Labor is sure to be imposed upon just as much as the laboring class will endure the imposition. The poorer the man the more necessary is it that he shall work in order to live. This being so, he is sure sooner or later to encounter somebody who will take advantage of him. No man need be a scoundrel in order to drive a sharp bargain if he gets the chance. To drive a sharp bargain is something that all of us rather pride ourselves upon. Probably the laboring man would do it himself if he got the opportunity. Nevertheless, the purpose and aim of the laboring man should be to be so “fixed” that no one can catch him at a disadvantage.
Labor—that is, organized labor, must be in ceaseless conflict with the spirit of competition that prevails among employers. In every manufacturing industry that admits of competition, all the way from making door-mats to building houses and railroads, men try by underbidding one another to get business. The energy of a new country is always in excess of its capital and also of its demand. This is very encouraging so far as the outlook for energy goes, but it does work a great many wrongs and unpleasantnesses. In business it does not take long to reach bedrock as to cost of raw material. After that, the strain of competition must come entirely upon labor, and, if labor does not resist, it must starve.
Consequently the workingman must fight, and fight continually, to keep from being reduced to slavery in one form or other. The word slavery has a dreadful sound, but there are ways of muffling it so that the slave himself does not always see himself in a true light.
It is only a short time ago that New England was thrown into a fervor of patriotic indignation by the spectacle presented in one town of a native bringing a laborer in chains to the market-place to be sold. The owner regarded himself as entirely in the right, and explained his position very distinctly. He had obtained his vassal on a contract that a certain amount of labor would be given for a specified sum of money. The sum was small; nevertheless it was paid and accepted, and the man afterward imagined that he could escape from the terms of his contract. Consequently the employer, or purchaser, as he seemed to consider himself, put chains upon the fellow, and as literally brought him for sale as any slave was ever offered in any slave-mart in the world. The beholders rose in their wrath, dragged both men before the court, the slave was freed and the owner was fined.
But the point is here: this was simply a case
in which the slave-dealer, taking advantage of an ignorant, unthinking man, was found out. How many thousands of similar cases exist in the United States at the present time of which the public know nothing? All newspaper men at the principal sea-ports know that people come to this country by the thousand on contracts to do a certain amount of labor for specified prices. The prices may be below the cost of living, nevertheless the contracts hold good in all courts of law, and the men are obliged to do their duty. We are sorry for them, but, according to the practice of all countries, man seems to be made for the law and not the law for man.