WHAT SHALL WE DO? 333 



the country men who do not know how to work 

 and the consequent evils that find no mitigation in 

 the benefits vainly hoped to be derived by the pro- 

 scribers and their unions. 



The next step was the use of labor organizations in 

 dictating who should be employed and the wages that 

 should be paid ; compelling the whole body of work- 

 men, in any given trade, or in several trades, to strike 

 -to abandon their work at the command of a few 

 unreasoning, hot headed leaders, and against the 

 counsel of the more prudent and thoughtful, often 

 without cause or reason, throwing hundreds and thou- 

 sands into idleness and distress, and bringing hunger, 

 nakedness, and want in every form upon multitudes 

 of helpless women and children. These methods of 

 proscription and monopoly, coupled with riot, violence, 

 and destruction, are the only measures that have been 

 relied upon to arrest the evils by which the working- 

 men are surrounded. Every succeeding year has 

 brought with it a repetition of the past, differing 

 only in a less show of strength, and increasing dis- 

 couragement and loss of hope. Year after year the 

 labor strikes are followed by a greater development 

 of idleness, the generally increasing weakness and pov- 

 verty of the laborers, a greater distress of the masses, 

 but with a rapid growth and power of combinations 

 of capital and gigantic monopolies that are truly 

 alarming. So evident are these matters that they 

 have begun to attract attention in quarters where the 

 most persistent blindness has heretofore prevailed, as 

 shown by the following item, found in the New York 

 Tribune of April 7, 1883 : 



