 
 country? Has the history of landlordism been 
 so happy across the sea that we wish to adopt 
 it, and make it universal? Has the word "ten- 
 ant" become so dear to the masses that they 
 desire, by universal impulse, to enroll them- 
 selves as tenants for life? A brighter day has 
 already dawned on Ireland — a day which, in 
 its zenith, will see the dream of O'Connor real- 
 ized, and which will make good the boast of 
 O'Connell. But when the full noon of that 
 bright day comes. Irishmen will no longer be 
 "tenants." They will be the owners of Irish 
 soil. Tell me, American workingmen, is our 
 millenium to be ushered in by making the gov-
 
 126 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 ernment an overgrown "landlord?" And are 
 we all to be made happy by wearing the name 
 of "tenants?" Don't believe it. Even the fas- 
 cinating rhetoric of Henry George can't hang 
 flowers enough on the yoke of tenantry to 
 make it seem beautiful to me. What England 
 needs to-day is not to make the government a 
 universal landlord in place of the many land- 
 lords, but she needs some scheme whereby the 
 great estates may be divided into small hold- 
 ings. She needs to abolish her law of entail 
 and hereditary nobility. She needs what we 
 have in this free country, where even a poor 
 man, by care and frugality, may become the 
 owner of land. The instincts of freedom are 
 toward individual ownership of the soil. De- 
 pend upon it, Mr. George and Mr. Hyndman, 
 the heart of humanity is not beating very 
 warmly toward your scheme of universal gov- 
 ernmental landlordism. The heart of humanity 
 beats with the heart of Ireland to-day, when 
 she says, "Give my sons a chance to own the 
 soil on which they live!" 
 
 But there is no. need of arguing this matter 
 from the standpoint of abstract right or econ- 
 omic theory. Why not look at a great and 
 conspicuous example of the communal land- 
 system, which has been before the world in its
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 127 
 
 present form, since the emancipation of Rus- 
 sian serfs in i86i. Why doesn't Mr. George 
 point to Russia and say to the oppressed labor- 
 ing men of America, "There, fellow-toilers, is 
 a bright and shining example of the working 
 man's paradise! Behold in free and liberty lov- 
 ing Russia a land where the poor have their 
 rights and where capital never grinds the face 
 of labor!" Why didn't he say that! What! 
 Wouldn't it apply? Is not Russia free? Can it 
 be possible that the poor are oppressed there? 
 What do I hear? Do you tell me that "Russia 
 is the synonym of despotism in all the world 
 to-day?" How can that be, when she has in 
 universal practice the very system of land-ten- 
 ure which, dreamers are telling us, would cure 
 all of our poverty and trouble? In that great 
 empire the land is practically owned by the 
 government, as Henry George recommends. 
 The rural population dwell in communal vil- 
 lages and the land is re-apportioned once in 
 fifteen years. If a man's family has increased 
 he gets more; if it has decreased, he gets less 
 accordingly. The people of .each commune, 
 or village, meet and determine the land appor- 
 tionment by vote. They also determine by 
 vote when the plowing shall begin; and when 
 the seeding; and when the haying and harvest-
 
 128 TALKS ON THE LABOR TROUBLES. 
 
 ing; and so on through the whole round of 
 farm operations. No man dares to plow his 
 strip of ground until the time appointed by- 
 vote of the commune. The individual expresses 
 his will by voting in the commune and then 
 loses his individuality — a fact which illustrates 
 again the saying of DeTocqueville that "there 
 is no tyranny like that of a democracy, when 
 once its current sets in that direction." But 
 not only so. A land system like that of Rus- 
 sia makes it necessary that the inhabitants of 
 each commune should hold together. Hence 
 no man can change his residence without a vote 
 of the commune; no person can be absent even 
 for a few weeks, without consent of the com- 
 mune. If he goes for a visit to St. Petersburg 
 or Moscow, he must report once in so often, 
 and the commune may order him home at 
 pleasure — a privilege which it often exercises, 
 and very oppressively. If a man has moved 
 to a city and is prospering, his prosperity excites 
 the envy of his old neighbors and they call a 
 meeting of the commune and order him home. 
 There is no escaping the order either. All of 
 the tremendous police power of Russia is 
 pledged to enforce that order. The police pow- 
 er of an absolute despot enforces the tyrannical 
 decree of a little democracy! Isn't it a lovely
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE. 129 
 
