to their principles, made in a less material age than the present, before the modern burgher civilization was fairly inaugurated; but their application to the mechanic arts, to production and transportation, whether by sea or land, has been made since, and chiefly within the last one hundred years. The introduction of labor-saving machinery has, to an extent not easily estimated, superseded human labor, broken up the small domestic industries, as carding, spinning, and weaving, carried on in the bosom of the family, and securing it a modest independence, and small farming, carried on chiefly by the father and his sons, and built up in their place large industries and large farming, beyond the reach of people of no means or small means but their labor, and in which human labor is employed only in the form of labor at wages. The introduction of machinery, or the working of mills or farms by machinery driven by steam or by horse-power, requires capital, or an outlay possible only to large capital or combinations of small capital. Take, for instance, the steam carder, spinner, and weaver; the mule, jenny, and power-loom; the patent mower, reaper, and horse-rake; threshing and winnowing machines—hardly any of them heard of or only beginning to be heard of in our own boyhood, at least in this country; take the railway and the locomotive—and you can easily see that modern industry, and in a measure even agriculture, fall necessarily into the hands of large capitalists, individual or corporate, and cannot be prosecuted on a small scale, at least profitably. We have corporations for condensing milk and making butter and cheese, regardless of our youthful friend the dairymaid, and for supplying us with ice. Perhaps nothing has tended so much to enlarge the inequality between
capital and labor as the introduction of labor-saving machinery in nearly all branches of industry.
We do not make war on labor-saving machinery, which, we have heard it said, increases the power of capital six hundred million fold, though that seems to us hardly credible. We could not now do well without it. We could not well dispense with our cotton and woollen factories, and go back to the hand-cards, and spinning-wheel, and hand-loom which, in our own boyhood, were in every farmer’s house; but we cannot forget that the independence of the laborer—now a laborer at wages, and obliged to make cash payments for what he consumes—has gone with them to the advantage of the capitalist. We could not well dispense with railways, and yet there is no denying that they are monopolies, that labor cannot compete with them, and that they impose a heavy tax on labor. They also tend to convert the independent laborer into a workman at wages, and the freeman into the slave of machinery, to enrich a few railway presidents and directors, and stock-jobbers. Then, those great corporations, without souls, are not only stronger than the laborer, but stronger than the government. No great feudal lords in France or England were ever more formidable to the crown than such corporations as the Pennsylvania Central, the New York Central, the Union Pacific, with our National Bank system, are to the government, state or general. Neither state legislatures nor Congress can control them, and they have already made both simply their factor or agent.
There is a truth which cannot be denied expressed in the following paragraph from Mr. Phillips’ lecture:
“Now, look at it. You say, why do you find fault with civilization? Tonight is a cold night, and you will go home to parlors and chambers warmed with the coal of Pennsylvania. Why don’t you have it here for $3 and $4 a ton? Why don’t you have it here at an advance of $1 or $2 over what it is sold for at the mouth of the pit? Because of the gigantic corporations and vast organizations of wealth. The capitalists gather three or four millions of tons in your city—sell it when they please, at such rates as they please, and the poor man struggling for his bread is the sufferer. A rich man is careful; he won’t put his foot in any further than allows of its being pulled back. If he heard a groan coming from the people at something he did, he would withdraw his investment, for nothing is more timid than wealth. But let that man take $100,000 or so and put it in with nine others, and make a capital of $1,000,000; then he is as bold as Julius Cæsar. He will starve out 13,000 coal miners. The London Spectator says that the colossal strength of Britain has reason to dread the jointure of $456,000,000 of railroad capital. How much more should America have reason to dread such combinations, when Britain has more than ten times our wealth!”
Yet is there not some compensation to the proletarian class in the very system which tends so fearfully to increase their numbers and dependence? Grant that coal might be delivered from the mines in Pennsylvania in this city at $3 a ton; but suppose there were no railroads and no railway monopolies, could or would coal from the same mines be delivered in this city as cheap as it now is? Suppose there were no railways between this city and the great West, would wheat, flour, beef, pork, and the other necessaries of life be cheaper for the laboring class in this city than they now are? Railway companies may charge exorbitant rates of freight, and yet the laboring classes get the chief necessaries of life cheaper than they
would, other things being equal or unchanged, without them. Those things might be cheaper in the localities where they are produced, but not elsewhere. The evil of these monopolies and corporations is not so much in the enhanced cost of living chargeable to them, as their multiplication of the class dependent on capital for employment; and in their power to shape the action of the government to their special interests. It is far better for the workman to depend on a single wealthy individual who is likely to have a soul than on a soulless corporation. The combination of capital in corporations for industrial or trading purposes founds an aristocracy, or ruling class, far more humiliating and crushing to the class below them than aristocracies founded on land and birth, education and manners.
This is the view taken by the Internationals. They war specially against the rule of the burgher class, which is now supreme in society, as formerly were the church, kings, and nobilities. In this opposition to the rule of the burgher class, supposing the means and methods of their warfare just and honorable, we confess we might sympathize with the Internationals, as we have always sympathized with the working-classes. We never have been able to get up much liking for an aristocracy based on Mammon, who, Milton tells us, was the meanest of all the angels that fell, and who, even in heaven, went about head down, and his eyes fixed on the gold of heaven’s pavement. It is well for no country when its ruling class are the moneyed or business class. Yet it would be difficult to say, as to our country at least, what class can be better trusted with the government, or what class has more virtue, more nobility of sentiment, chivalric feeling, nobler
aims, or higher purpose. Nothing better from the proletarian class could be expected, and, judging from the Paris Commune, nothing so good. The workingmen have all the love of money, all the sordid passions, low views, and degrading vices that can be charged to the burgher class, and, perhaps, fewer redeeming qualities. Civilization has descended to the burgher. What would it gain by descending to the proletary? But let us listen once more to Mr. Phillips:
“I think our civilization is better than anywhere in the world. Now, gentlemen, you say to me, What do you intend to do? Every man has a different theory, and I have no panacea. My theory is only this: I know that a wrong system exists, and that the only method in these states of turning the brains of the country on one side is to bring it into conflict, and organize a party. If I should ask one of your editors to-night to let me indite an article on labor and capital, very likely he would refuse me, or if he granted it, it might be because a fanatic like me would sell a copy or two. But if you will give me 50,000 votes on one side, and the balance impartially divided between your Fentons and Conklings and Seymours, I will show you every journal in the city of New York discussing the question with me. Labor is too poor to edit a column in a New York journal, but when it comes in the shape of votes, then those same journals cannot afford to disregard it. Now, let us organize it. The ultimate view which we aim at is co-operation, where there is no labor as such, and no capital as such—where every man is interested proportionately in the results. How will you reach it? Only by grappling with the present organizations of power in the nation. It is money that rivets the chains of labor. If I could, I would abolish every moneyed corporation in the thirty states. Yet I am not certain that that would be a wise measure, because it seems probable that the business of the nineteenth century can hardly be carried on without corporations; but if it be true that facility and cheapness of production are solely to be reached by