210 



CONGRESS. (THE PINKERTONS.) 



tempts me to feel that I should dislike being 

 driven, even though 1 might be in the wrong, 

 by a person who might happen to be in the 

 right. 



" I will not discuss that question. Something 

 more, however, must be claimed for these men. 

 I maintain and I ask the attention of the Com- 

 mittee on Education and Labor, if that commit- 

 tee shall be instructed to inquire into this sub- 

 ject that these citizens were right. I maintain, 

 according to the law of the land, not as the law 

 is generally understood, but according to the 

 principles of the law which must hereafter be ap- 

 plied to the solution of these troubles, that those 

 men had the right to be there. That makes it 

 necessary for me to assert that these men had a 

 right to employment there ; they had earned the 

 right to live there, and these large manufactur- 

 ing establishments and there is no other road 

 out of this question must hereafter be under- 

 stood to be public establishments in the modified 

 sense, which I will explain in a moment, in which 

 the public is deeply interested ; and the owners of 

 these properties must hereafter be regarded as 

 holding their property subject to the correlative 

 rights of those without whose services the prop- 

 erty would be utterly valueless. That concession 

 which I make only concedes to them a right to a 

 reasonable profit on the capital invested in their 

 enterprises. 



" I maintain, furthermore, that these laborers, 

 having been in that service, having been engaged 

 there, having spent their lives in this peculiar 

 line of service, have the right to insist upon the 

 permanency of their employment ; and they have 

 the right to insist, too, upon a reasonable com- 

 pensation for their services. 



" We talk about the civil-service law as ap- 

 plicable to Government employment. I assert 

 that there is a law wider and broader than that, 

 which gives to these men who have been bred in 

 these special pursuits, as, for example, in the serv- 

 ice of railroads or of these vast manufacturing 

 establishments, a right to demand employment 

 a right which can only be defeated by miscon- 

 duct on their part. 



" I maintain, therefore, that at the time of the 

 assault upon these people at Homestead they 

 were there where they had a right to be ; they 

 were upon ground they had a right to defend. 

 Do you ask me if these men may by force take 

 possession of the property of another f No. 

 They were conducting themselves in the line of 

 their rights, as I understand them. Business was 

 suspended, and these men were simply awaiting 

 the settlement of the disputed questions between 

 them and their employers. 



" Mark me, I maintain the right of the owners 

 of property to operate it at their will ; I main- 

 tain the right of the operatives to assist in its op- 

 eration ; I maintain the right of both parties to 

 reasonable compensation for their services; I 

 maintain the right of these laborers to continu- 

 ous employment, dependent not upon the will 

 alone of the employer, but dependent upon the 

 good conduct of the employees. 



" Mr. President, this is the only road out of 

 the difficulty. You may call out the militia of 

 the State of Pennsylvania, and you may extermi- 

 nate all the inhabitants of that beautiful and 

 thrifty village, and what is done ? Human life 



has again been sacrificed in one of these strug- 

 gles for human rights. Do you establish the 

 right of these large establishments to control 

 their business? On the contrary, the laboring 

 men of the country, so conscious of the existence 

 of this right which I assert, the right to continue 

 in employment during good behavior, will con- 

 tinue to resist, and this social war will be upon 

 you, and it becomes the duty of Christian states- 

 men, republican statesmen, to find some road out 

 of this difficulty. 



" Within my lifetime I have seen marvelous 

 changes. There was a time when individualism 

 was the universal rule, and men lived alone al- 

 most, because they could support themselves ; 

 but matters have changed. To-day the world is 

 practically divided between the employers and 

 the employees. I do not take into account those 

 neglected agricultural districts, those farm la- 

 borers, for whom nobody seems to care, for, in all 

 the discussions of tariff policy we have, nobody 

 ever speaks of the toiler upon the farm. We 

 speak of organized labor and skilled labor, but 

 when we come to talk about the white or the 

 black men who toil upon the farm from the ris- 

 ing of the sun to the going down thereof, and 

 speak of the influence of legislation upon these 

 men, we do not regard them. If we pray for 

 them, we pray for them very much as Brougham 

 said the Queen was prayed for for the desolate 

 and the oppressed ; if we legislate, they are not 

 regarded. But this organized labor is a power 

 in the state. You must regard it ; you must ad- 

 just it. 



" How can you adjust it ? You can not do it by 

 asserting, what I admit to be true, that every man 

 has a right to the control of his own property in 

 his own way ; if he does not like to go to work 

 for the Carnegies, he may go to work for some- 

 body else. You can not settle it in that way. 

 You can not settle it by saying that Mr. Carne- 

 gie has a right to employ whomsoever he pleases. 

 Those are old truisms which have no application 

 in this changed condition, when organized capital 

 furnishes us all that we have ; it furnishes all our 

 food ; it furnishes all our clothing ; it furnishes 

 our physicians ; I believe it is now furnishing our 

 lawyers ; and it is said that it has furnished us our 

 legislators sometimes, although that is a slander 

 which 1 am not disposed to indorse. That being 

 the case, you have got to find some road out. 

 You can not admit the absolute right of capital ; 

 you can not admit the absolute right of labor ; 

 you have got to adjust their rights upon some 

 basis. What is it 1 That the manufacturing es- 

 tablishment is a public institution, as the rail- 

 roads are held to be public because they work 

 for the public, public because they employ the 

 public, public because men in their service be- 

 come unfit for other services, and public because 

 there are thousands dependent upon them for 

 food and nurture. 



" Thus we have recognized the right of the 

 capitalist to the control of his property, subject 

 to his right to a reasonable reward for his in- 

 vestment ; and we claim for the laborer the right 

 to permanent employment during good behavior, 

 though he is certainly compelled to submit to 

 the changes of business. Where the profits are 

 small, the parties must divide the losses ; where 

 the profits are large the profits may be divided. 



