“Less than half a century ago the people of the United States were comparatively poor and the wealth of the country distributed with a near approach to equality, less than a dozen individuals having fortunes approaching the million mark. The laws had been made for the existing conditions of labor, and were, as a whole, of a satisfactory character. No one had yet dreamed of the marvelous inventions and discoveries of natural wealth which were to upset all the conditions of production, and make the succeeding fifty years a wealth-giving period, unprecedented in the history of the world. Anthracite and bituminous coals, petroleum, the cotton gin, the reaper, steam and electricity, with their thousand marvels, were suddenly emptied upon a community whose laws had been made for conditions the very opposite of those now existing.
“It is not to be wondered at that the American mind should seize upon the possibilities which old laws gave to individuals for grabbing these newfound treasures. They would have been more than human if they could have resisted the temptation, and besides, it must be recollected that the Christianity practised was of a perfunctory character, formal and nominal rather than real, and civilization just beyond the period of wild beast skin wearing. In fifty years the creation of wealth has become prodigious; the distribution of wealth has become frightful in its inequalities. The laws, which were beneficent for an agricultural and pastoral people, worked degradation and infamy in a manufacturing community. They permitted the few to grab the greater part of this new wealth. With great fortunes are coming upon the scene an unparalleled luxury upon the one hand, and a poverty upon the other, scarcely surpassed in the days when production did not equal one-tenth the present output. In the strife for wealth the law-making power was found to be a useful auxiliary. Judges were bought, senatorships were sold in the interests of railways and the great corporations; and within the last ten years we find wealth—not contented with the advantages which the laws, confessedly in its favor, give it—hiring private armies to give force to edicts allotting to the laborer a lesser share of the product.”
Experience and observation force the conviction upon our minds, that Mr. Walker is correct in his assumption that even the ministers believe that the distribution of wealth among the masses is not only legal, but fair, and authorized by the teachings of the Gospel. A little strange, however, is it for the teachers of the doctrine of Christianity to maintain principles so utterly at variance with those expressed by their divine Master: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.”
“There is only one class to dispute this proposition. They are the toilers, whose labor is the immediate cause of the production of our wealth. We may say that there must be intelligence to direct, and that to the intelligence which takes advantage should come the gains. But Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Frick are proofs that in the ranks of labor itself there is intelligence to direct. Many Carnegies and many Fricks would spring up to-morrow if opportunity permitted. If one would study the justice of a system of political economy, let him surrender his vested rights of property and take his place among those whom the system crushes, whose labor it devours, and whose reward for labor is a bare, joyless existence. We who have the money can reason speciously regarding the justice of our laws, the excellence of our system of government. The laboring man can only groan in spirit. He has not hitherto had the power of his vote, notwithstanding our boasted representative government, because his brothers, in the agony which poverty brings, in their effort to relieve the hand-to-mouth miseries of their existence, have sold at each election this birthright for the merest taste of pottage.”
Fortunately, under the Australian system of voting, it was impracticable to buy Esau’s birthright with a delusive mess of pottage held out by the protected, wealth-accumulating, sham aristocrats.
“Everyone knows that this has been true, that the labor vote has never been a unit, that its purchasability has been one of the well-understood factors in ward politics, that there has been no combination, no united effort, no intelligent direction, no willingness to submit to leadership, and that there is to-day no probability of the vote of these people being cast at an early election for the objects in which they are so deeply concerned. The issues that are before the public in either of the great political parties for whose candidates the votes will be cast, are very largely those which concern the people of means and influence. Platforms are dictated with reference to Wall street, and the great corporations and the rich men who supply the sinews of political war.”
Fortunately, Mr. Walker’s prophecy has proved incorrect. There was a time in the very near future when the objects so sacred to them would outweigh any possible advantage that might accrue to their pocketbooks by voting with those who would impose the yoke of a class distinction upon our country. It was nearer the day of retribution than even Mr. Walker, farseeing as he has demonstrated himself to be, supposed. The 8th of November was to witness the vindication upon the part of the workman of his inherent right to exercise his prerogative as an American citizen, uninfluenced by mercenary motives. Almost without an error has Mr. Walker gauged the public feeling. It is pardonable, in one who is so much nearer right than the majority, to make one single error. None of us appreciated how full were the hearts of the workingmen, the poor, and those oppressed by wealth and stung by an attempted exhibition of the privileges accorded to “caste.”
