154 PERILS. — SOCIALISM. 



home? Of males engaged in the industries of Massachu- 

 setts in 1875, only one in one hundred owned a house. 

 When a working man is unable to earn a home, or to 

 lay by something for old age, when sickness or the 

 closing of the factory for a few weeks, means debt, is it 

 strange that he becomes discontented? 



And how are such items as the following, which ap- 

 peared in the papers of January, 1880, likely to strike 

 discontented laborers? "The profits of the Wall Street 

 Kings the past year were enormous. It is estimated 

 that A^anderbilt made 830,000,000; Jay Gould, $15,000,- 

 000; Russell Sage, $10,000,000; Sidney Dillon, $10,000,000; 

 James R. Keene, $8,000,000; and three or four others 

 from one to two millions each ; making a grand total for 

 ten or twelve estates of about eighty millions of dollars." 

 Is it strange if the w^orking man thinks he is not getting 

 his due share of the wonderful increase of national 

 wealth? 



Many wage-workers have come to feel that the capital- 

 ist is their natural enemy and that he is always ready, 

 when opportunity offers, to sacrifice them and their 

 families to his selfish gains. This does the greatest 

 injustice to some employers, wiio, in times of depression, 

 run their factories for months at a daily loss to them- 

 selves, rather than throw their workmen out of employ- 

 ment. But such capitalists are as rare as they are noble. 

 More do not hesitate to enter in to combinations pow^er- 

 ful enough to command the trade, and then stop work 

 for weeks and months in order to inflate prices, already 

 fair. In November, 1883, the Association of Nail-makers 

 ordered a suspension in order to raise prices ; and for five 

 weeks 8,000 workmen were thrown out of employment, 

 just as winter was coming on. Every mill in the West 

 was in the "pool" ; the suffering workmen, therefore, 

 could not gain employment by going from one to 

 another. They had learned to do but one thing, and 

 could not turn their hand to anything else. There was 

 nothing to do but nurse their discontent. Those Novem- 

 ber and December weeks were a good spring-time for 