 scheme? Just the thing for us to adopt in this 
 country, is it not? I haven't time to display all 
 of its beauties this evening, I have given you 
 a glimpse of a system such as Mr. George tells 
 us would cure all of the ills of society and 
 wipe out the distinction between plutocrats and 
 proletarians. It would wipe out pretty much 
 everything that an American working man 
 holds dear. Wouldn't it? Does it cure all the 
 ills of the poor in Russia? Do the poor never 
 find fault with the government there? Russia 
 is the very center of Nihilism to-day. In no 
 other country on earth are the foes of organ- 
 ized society so bitter, so determined or so rad- 
 ical in their schemes. It is in Russia that the 
 ruler of the empire is obliged to shut himself 
 up within the walls of his palace and guard 
 every door with double ranks of soldiers for 
 fear of his life. "But," you say, "the Czar is 
 a despot; our ruler is not." I answer, "None 
 but an absolute despot could ever rule over a 
 country where a system of land-tenure like that 
 of Russia prevails. Pass a law in any country 
 that the government shall henceforth own the 
 land and you thereby make a despot of the 
 ruler of that land. Nothing but the heart of 
 an angel would keep him from the deeds of a 
 tyrant, for his position would carry with it ty-
 
 130 t:ALKS on the labor TRv)lJBLES. 
 
 rannical power. Nor would it help the matter 
 if the government should be administered by a 
 board of "bureau-chiefs." The history of 
 Athens under the rule of The Thirty Tyrants, 
 and of France under the Directory, shows only 
 too well that many rulers may concentrate 
 their purposes into one purpose of despotic 
 power. 
 
 The cure for existing troubles will call for 
 great wisdom. No one living may be wise 
 enough to say just how that cure will be 
 wrought — by what plan. But one thing we 
 may be perfectly certain of. It will not come 
 by changing the government of this country 
 into a land-owning despotism like that of Rus- 
 sia. 
 
 There are a great many people in this country 
 who prefer America to Russia. If Mr. George 
 does not he might manage a colonizing scheme 
 for those who prefer the Russian plan. He 
 will wait a great while before he succeeds in 
 making another Russia out of this free country. 
 We are not yet ready to part with that grand 
 national anthem; nor with the facts which make 
 it dear: 
 
 "My Country 'tis of thee, 
 Sweet land of liberty, 
 
 Of thee I sing. 
 Land where my father died!
 
 MIND AND MUSCLE 131 
 
 Land of the Pilgrim's pride! 
 From every mountain side 
 Let freedom ring! 
 
 "My native country, thee, 
 Land of the noble free, 
 
 Thy name I love. 
 1 love thy rocks and rills, 
 Thy w^oods and templed hills, 
 My heart with rapture thrills, 
 Like that above. 
 
 "Our Father's God, to thee, 
 Author of liberty. 
 To thee we sing. 
 Long may our land be bright 
 With Freedom's holy light 
 Protect us by thy might, 
 Great God, our King!"
 
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 ble, small amounts may be sent in postage stamps. 
 
 A CLASSIFIED LIST OF 
 
 BOOKS OF PRACTICAL WORTH 
 
 SELECTED FROM THE CATALOGUE 
 
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 Fleming H. Revell, 
 
 Publisher of Evangelical Literature, 
 
 148 AND 150 MADISON ST, CHICAGO, 
 
 Special Terms are offered on many of our publications when used 
 in Quantities for gratuitous circulation. 
 
 HELPS IN BIBLE STUDY. 
 
 Notes and Suggestions for Bible Readings. Twenty-first 
 thousand. Compiled by S. R. Briggs and J. H. Elliott. Large 
 i2mo, 262 pages, with complete index, cloth, fine, $1.00; flexible 
 cloth, traveler's edition, 75 cents ; cheap edition, paper covers, 
 50 cents. 
 
 Acknowledged to be the very best help for Bible readings in 
 print. Containing, in addition to twelve introductory chapters on 
 plans and methods of Bible study and Bible Readings, over six 
 hundred outlines of Bible readings by many of the most eminent 
 Bible students of the day. 
 
 This is a book which every Bible student should possess. Those 
 who conduct Bible readings wUl And it most suggestive.— C7iJ'istiaji 
 Profjrcss. 
 
