Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/187

 SOCIAL DISCONTENT AND THE LABOR TROUBLES.

A MAJORITY of men and women find it necessary or expedient to work for others, and the question of a fair compensation for labor and of a fair and equitable division of the products of toil is a most important one. With the growing complexities of our social and industrial life, a satisfactory adjustment of these prob- lems becomes more and more difficult. Religious animosities are dying out, or are becoming greatly softened ; political dis- cussions are losing their sharpness ; but the question of capital and labor is agitated with more and more bitterness, in many instances with insurrection, violence and assassinations. Indus- tries are crippled, commerce paralyzed, liberty violated, and cities placed at the mercy of mobs. Selfishness, inordinate greed, and reckless ambition are engendering envy, prejudice, and class hatred that prevent a calm and rational consideration of these questions.

The conflict between capital and labor could have had no reason for existence in the origin and development of capital. In the beginning man found himself alone, with only his natural faculties, " face to face with brute nature." His first struggle was to provide food, clothing, and shelter. One by one he invented simple instruments to aid in the work of his bare hands. In times of plenty he stored up against times of need. When a man gathered food enough for two meals and stored the surplus, to that extent he became a capitalist. A club or stone ax of more avail than one gathered by chance gave to its owner an advan- tage, and he became a property holder, and had something to protect against violence and theft. Painfully and slowly men acquired knowledge and skill, and multiplied the agencies through which their increasing wants might be supplied. They accumulated capital in tools, machinery, buildings, means of transportation, lands cleared, drained, and inclosed; and in many other products of their industry and thrift.

The crux of the social and industrial questions is distribution,