THE LABOR QUESTION.
Question. What is your remedy, Colonel, for the labor troubles of the day?
Answer. One remedy is this: I should like to see the laboring men succeed. I should like to see them have a majority in Congress and with a President of their own. I should like to see this so that they could satisfy themselves how little, after all, can be accomplished by legislation. The moment responsibility should touch their shoulders they would become conservative. They would find that making a living in this world is an individual affair, and that each man must look out for himself. They would soon find that the Government cannot take care of the people. The people must support the Government. Everything cannot be regulated by law. The factors entering into this problem are substantially infinite and beyond the intellectual grasp of any human being. Perhaps nothing in the world will convince the laboring man how little can be accomplished by law until there is opportunity of trying. To discuss the question will do good, so I am in favor of its discussion. To give the workingmen a trial will do good, so I am in favor of giving them a trial.
Question. But you have not answered my question: I asked you what could be done, and you have told me what could not be done. Now, is there not some better organization of society that will help in this trouble?
Answer. Undoubtedly. Unless humanity is a failure, society will improve from year to year and from age to age. There will be, as the years go by, less want, less injustice, and the gifts of nature will be more equally divided, but there will never come a time when the weak can do as much as the strong, or when the mentally weak can accomplish as much as the intellectually strong. There will forever be inequality in society; but, in my judgment, the time will come when an honest, industrious person need not want. In my judgment, that will come, not through governmental control, not through governmental slavery, not through what is called Socialism, but through liberty and through individuality. I can conceive of no greater slavery than to have everything done by the Government. I want free scope given to individual effort. In time some things that governments have done will be removed. The creation of a nobility, the giving of vast rights to corporations, and the bestowment of privileges on the few will be done away with. In other words, governmental interference will cease and man will be left more to himself. The future will not do away with want by charity, which generally creates more want than it alleviates, but by justice and intelligence. Shakespeare says, "There is no darkness but ignorance," and it might be added that ignorance is the mother of most suffering.
—The Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 30, 1886.