“Nevertheless, there is a ground-current steadily moving across the continent. Workmen, who were wholly ignorant thirty years ago, are partly educated to-day. Within fifteen years, a highly-intelligent class has sprung up among the workmen themselves, and there are a few really able men who have been making efforts for their advancement. That man Powderly, for instance, is a statesman of a high order. He has capacity for organization, he has singleness of purpose, he has determination, and he has courage. And he is only one of a number. They have been educating their followers, and teaching them to unite upon certain simple propositions. It is like the fencing-master, who puts in the hands of his pupil the single-stick, before he confides to him the glittering rapier. There is talent enough among them to organize a movement more formidable than that of Spartacus. Thank God, they are men who love the Republic, and who hope for the elevation of their people through the evolution of the law.”
Mr. Walker could have gone on and called the attention of the wealthy to the fact that, while these men loved the Republic, they did not love the foreign spirit that pervaded the would-be upper classes. It is well that a man of Mr. Walker’s position should feel it incumbent upon him to compliment, or, more properly speaking, to duly appreciate, a man like Powderly. Mr. Powderly, were he not a statesman and a patriot, is possessed of dangerous powers; were it not for the great amount of virtue, honesty, and common-sense that resides in the bosoms of the masses, some dangerous, daring, and magnetic leader might spring into prominence and cause the overturning which Mr. Walker so ably depicts later in his article. Mr. Powderly, and men of his kind, have ever acted as the governing-power on this tremendous engine, called Labor, in this country. They have exhibited a degree of conservatism and consideration for the rights of the wealthy, as well as the rights of the laborer, which entitles them to the respect of all sound-minded Americans.
“Two things must always be borne in mind: First, that the laboring men have the majority, if they choose to exercise it, not only of votes, but of physical strength. Intelligence and cunning were, once upon a time, factors upon which the few rich could count to keep in subjection the many poor. The time is rapidly approaching when these will no longer avail. There is a prevailing thought that this must be a Republic, indeed, where all men shall be equal before the law; where the law will carefully guard the industrious man against the greedy man; where cunning will not place labor at the greatest of disadvantages; where labor will become honorable, and idleness contemptible; where effort will be expected from every citizen in the direction of his best talent, and where the needs of the unfortunate, through disease or inheritance, will be respected; in a word, the model government in which a near approach to the ideal Republic will be attained, an example set which the countries of Europe may well imitate. We have the opportunities here, with our rich territory, our great natural resources, and our population yet uncrowded, to do this. If we fail, the idea of a Republic may well be abandoned for the next 2,000 years.”
Forcefully is it called to the minds of the fortunate possessors of wealth, by Mr. Walker, that the poor are in possession of a superior physical force. It would be well for those who enjoy the protection accorded to them and their property by this vast population, made up largely of the laboring classes, to consider what a small percentage the “wealthy” represent in the mass of 65,000,000 people. Their pronounced minority becomes apparent whenever they oppose the will of that great majority, the “Common People.” Should it ever be necessary to arbitrate any question of difference by physical force, how absolutely unequal are the contending elements! Men like Mr. Powderly have ever sought to cast oil upon the turbulent waters occasioned by too much arrogance upon the part of the wealthy. It is not only equality before the law which the poor man prizes, but that equality which is rather of a sentimental than a legal nature. He recognizes no inequality as existing between the woman whom he honors as his wife and the woman whom men like Messrs. Carnegie and Frick may clothe in seal-skins and laces, and bedeck with jewels. It is not only before the law that the poor man desires to be equal. The sentimental portion of his nature is moved to create a difference, socially, resting only upon those natural inherent qualities, worth, merit, and virtue, and not that which has its foundation in the possession of wealth alone.