fact in some lines of business is the general combination of proprietors on the one hand, and of laborers on the other, in associations for mutual protection. Nothing at first view would seem more proper; for all employers have a common interest in the prosperity of the business, as all laborers have likewise, and what injuriously affects one may prejudice all. But the evil lurks in the aim and purpose of the combinations; for instead of a common purpose pervading all, the employer is found organized for protection against the laborer, and the laborer against the employer. It is the old fable of the belly and the members realized; but in this case both belly and members are in rebellion against coöperation, and, as a necessary result, both are suffering. The several organizations are likely to have the governing machinery of a little commonwealth; and the legislative and administrative tribunals of each are working at crosspurposes, with a view to circumvent each other. Laborers believe their union a necessity, and the sole means whereby they can prevent their subsistence being at the mercy of employers. Employers look upon their own combination as necessary to secure to them the control of their own business. Thus they stand to each other in hostile attitude, and behind walls of defense. Each is right, in a measure; but the wrong in their strife is more conspicuous than the right, and the evils more certain than the advantages. The defensive organization invites attack. No walled city was ever yet secure behind its battlements; security only came when the good-will of its neighbors permitted its walls to be leveled to the ground. Strikes and lock-outs inevitably bring loss and misery; the strife often becoming a trial of endurance that may bankrupt the employer, while it pauperizes the employed. Nor are these the sole evils; sometimes they are not even the chief. All those classes that are accustomed to prey upon labor-the agitator, the demagogue, the grog-seller, the shyster-make labor troubles their harvest-time, and do what they can to aggravate them, that they may extend the opportunity for making the workmen their spoil. The employer becomes bitter in proportion as he sees his anticipated profits becoming impossible; the laborer is bitter in proportion as he feels himself at a disadvantage; the controversy breeds a lawless spirit, and tends to criminal organizations; it finds its way into politics and into the jury-box; and we are compelled to believe that men sometimes disregard the

obligations of duty, as well as solemn oaths, that they may inflict punishment on those they look upon as extortionate capitalists and hard-hearted masters. The legislation of the state comes to be suspected; one party believing that laws that may or may not be proper in themselves are adopted to win the favor of a rabble, and the other suspecting that corruption controls; until a high-minded and honorable man turns his back upon legislative halls, and refuses to expose his reputation by entering them as a member. These are very serious evils, and they affect the state at large and all classes of the community. We are all concerned, therefore, in establishing a better state of things, if that be possible. The state has ample power to interfere by law, but probably no interference would be beneficial that went beyond the mere preservation of public order. Employers and laborers alike would resent any further interference as an unwarrantable meddling with private concerns. The employer especially would insist on his right to control his business in his own way; to go on or to stop, as his interest seemed to require; to make his own contracts, and to resist contracts being forced upon him. In all this he would be standing upon principles of general acceptance; and the state must respect his rights, because they are rights that belong to us all, and are fundamental. But when a strict insistence upon legal rights leaves the troublesome and dangerous contentions in full vigor, the parties concerned may well be invited to consider whether remedies consistent with justice are not within the compass of mutual concessions.

It is a common remark that the chief difficulty in labor troubles is, that laborers refuse to recognize their own interest, and that they put themselves into the hands of those who make use of them for mercenary purposes of their own. If they would act reasonably, we are told, if they would recognize the laws of political economy, against which it is folly to object, we should not see large bodies of men wasting their time in strikes, and giving their money to support in idleness those who organize disorder. This is doubtless true; the laboring classes are greatly in need of a better understanding of the principles of business as well as of government. There are men among them who, like the Nihilists of Russia, are ready to be indiscriminate destructives. In any country this would be an ominous fact; in a free country it is especially alarming, for the man with

nothing, but who is in sympathy with large classes of discontented people, may be a greater power in the state than the man with large possessions. And when discontent rules, it is possessions that are chiefly in danger.

But the laboring classes are not all who need further enlightenment upon the difficult problems that concern the relations of labor and capital. Hitherto, in dealing with those problems, employers have taken high ground, and have generally been able to maintain it. But in the long run it matters little which party has the temporary success, if the conditions from which the difficulties spring must still continue. A victory is in general a disaster unless it has some tendency to bring about peace; but peace between employer and laborer can never be based upon the triumph of one over the other; it must come from general content. If a man says, "My business is my own, to be managed as I please," we must assent that this is his legal right. But there is a sense in which the business cannot be exclusively his own; and any one who thoughtfully regards all sides of the problems that concern him will not overlook this. While any particular establishment belongs to the proprietors, yet so long as labor and capital are equally essential, any particular business, considered in the aggregate, is as much that of those who bring to it the labor as of those who furnish the money. If laborers withdraw from it, it comes to an end as certainly as when the proprietor closes his doors. That the proprietor has a legal right to close his doors at discretion, regardless of the effect upon the interest of others, must be admitted. But moral obligations are sometimes so imperative that no legal sanction can possibly make them more so. The obligation of the employer to assume some responsibility for the well-being of those who perform the labor from which he expects his profits, ought to be classed in this category. They and their families are in so large a degree dependent upon him, that their condition appeals specially to his humane impulses, and ought to be sufficient security against hasty, passionate, or capricious action to their injury. But as his interests and theirs are to a considerable extent identical, the claims of humanity are supplemented by selfish reasons.

