FROM SERFDOM TO FREEDOM. 95 



not until political power came nearer and nearer to him that he gained 

 the strength to raise his standard of living, to make a stand for himself. 

 He knew the struggle would be a hard one, for everything he gained 

 seemed to be something taken away from those who held themselves 

 above him and better than he. 



As a rule, we are very well content to let things alone if we our- 

 selves are fairly comfortable, and especially are we blind to another's 

 ills if the remedy for them is found in a renunciation of part of that 

 which we have always considered our own. There is nothing particu- 

 larly new in this. We easily can imagine some worthy burgher in 

 the olden time expostulating at the demand of the craft guild even to 

 be allowed to exist, and I do not imagine his language varied much in 

 spirit from the indignant disgust shown by some large employer of 

 labor to-day when he talks of labor unions. Doubtless these unions 

 to-day seem to him to have the same dangerous tendencies which the 

 craft guilds were talked of as having eight hundred years ago. 



If there were no wrongs to right, if selfishness did not exist, if there 

 were a real belief in the brotherhood of man, and life were in accord- 

 ance with that belief, such organizations might not be necessary, or if 

 they existed have other aims; but until all men have an equal chance 

 for self -development, and a chance for something more than a mere 

 existence, labor unions or something to take their place must exist. 



And so we stand to-day with labor unions and the labor problem, 

 so called, with us. The laboring class is discontented. Men claim 

 as rights what their fathers would have been glad to get as favors. 

 There are violence and bad blood and waste, and so there have been 

 from the beginning. But there have been also injustice and oppression 

 and greed from the beginning. While we may condemn strongly 

 much of the violence and wrongdoing of labor organizations, we can 

 find many extenuating circumstances. The same spirit of independ- 

 ence, the same desire for equal justice which animated the old guilds of 

 England, and which have made the Englishman and those who have 

 sprung from him the freest as well as most law-abiding people on the 

 earth, are found within the organizations of labor. We in this country 

 hardly can find only danger in the spirit which impels the working- 

 man to resist every encroachment upon his rights, to strive for that 

 better future to which he believes he is entitled. There were many 

 things done in the youth of our history which in our manhood we 

 regret, and I hardly think, as a nation, our own robe is so unspotted 

 that we must draw it round us lest it be soiled by the violence of a 

 perhaps uneducated and inadvisable but still earnest effort after 

 higher and better conditions of life. Let us read and ponder over our 

 histories anew, and with humble hearts try to find a better way both 

 for the laborer and ourselves. 



