If a nation is to remain in a state of prosperity, it must
make continual progress,—progress in the arts, in the
sciences, and in the industries. But industrial progress is
impossible without industrial stability, and the industrial
stability of a country depends on the efficiency of its laborers
and on the existence of friendly relations between them and
their employers. But are'proper relations likely to be found
when every avenue through which man can earn a livelihood
is being controlled by capital, whose power over the work
ingman is almost absolute? Is the efficiency of the laboring
class likely to be high when it is hemmed in and crushed by
the restrictions which are imposed upon it by capital? Can
one hope for continued prosperity when such conditions ex
ist? Assuredly not, and upon this fact rests the solution of
the whole problem. The most learned students of this ques
tion have been baffled on every hand in their attempts to dis
cover some means for preventing such injustice.
The settlement of many other controversies, even war
in certain instances, has been effected by a carefully con
structed system of arbicratiou which has been upheld by pub
lic opinion till it has acquired a weight equal to that of a
public law. But in labor disputes, some of which during
the last century have left on the pages of our country’s his
tory, blots which can never be effaced, and which have
caused many a loyal citizen to blush for shame, the state
takes no part whatever, until, as the laborer gathers his
forces for the last supreme effort, it crushes him to earth,
takes away his weapons, yes, deprives him of his
rights as a citizen, all in the sacred name of law and order.
There is, for him, no tribunal to which he can resort for the
readjustment of his wrongs; there is no legal recourse by
which he can assert his rights. When lie must suffer such
treatment as this, is it to be wondered at that he resorts to
violence in attempting to enforce his claims?
The advocates of socialism suggest a total reconstruction