L^fe Insurance, Savings Banks, Etc. , 35 



There will be no quiet in the industrial situation till the price 

 of a yard of cotton cloth approximates to that of a bushel of corn, 

 perhaps cf a bushel of wheat ; unless utterly undreamed of inven- 

 tions and conditions are worked to modify the labor of its pro- 

 duction. 



Though we have given political freedom to the slave, we have 

 not yet touched his individual condition. 



The price of the production of cotton is still at a point which, 

 represents the absolute chattelhood of labor. That will not stand. 



In the manufacture of cotton we are working on an inversion of 

 the family relation, and that will not stand. 



The condition of no great manufacturing interest will be stable 

 that rests on the labor of women and children. 



The cotton cloth finds its way to market over railways. 



Last summer the transportation business was brought to a sud- 

 den halt, the operatives said, because they could not support 

 families on their wages. Blind and foolish these operatives were; 

 but thousands of men do not enact blind folly without the com- 

 pulsitin of some master grievance. 



This is certain — no men are more closely worked and more 

 clos^^ly paid than railway operatives. 



The remedy against the troubles of last summer was in promi- 

 nent quarters maintained to be the employment of none but 

 unmarried men. 



Now look at the condition of things revealed by a yard of cot- 

 ton cloth. Here are three great departments of industry — origi- 

 nal production, manufacture, and distribution — which are carried 

 on, or sought to be carried on, in flat violation of the family rela- 

 tion or in indifference to it. Yet we are all agog with wonder to 

 know where communism comes from. Its origin may be sus- 

 pected not to be altogether due to the outcropping of original sin 

 in the laboring man. 



As if we had not degradation enough in our own labor, we are 

 invited by some capitalists to put labor down to the level of the 

 Cbinese system. 



If there is any one gauge indicating the superiority of our civ- 

 ilization over that of the Chinese, it is the cost of supporting 