It is a short-sighted view that we take of our relations to our fellows when we say, "If they will be foolish, they must take the consequences of their folly." The vessel to which their

fortunes are committed bears ours also; we are united with them in the management, and are necessarily, as members of the same political society, linked to the same destiny. If folly on their part would injuriously affect them, it concerns us to prevent it if we can; and if the folly is committed, then to guard as much as possible against the injurious consequences. The experiment we are making in self-government is to some extent involved in every unnecessary controversy that springs up to embitter the relations of classes in the civil state; and we neither get rid of the attendant dangers nor to any extent diminish them by turning our backs and refusing to consider the causes from which they spring. It is a momentous fact when a great body of laborers throw down the tools of their business, even though it be done under an entirely mistaken view of their rights or wrongs or interests; and, willingly or unwillingly, we must share the consequences of their mistake or their folly. That they are foolish, instead of being an excuse for turning away from them, ought rather to remind us of a duty to aid them. A foolish man must be expected to do foolish things; nothing but curing the folly will prevent it. But the folly itself is likely to be a consequence of unavoidable conditions.

Labor, the world over, has always in different degrees been the servant of capital; and generally, when not enslaved by law, the remuneration has been so slight that accumulations were nearly impossible. Any untoward circumstance might then reduce the laborer to destitution; and if destitute he might better be slave than free, for the slave must be supported by the master, when the free laborer might be left to starve. Circumstances have made America the paradise of the laborer; but at present there is plenty of real destitution, and probably still more that is simulated for purposes of beggary or crime. But when appeal is made to our charity on behalf of classes apparently destitute, whether we respond or refuse, we may wisely reflect that the appeal is for those who, whether deserving or not, are joint rulers with us of this magnificent and wealthy country. Hitherto the joint rule has been beneficent; but to insure its continuing so, it is needful to take all possible precautions against foolish and disquieting actions. Persons who are both idle and needy may be thinking dangerous thoughts as well as foolish thoughts; but their folly is of itself a danger. A body of strikers may be taught by destitution the folly of their course, but destitution is

not likely to impress their minds with the conviction that the business is exclusively that of their employers. On the contrary, poverty and want, coming upon them from the stoppage of wages, are severe and constant reminders of their personal interest; and it is inevitable that they should suffer under a sense of wrong if they and their families cease to receive the means of subsistence from the business, for reasons the justice of which is not apparent to them. And what they may be thinking under a sense of wrong concerns us all; for the evolution of law is from below, and the rule that finally prevails is worked out by the gradual operation of mind upon mind. And when the right-thinkers and the wrong-thinkers are all busy propagating their ideas and their theories, their influence respectively will depend largely upon the state of mind of those they address. With a discontented people, the wrong-thinkers are certain to be most influential, and they may therefore come to have the making of our laws. The importance of preventing any considerable discontent is obvious; and it ought to be equally obvious that the best security for capital is in cordial relations between those who possess it and those whose labor gives it satisfactory employment, and that the best protection for a state is in steadfast and remunerative industry. A condition of organized antagonism in any particular business is prima facie one of mutual folly; much as would be the antagonism of men to women as classes, of parents to children, of street to street in a city.' Its existence is evidence that a wrong exists for which some one should find a remedy; and if one party is superior to the other in intelligence, it is upon that party that the duty to search for a remedy is specially incumbent.

It is sometimes our boast that in this country we have given to our possessions a protection that is found nowhere else; for the Government itself, even in the greatest emergencies, cannot impair the obligation of contracts, or take from the most humble citizen his property. But as the benefit of this protection is reaped by those who have possessions, the Constitution itself may come to be regarded by considerable classes as an instrument whose office is to protect the rich in the advantages they have secured over the poor, and one that should be hated for that reason. Mr. Gladstone, with the power of Parliament behind him, when landholdings are oppressive, forces better terms from the landlords; and it is not difficult to make classes that