You assume that the labor question is a question
between wage-workers and their employers. But working for
wages is not the primary or exclusive occupation of
labor. Primarily men work for themselves without the
intervention of an employer. And the primary source of
wages is in the earnings of labor, the man who works for
himself and consumes his own products receiving his wages
in the fruits of his labor. Are not fishermen, boatmen,
cab-drivers, peddlers, working farmers — all, in
short, of the many workers who get their wages directly
by the sale of their services or products without the
medium of an employer, as much laborers as those who work
for the specific wages of an employer? In your
consideration of remedies you do not seem even to have
thought of them. Yet in reality the laborers who work for
themselves are the first to be considered, since what men
will be willing to accept from employers depends
manifestly on what they can get by working for
themselves.
You assume that all employers are rich men, who might
raise wages much higher were they not so grasping. But is
it not the fact that the great majority of employers are
in reality as much pressed by competition as their
workmen, many of them constantly on the verge of failure?
Such employers could not possibly raise the wages they
pay, however they might wish to, unless all others were
compelled to do so.
You assume that there are in the natural order two
classes, the rich and the poor, and that laborers
naturally belong to the poor.
It is true as you say that there are differences in
capacity, in diligence, in health and in strength, that
may produce differences in fortune. These, however, are
not the differences that divide men into rich and poor.
The natural differences in powers and aptitudes are
certainly not greater than are natural differences in
stature. But while it is only by selecting giants and
dwarfs that we can find men twice as tall as others, yet
in the difference between rich and poor that exists today
we find some men richer than other men by the
thousandfold and the millionfold.
Nowhere do these differences between wealth and
poverty coincide with differences in individual powers
and aptitudes. The real difference between rich and poor
is the difference between those who hold the tollgates
and those who pay toll; between tribute-receivers and
tribute-yielders.
In what way does nature justify such a difference? In
the numberless varieties of animated nature we find some
species that are evidently intended to live on other
species. But their relations are always marked by
unmistakable differences in size, shape or organs. To man
has been given dominion over all the other living things
that tenant the earth. But is not this mastery indicated
even in externals, so that no one can fail on sight to
distinguish between a man and one of the inferior
animals? Our American apologists for slavery used
to contend that the black skin and woolly hair of the
negro indicated the intent of nature that the black
should serve the white; but the difference that you
assume to be natural is between men of the same race.
What difference does nature show between such men as
would indicate her intent that one should live idly yet
be rich, and the other should work hard yet be
poor? If I could bring you from the United
States a man who has $200,000,000, and one who is glad to
work for a few dollars a week, and place them side by
side in your antechamber, would you be able to tell which
was which, even were you to call in the most skilled
anatomist? Is it not clear that God in no way
countenances or condones the division of rich and poor
that exists today, or in any way permits it, except as
having given them free will he permits men to choose
either good or evil, and to avoid heaven if they prefer
hell. For is it not clear that the division of
men into the classes rich and poor has invariably its
origin in force and fraud; invariably involves violation
of the moral law; and is really a division into those who
get the profits of robbery and those who are robbed;
those who hold in exclusive possession what God made for
all, and those who are deprived of his bounty?
Did not Christ in all his utterances and parables show
that the gross difference between rich and poor is
opposed to God’s law? Would he have condemned the
rich so strongly as he did, if the class distinction
between rich and poor did not involve injustice —
was not opposed to God’s intent?
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