98 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



communities. And society must continue to suffer from the violence 

 and waste of strikes until it teaches employers and workingmen and 

 itself a higher and better way. 



May not it be possible that the outcome will be that associations 

 of wage-earners are to be treated as the equals of the employer? Will 

 not the democratic spirit of the age to come so permeate the industrial 

 as well as the political world that the laborer and the employer will 

 each have a share in the business they together carry on? 



I have tried to make a very broad sketch of the change which has 

 taken place in the condition of the laborer, with a consideration of 

 some of the means by which that has come about. No longer is he 

 a serf — no longer even the servant of a ruling class. He at length 

 has risen to a share in the government of his town and country. No 

 longer are laws passed against him specially, but in his favor. The 

 laborer has become free — free to follow along the path of his pred- 

 ecessors, to gain full justice, but not to oppress others. Before 

 the law at least he is the equal of his employer. I have implied at 

 least that he has but followed the spirit which led his older brother of 

 the middle class up from practical subjection to power. The craft 

 guilds of the one, the labor unions of the other, are in the same line 

 as the old to^vn guilds. They all are manifestations of that demo- 

 cratic independence which seems necessary for political freedom. 

 They all imply the capacity for organization as they all have shown its 

 power. Let us believe that, like the old guilds, these labor organiza- 

 tions are helpful parts of the machinery of human progress. They 

 force upon us the fact that there have been and are injustices which 

 must be righted. "We are beginning to learn that we can not depend 

 upon one side alone for our political economy or our facts; that we 

 need an organization strong enough to compel respect in order to pro- 

 tect those who without it would be, as they have been, helpless. 



All the smoke and clash of industrial warfare seem terrifying; the 

 innocent victims shock our sense of justice, but it is leading to the 

 perfect peace. The true democracy — the brotherhood of man — is 

 forcing itself upon mankind. If we in our prejudice, our selfishness, 

 our ignorance, defy the signs of its coming, try to prevent its growth, 

 or find only license in liberty, we shall continue to suffer all the ills 

 which an obstruction of progress or a violation of its laws always 

 brings with it. Is it not true that never in the history of the world 

 has there been an agrarian rising, a peasant revolt, a labor war, that 

 back of it we do not find as a main cause the injustice, the oppression, 

 the selfishness of a more powerful class? And vtdll there be perfect 

 peace, perfect prosperity, until the divine harmony — the real brother- 

 liood of man — is the rule of life? AVrong always breeds violence. 

 But out of that violence, when the wrong is made right, comes peace. 



