5 z8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



justification for such demonstrations, or excusing such acts of destruc- 

 tion or violence. But I want to call attention to this source of dan- 

 ger and menace to the good order and peace of society, and the secu- 

 rity of property. An unemployed and more than half -starved element 

 in any community is a slumbering volcano which at any moment is 

 liable to a violent and destructive excitement. In the rapine and 

 desolation that follow such an eruption, we see the result of ignoring 

 the obligations to which I have referred — obligations, indeed, that are 

 not recognized by our laws, and such as can not be enforced in any of 

 our courts, but which are of a character that transcend all human law, 

 and reside in that relationship which the Creator has established be- 

 tween men. 



Take away the conditions of suffering and want which are coinci- 

 dent with an unemployed laboring class, and both the pretext and 

 incentive to such demonstrations will be wanting. 



But hungry men are neither philosophers nor political economists. 

 Both themselves and those who depend upon them are in the direst 

 need. Food and wealth are plentiful, but in the midst of both they 

 are dying from want. Is it strange that under the promptings of 

 their necessities they come to regard wealth as their enemy, and its 

 possessors as in league against them, or that they determine to obtain 

 relief without reference to the legal rights of those who may for the 

 time being be the owners of that which they so much need ? 



We deprecate these outbursts. They ought to receive the severest 

 condemnation. Their effect can only be to aggravate the very diffi- 

 culties by which they are inspired. But let us remember that they 

 have their origin, to a very considerable extent, in the indifference of 

 society to its obligations to the laboring classes, and that society can 

 only be made secure by recognizing and discharging these obli- 

 gations. 



The recent labor-strikes, culminating in the dynamite murders at 

 Haymarket Square, in Chicago, should not, in my judgment, be classed 

 with the London demonstration. 



The labor difficulties occurring throughout the United States, in the 

 first half of a. d. 1886, have a different purpose and origin. They 

 are the first manifestations of a plan to establish an oligarchy of work- 

 men. A secret organization was established, on the theory of unques- 

 tioning obedience to the mandates of its leaders. Its members were 

 made to believe that the organization was potent and beneficent. 

 Under the pretense of protecting labor, these leaders assumed to dic- 

 tate and control the actions of laborers, after a fashion more odious 

 and tyrannical than was ever before known among civilized men. 

 Large numbers of working-men were deceived by the professions- of 

 these demagogical leaders. Others were intimidated and dragooned 

 by the power of the organization, and thus these pestilent fellows of 

 the basest sort were enabled for the time to set at defiance all law, to 



