EDITOR'S TABLE. 



701 



into their service. But tliey do noth- 

 ing of the kind: as ti rule they only 

 yield when they have to, and yet there 

 is generally more labor offering than 

 can be satisfactorily employed. Now, 

 this we consider to be the fundamental 

 social problem of our time; and yet we 

 do not find that it receives anything 

 like the attention it deserves and re- 

 quires. The labor organizations which 

 play so prominent a part in the modern 

 world seem to assume that labor will 

 always be in excess, and devote their 

 chief efforts to neutralizing by ai'titicial 

 means this natural disadvantage. Their 

 attitude toward capital is thus normally 

 a hostile one, even when actual hos- 

 tilities are not in j^rogress; and this 

 fact alone may account for not a little 

 of the friction which actually occurs in 

 the pi'actical relations between capital 

 and labor. To be always confronted 

 wiih a hostile force is not soothing to 

 the temper, and suggests at least de- 

 fensive, when it does not suggest off'en- 

 sive, measures. It would be better, as 

 it seems to us, if the labor organiza- 

 tions would cultivate less of the mili- 

 tant and more of the administrative 

 spirit, and would use the wide knowl- 

 edge they must necessarily acquire of 

 the conditions of the industrial world 

 to prevent the overcrowding of particu- 

 lar trades, and, in a general way, to 

 favor such a distribution of the work- 

 ing population as will tend most to 

 their welfare. As long as the capitalist 

 has only to blow his whistle, so to speak, 

 in order to get all the " hands " he re- 

 quires, the condition of the "hands" 

 will be one of more or less dependence 

 on him ; and therefore the true policy of 

 labor leaders is to try to so dispose of 

 the laboring population that they will 

 not be at the beck and call of capital, 

 but will have a much larger measure 

 than at present of social stability and 

 personal independence. 



Just how this very desirable result 

 is to be brought about we are not pre- 

 pared to say ; but what strikes us is that 



if more effort and thought had been de- 

 voted by the working classes, organized 

 as they are in unions which permit of 

 their best men coming to the front, to 

 problems of a constructive character, 

 and less to the planning of campaigns 

 and the devising of means by which the 

 least return in labor should be given for 

 the largest obtainable wage, they would 

 have been the better of it to-day. One 

 thing which they should long ago have 

 seen is the desirableness of their com- 

 plete separation from mere party poli- 

 tics, which, so far as they are concerned, 

 is a simple delusion and a snare. What 

 the workman wants is the simplest and 

 cheapest form of government, and, above 

 all, one under which no exceptional fa- 

 vors will be accorded to individuals or 

 classes. If he is not vvise enough to see 

 this, but falls a victim to the special 

 pleading used on behalf of preposterous 

 tariff laws, he can not lay the blame on 

 others; what he wants is understand- 

 ing, and, until he gets it, he will suffer. 

 A generally higher ideal of life would 

 stand the workman in good stead an 

 ideal opposed to show and extravagance 

 and favorable to earnest endeavor for 

 intellectual and moral improvement. We 

 are no advocates for " starvation wages " 

 far from it but we can not overlook 

 the fact that what one individual con- 

 siders starvation wages will sometimes 

 sutiice for the comfort and self-respect 

 of another, the difference between the 

 two cases being one of personal habit. 



As to the capitalist class, there is 

 this to be said, that the man of large 

 means, the lai'ge employer of labor who 

 does not interest himself in his men and 

 make the conditions of their labor as 

 profitable and satisfactory to them as 

 possible consistently with a due regard 

 to the stability of his business, is shame- 

 fully neglecting the duties which lie to 

 his hand. We have but a limited belief 

 in what is commonly known as philan- 

 thropy, but we believe in justice and 

 good will between man and man, and it 

 ' should not be hard for the capitalist to 



