No. 0.
A. IMCTUKE AND A TIIOUOHT.
407
livelihood in any other way. The employ
cr should bo in a certain seusc the father
of all his employes. lie holds a power
in his hands and has the right to wield it
justly. He should make the interests of
his employes his own interests, and pay
them as liberally as his own circumstan
ces and their services will permit. The
employe, on the other hand, should con
sidcr the interests of the employer as af
feeling his own, and should endeavor to
advance them as he would his own a Hairs.
The employe cannot justly complain
because his employer receives his hun
dreds in a day while he can earn only his
dollar, nor yet because his master lives in
a manison while he lives in a cot. All
men cannot live in palaces like Dives and
fair sumptuously every day, for agricult
ure, art and science will not support such
wide-spread luxury. Some men must be
contented with a little, if others are to
have abundance. Neither do I believe,
as some pseudo-philosophers have main
tained as a matter of justice, that prop
erty should be more equalized than it is
now. If property were equalized, some
branches of business would suffer for
want of a sufficiently centralized money
power. In feudal times a community
without a chief would have been short
lived, because power by becoming scat
tered would have become ineffective.
The same is true io a certain extent to
da. A dozen men might perhaps do bus
iness with the same capital as one man,
but the effect would be about the same as
though a dozen commanders-in-chief
were at the head of an army, while, the
employes of the dozen men would be less
carefully looked after than as though they
were in the employ of one man.
So I think that the relation between
labor and capita is just about as it can be,
if it is not always just as it thould be, and
like society itself, it must be self adjusting
and can be brought under rules and reg
ulations only in a limited degree.
But there is a tendency among Amer
ican people to cry equality of wealth aud
social position, as well as equality of
rights and privileges. We have said so
often that "all men are created equal"
that we begin to half believe the bombas
tic assertion, and to live up to the doctrine.
The employe too often thinks himself
on an equality with his employer, and
would dictate his terms rather than be dic
tated to. "We have seen this increasing
tendency illustrated on a large scale in
the late strikes of railroad employes
and other working men. It is nonsense
to suppose that all men are created
equal, either intellectually or soci
ally, and that feeliug of independence
so characteristic of the American, like
the liberty and free constitutions which
he enjoys, has its serious disadvantages
as well as its advantages. It greatly in
jnres that sort of family feeling which
unites master and servant in countries
where wealth and power arc centralized
and kept intact by the right of primogen
iture. In this country the motto for ac
lion is, " Every man must look out lor
himself." Whether poor man, sick man
or beggar, he must earn his daily bread or
starve, as there is no proprieter for whom
his father and his grand-father before him
have labored, to look after him with any
soi t of paternal care. The man of bus
iness bustles past him with his head erect,
as much as to say " I've made 1113' mark in
the world by my own efforts, go thou and
do likewise," and is rather disposed to
sneer at the man in straightened circum
stances than to pity or help him. What
is the result of such a feeling in society?
It is just this: Our men of wealth aud
position become selfish and between them
and their employes there springs up a
sort of antagonism. The one class want
all the work they can uet out of men for
the least amount of money, and the other
class want all the money they can get
for the least amount of work. The man
who is unfortunate, must, like everybody
else, look out for himself, and, as Shake
speare says:
" If he full hi. good night, or fink or swim."
UlllKL.