212 HISTORY OF THE WHEEL AND ALLIANCE. 



word, and changes from one order of life to another are 

 always fraught with danger. We must learn what the law 

 of competition is, and how and why at the present time it 

 is operating banefully upon society. Then we will begin 

 to understand the meaning of labor organization, that it is 

 the effort of human reason to control the operation of what 

 is known as a "great natural law." Then we will also 

 see that the effort on its inception is apt to occasion the 

 troubles referred to business depression, strikes and con- 

 comitant evils; but we will also see, that no matter what 

 the difficulties may be, incident to the organization of 

 labor, that the movement must go on. For under the 

 condition 'of things as they are to-day, with capital 

 solidified into great corporations; with machinery con- 

 stantly superseding human labor; with the markets of the 

 world being opened, and competition from Asia to the 

 United States acting with unlimited license, there would 

 be without the counteracting effects of labor organization, 

 a social system of wretchedness, vice and crime engen- 

 dered such as the world has never seen. 



"It should never be forgotten that all the available 

 wealth of the world has been produced by labor, and that 

 capital is only the accumulation, the stored up energy of 

 labor. Without the vitalizing power of labor, civilization 

 would cease to exist. Labor is to the business world what 

 the soul is to the body its vitalizing, constructive force. 

 Up to the present time the full value and power of labor 

 have not been adequately recognized. From age to age it 

 has been held in bondage, controlled and directed by the 

 power that its activity has called into existence 



"The wondrous wealth of resources with which God 

 has endowed the world, has been brought forth in every 

 conceivable shape of use and beauty, but only the favored 

 few have profited by the prodigality of nature. To the 

 great majority life offers nothing better than err 11 ess 



