Page:Johann Jacoby - The Object of the Labor Movement - tr. Florence Kelley (1887).djvu/10



Permit me to-day to make the Labor Movement, the so-called Social Question, the subject of my remarks. In view of the close connection between the political and the social conditions of a nation, every constituent has a well-founded right to demand of his representative a social confession of faith besides his political one. I shall endeavor to meet this demand with the utmost frankness.

One of the greatest thinkers of antiquity, Aristotle, divides the whole human race into two classes, free men and slave natures. The Greeks he declares are appointed by reason of their free nature to rule over other peoples. The barbarous races on the contrary, are fitted for being ruled and performing the services of slaves. But slavery and slave-labor he explains as a social necessity, as the indispensable material foundation of State and Society; for if the free citizens were obliged to do the work required for their maintenance, how could they have the time and the wish to cultivate their intelligence and attend to the affairs of the State? And yet, Aristotle makes a remarkable observation as to the conceivableness of a society without slavery. If, he says, an inanimate object, a tool, an implement, could render the service of the slave, if every instrument could perform its function at command or, still better, without even a command, as the old tradition relates of the statues of Dædalus, and Homer sings of the three-legged table of Hephæstus which entered the halls of the gods of its own motion; if the looms could weave and the zither produce its tones spontaneously, then the artificers would need no helpers and the masters no slaves.

Now, everyone knows that the miracle here sketched has to a great extent been wrought and that without the help or intervention of the gods, in the most natural way in the world, by insight into the laws of nature and mastery of its forces. What once seemed impossible to the wisest of the Greeks happens daily before our eyes. But how has the miracle worked? Has the success which Aristotle supposed, attended it? Experience teaches that the wealth of nations has been immeasurably increased by the magnificent mechanical appliances of our time. Yet, the toilsome, anxious lot of the laboring class has been anything but lightened.