UNIVERSITY COURIER.
15
In the economic world the old middle-age rule of "Might makes right" holds almost uncontested sway. "The reign of violence, is dead"—of physical violence, yes, but
"Force rules the world still, Has ruled it, shall rule it, Meekness is weakness, Strength is triumphant."
Not physical strength any more, but the force of wealth and rank. So harp the economic bards of our time.
not physical strength any more, but the force of wealth and rank. So harp the economic bards of our time. Roscher says "there is what we might call a public conscience concerning merit and reward by which a definite relation of the three branches of income to one another is declared equitable. Every fair minded man feels satisfied when this relation is realized. * * * Every deviation from it is, of course, a misfortune, but never so great as when it takes place at the expense of the wages of labor."
Now, plainly, the public conscience declares that this equitable relation does not exist in our country.
I do not know that it is incumbent on me to prove that the public conscience is right,—it does not need any proof to those great numbers who feel only that they are doing their best and working every nerve and muscle and yet find as their reward only the bare necessities of life, while those who control their wages take from the products of the labor every means for gratifying the most extravagant tastes, and accumulate besides fortunes for degenerate sons to ruin themselves with, and this while their own children are obliged to work at an age so early as to prevent their acquiring the education that might help them to a better condition.
Is it not some proof—the simple fact that there is a pretty general and a pretty well-founded belief that the distribution of "this world's goods," is not made with the same impartiality as for instance that of the grades in this institution—that in certain prevalent conditions of society, and among certain great classes of people it is all but impossible for a man to get and hold what is his right. Perhaps no man will admit that he gets his full deserts, but in the case of great numbers the injustice is so obvious that all reasonable men admit it.
Is it not stronger proof still that those who consider themselves thus wronged are willing to fight, even to the death, for justice. However blind the effort, such desperate struggles as the labor riots of 1877 showed that there was a great wrong at bottom. Men who have enough to eat and drink and are in the enjoyment of their rights do not rise spontaneously all over the country and get themselves slaughtered for pastime.
They tell us that no eye but that of Omniscience can see clearly enough to determine the exact merits of men, and that therefore, O lame and impotent conclusion! we are wasting words in trying to improve the present conditions of affairs. Even such a man as Prof. Sumner, who has spent his life in trying to improve things, can write sneeringly of "young enthusiasts who go to work as though sin and suffering could be eliminated from the world," and throw up to his fellow-workers that "it is so much more easy to plan for reform the world than to reform one's self."
Why, all the unselfish men and all the governments since the beginning of time have been working for this sole purpose, to eliminate injustice, and the fact that the task is not yet finished and never will be should not deter any efforts in the right direction—it will be more nearly finished than it is.
On the other hand they say if you take one step in that direction you cannot stop short of communism.
The same logic that leads toward justice leads toward communism, they say. That is toward injustice. Absurd! Justice does not demand equality, it demands that a man get what he earn, and also that a man earn what he get, for the other depends on this. For all increase of wealth is by labor and capital—is earned. Therefore if any man gets what he does not earn, some one, somewhere, must for that reason fail to get what he does earn. If one man without any labor has an income of a million dollars a year, how many men must be giving part of their earnings to furnish that income!
Now I claim that this is the case between capital and labor. If one hold up a passer-by and relieve him of his money, it is called robbery, but if one can appropriate part of the man's earnings through what Political Economy calls the voluntary agreement between Capital and Labor, it is called business capacity.
The victim in the first case has the sympathy of all and is authorized to shoot his assailant. In the second case if the victim remonstrates he is called an ungrateful dog, a socialist, a communist, a nihilist, (for to the unthinking these are all one), and if he dares resist, the same law that in the first case punished the assailant, calls out the militia to shoot the victim. I do not wish to be understood as justifying Pittsburgh riots, but I do say that those riots and others that will come sooner or later are the legitimate results of the existing social order. It is farcical to call the hiring of a man with ten children and no food by a man with no children and the means for ten years' support a free bargain. You might as well call a poor post-office clerk's contribution to Jay Hubbell's campaign fund a voluntary arrangement.
Political Economy takes for granted this principle: That of the various facors engaged in production, Capital alone has a right to profit and loss. Or, more accurately, that profit and loss belong to him who takes the risk. Now I claim that there is no justice in the present order, by which capital is enabled, under very slight restrictions, to dictate the wages of labor. I do not know any one who claims that it is just. Here is a fair statement of the view of most students to-day, written by a graduate of this institution: "Until the millenium is reached the only relation that can exist between labor and capital is this: labor will have to take what capital is able and willing to give. Labor must have employment. Capital may remain idle. It often works grievous wrong,but thus it was in the beginning and thus it must be to the end." Now if that were true, then, indeed, Political Economy, and Government, and the Golden Rule might as well be laid away with Joshua's sun and Jonah's whale and the theories of