332 LAND AND LABOR. 



escape the effects of this overwhelming development 

 has been in the direction of proscription, monopoly, 

 and strikes, that have only served to aggravate the 

 evils that have been so rapidly growing. 



The first notable move made by the workingmen, 

 when this power was first felt, were in the organiza- 

 tion of unions that limited the number of apprentices 

 who should learn trades, prescribing the number of 

 boys who should be employed in shops and factories, 

 and proscribing the employers who attempted to teach 

 a greater number. 



Here was the beginning of that unreasoning and 

 heartless monopoly that attempts to seize and hold 

 all the work, and to deny to a portion of their fellow 

 men the equal and God given right and obligation, 

 which rests upon all, to labor for their daily bread 

 that says to a parent that his child shall not be taught 

 a trade, nor acquire a profession by which he may earn 

 a subsistence, but shall go out into the world unpre- 

 pared for its duties and fitted for vagabondage only. 

 Here was the commencement of that tyranny of the 

 workingmen over their fellows that has resulted in 

 converting one moiety of that class who are dependent 

 upon labor for the means of life and its comforts, into 

 the veriest slaves, who toil from ten to eighteen hours 

 ,'i day for the most scanty subsistence, and the other 

 half into paupers, tramps, and criminals. Of all the 

 monopolies and tyrannies of capital there is not one 

 that equals the suicidal selfishness of the workingmen. 

 These measures and methods of proscription and mo- 

 nopoly have continued to the present time. Out of 

 them have grown the armies of unskilled laborers in 