 Symbols and Systems in Bible Readings. By Rev. W. F. 
 
 Crafts. 64 pp., 25 cents. 
 
 Giving a plan of Bible reading, with fifty verses definitely as- 
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 the order of its events. The entire symbolism of the Bible also 
 explained concisely and clearly. 100 hints upon Bible markings 
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 A year of work upon sueh a system would yield rich harvests of 
 Bible knowledge and spiritual experience.— SujKZay School World. 
 
 CHICAGO. F. II. REVELL, U8 dk 150 MADISON ST
 
 HELPS IN BIBLE STUDY. 
 
 The True Tabernacle. A series of lectures on the Jewish Taber- 
 nacle and its typical signification. By George C. Needham ; 
 illustrated, cloth, neat, 75 cents. 
 
 C> H. M's Notes. By C. H. McIntosh. Genesis, 75 cents ; Exo- 
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 The notes breathe a very sweet and reverential spirit, and the 
 author shows wonderful insight into tlie heart of truth.— Evangelist. 
 
 Mr. D. L. Moody says of these books : They have been to me a 
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 Major D. W. Whittle says: Under God they have blessed me more 
 than any books, outside of the Bible itself, that I have ever read, 
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 Life and Times of David, King of Israel; or. The Life of 
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 This work is specially commended as a most striking unfolding of 
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 No preacher or teacher should be ignorant of the truth which this 
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 Outline of tlie Booths of the Bible. By Rev. J. H. Brookes, 
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 Ruth, the Nloabitess; or, Gleanings in the Book of Ruth. By 
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 Contains many fresh and original remarks, all tending to practical 
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 Bible Readings. By Henry Moorehouse. A series of eleven ser- 
 mons of comment and exposition, by one pre-eminently the man 
 of one book — an incessant, intense, powerful student of the Bible. 
 Neat i6mo, paper covers, 30 cents; cloth, gilt stamped, 60 cents. 
 
 The Date of Our Gospels. A critical argument and examination 
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 The argument is winnowed of superfluous words, and presents a 
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 CHICAGO: F. H. BEVELL, 148 d; 150 MADISON ST. 
 %
 
 HELPS IN BI3LE STUDY. 
 
 Current Discussions in Tlieology. By the Professors of Chicago 
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 II, 328 pp., cloth, $1.50, Vol. Ill, 360 pp., $1.50. 
 
 There is nothing in our language of this liind. The American 
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 present position and recent movements of theology.— T/ie Independ- 
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 It may be safely said that from no one book in the English lan- 
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 A New Catechism. By Rev. J. T. Hyde. A manual of instruction 
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 needlessly diffuse, and it is written in a style suitable for the reading 
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 Practical and helpful, just the thing to put into the hands of the 
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 This work is in ti-uth a '^Multum in Parvo," containing within small 
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 Clifton Springs Bible Readings. Containing the Bible Reading, 
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 Grace and Truth Under Twelve Different Aspects. By W. 
 
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 Full of earnest enthusiasm which characterizes everything Mr. 
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 Daniel, the Prophet. An amplification and extension of Mr. Moody's 
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 A small book, but big as regards the ti-uth it contains. Every 
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 Birth-Day Memorial Text-Book. A handsome little volume with 
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 The Practice of the Presence of Cod. By "Brother Law- 
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 Envelope Series of Tracts. By H. W. S., from "The Christian's 
 Secret of a Happy Life," comprising the following: 
 How to Enter into the Life. Faith: What it is. 
 
 Dithculties Concerning Consecration. Is God in Everything? 
 Difficulties Concerning Guidance. The Joy of Obedience, 
 
 Difficulties Concerning Faith. Practical Results. 
 
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 Words of Worth, from the Chicago Christian Convention. A verba- 
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 Gems from Northfield. A Record of the best thoughts exchanged 
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 Christians of every name gathered about him; and ministers with 
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 Second Coming of Christ. By George Muller, of Bristol, Eng. 
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 Works of D. L. Moody. 
 
 Prevailing Prayer; What Hinders It. Paper covers, 30 cents, 
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 An earnest and solemn work, full of helpful hints on the aids 
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 To The Work! To The Work! A Trumpet Call. Exhortations 
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