factor. Such a sum would, in its successful use, provide for many households.
The temper which goes with sanguine and unscrupulous methods is a careless, and often a cruel, one. The democratic notion of equality is overridden, is pushed aside as of no significance in the business world. The same persons who insist on an open shop, and give free play to competition when it depresses labor, regarding it as a familiar and convenient principle in determining wages, may combine with each other to control products and enhance profits. The general welfare, which is the controlling idea, is lost sight of or readily forgotten. They have one standard when they look out on the community at large, and another standard when they are preparing the way to make and hold fast their own gains. The directors of business come easily to think that the welfare of the community is identical with their own welfare, and that the enterprise with which they sustain their own affairs is identical with that on which the public prosperity depends. They readily come to the conclusion that their activity, so essential to the community, should be cherished by the community. How possibly can production progress without them. Discrimination in their favor is a short cut to the common prosperity. Men of comfortable means and the poor even owe what they have to the enterprise which scatters wealth everywhere. There is sufficient truth in this feeling, when not too boldly put, to hide its failures. The expenditures of the very rich in the purchases and exchanges they involve do carry a measure of advantage to all, but they also bear with them an unjust distribution, a luxury and a poverty, which weaken the unity and sap the strength of society. It is the very gist of democracy that each man shall count one; that in spite of the diversities and the advantages among men they shall still remain units of the same value in the freedom and propagating power by which the gains of the race are stored. It is
neither identity nor arbitrary difference that is admissible, but every man and every class of men carry with them the potentialities, the social and spiritual possibilities, which are the germs of historic development. This is the principle with which all petty social distinctions and all civic tyrannies have been at war.
While, therefore, the evil of monopolies may appear in various forms and be met in different ways, they cannot be permanently removed except by social conditions which equalize opportunities and compel wealth and power, in all their activity, to conform to general safety. Production in all its forms and in all its agents must be subject to that temper of fairness, and come under those principles of equal rights, which bind the parts of the community together, and make them one producing and one enjoying agency. Every assertion of settled superiority in persons, classes and races must be set aside, and the world in its physical, intellectual and spiritual wealth be left open to all. Thus history has treated men, and is more and more treating them, in their claims to consideration. This birthright of men is not to be denied or stolen; for they who steal it have nothing more than this same birthright to plead in extenuation, the combinations which look to the defense and extension of these original gifts are in order, and all combinations which carry them beyond the bounds of their own territory are another outbreak of anarchy.
The soundness of this assertion has been recently exemplified in the history of Pittsburg. Pittsburg is the center of an industry which has come, perhaps more than any other, under the domination of a few leading men. In the Homestead strike they succeeded in dealing a heavy blow to workmen in their efforts to secure something like a fair hold on production. A little inquiry into a community built up for a few and ordered by them discloses conditions quite at war with general well-being. Wages are kept down by the constant presence of the unemployed:
the accidents of a dangerous occupation are left to fall upon workmen; the health of the community suffers great neglect, the remonstrances of workmen are met with the response, If they do not like the method let them quit; and the general good order and comfort of citizens receive but little attention. Here is an object lesson in which work, sure, skilful and unflinching; wealth, eager, unscrupulous and unsympathetic, have divided the world between them; no right gained, no power lost. Men may make wealth under these conditions, withdrawing it from the fitting returns of labor, but they cannot, wise as they may be or generous as they may seem to be, restore that wealth to the community in a form in which it will subserve the same living purpose it might have subserved if it had never been withdrawn. The life of a community is achieved where its activity is most intense and constant. Failing in our service at these vital centers, no extraneous effort will cover our fault. We might as well draw sap from a tree and then pour it out on its roots.
We have now given three constitutional remedies for the want of employment. The first is a more equal distribution of the rewards of production, thus making the demand for products as extended and uniform as their production. The second is increased restraints, especially in connection with corporations, in the action of the leaders of industry, rendering them more amenable to the wants of the community to which they belong. The third, arising from the other two and supporting them, is more unity, more harmony between the several agents of production.
There was a report not long since in England of an industrial commission, which had given protracted attention to the irregular demand for labor. The remedies offered were chiefly palliative. It may be thought that this form of cure is all within our reach; that what is here offered as constitutional correctives are beyond our power.
There is some truth in the feeling, and would be much truth in it, were not the actions and the sentiments now enforced under urgent consideration for reasons of public welfare, not directly involved in unemployment. We cannot expect to remove so grave an evil as this, the wavering demand for labor, short of some important change in the organization of society. Society is a structure of so many and such delicate dependencies that its perfect action must include the general integrity of the current relations between men. Unwholesome results of frequent recurrence are the most direct proof of an unsound system. Palliatives may soften the evil but cannot overcome it. We should aim immediately to reduce the difficulty and ultimately to remove its causes.