TEE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY 475 



better way to safeguard property than to give every man a fair start and 

 an even chance in life. No class can so ill afford to disregard the forms 

 of law as the owners of property. To throw labor agitators into jail or 

 to railroad them to the penitentiary on trumped up charges, to seize 

 their persons and deport them from the community by an unlawful 

 exercise of force, or to interfere unwarrantably in any way with their 

 freedom of speech, is undisguised anarchy. Those property owners who 

 make undue exactions, who entrench themselves in positions of privi- 

 lege, who use the state for their own aggrandizement and for the ex- 

 ploitation of the weak, or who stand out against much needed reforms, 

 are among the worst enemies of their class. 



The sooner employers abandon all pretensions to being a superior 

 class appointed by Providence to look after the interests of labor, the 

 better it will be for the property-owning class. 



The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, 

 not by labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wis- 

 dom has given control of the property of the country. 



These are the words of the leading spokesman of the coal operators 

 during the anthracite strike of 1902. They betray a feudalistic frame 

 of mind, and they did more to undermine the right of private property 

 than the numerous acts of violence committed by lawless strikers in the 

 coal fields. It is nothing less than amazing that so astute a business 

 man should have made so glaring a mistake. The divine right of prop- 

 erty to rule is no less objectionable than is the divine right of kings. It 

 ill becomes a spokesman of capital to uphold a monopoly in a necessary 

 of life while refusing to treat with a combination of labor, or to lay the 

 responsibility for his own mistakes at the door of Providence. The 

 industrial leadership of the country is in dire need of men of broad 

 intelligence and sympathy, men who are not blinded by class interest 

 and who have a due sense of social responsibility. 



Changes in our fundamental law can not be indefinitely postponed 

 by a difficult mode of amendment. In the long run the effect is to irri- 

 tate the public mind and to accentuate such changes. Until the con- 

 stitution of Ohio was overhauled in 1912, no amendment could be added 

 unless it received a majority of all the votes cast at an election. Every 

 vote that was not cast for an amendment counted against it. Hence, 

 it was next to impossible to amend the constitution. It is true that 

 several amendments were added during the early part of the last decade. 

 The veto power was given the governor, and the double liability of stock- 

 holders in certain domestic corporations was withdrawn. But this was 

 done by the Eepublican and Democratic parties endorsing the amend- 

 ments and placing the word " Yes " opposite them on the state tickets. 

 As a result of this strategy, large numbers of uninformed and indifferent 

 voters voted for the amendments. It was only on very rare occasions, 



