Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/180

168 classes, or those who are more distinctly physical as opposed to mental laborers, are striving to offset the corruption and abuses of the very wealthy by a system of organized aggressive action. They have accomplished nothing, so far, but harm to themselves, and diffused disturbance to the great mechanism of trade through which the entire people live. The generalization we have tried to establish furnishes the key to this difficulty.

The interest of the "laboring class" so called, as well as of the whole community in America, is purely industrial. The laborers are the product and symbol of industrial growth. No good, therefore, can be worked for them save through industrial appliances. Now, if we inquire into the character of the organization known as the "Knights of Labor," we find it to be as purely militant as the name it bears. It displays absolute autocracy of government; complete loss of individual freedom; the gospel of class hatred and strife preached in the place of the cooperation and sympathy of "industrialism"; and, finally, the natural outcome of all militant tendencies, a resort to physical violence for the attainment of ends. The "Knights of Labor" are a militant organization applying militant means to the betterment of industrial conditions. What wonder that they fail?

And, withal, the industrial means to the attainment of all legitimate ends that they may seek are ever at their disposal. What abuses could the rich few perpetuate in free America, if the poor many chose to use the ballot-box to crush them out? None. And if, as appears to be the case, it is a grievance that the able and hard-working triumph over the foolish and lazy in the struggle of life, the reconstitution of man, not of society, will alone remedy it. Is there not here a hint for Messrs. Powderly and George?

In an essay on "The Swarming of Men," Mr. Edward Courtney assumes that emigration is controlled by a force which operates as strongly and uniformly as any natural law. By it, whenever men find it too hard to make a living, they are induced to move themselves away, either to places within their own country where work is more plentiful, or to places beyond the sea. "An examination of true centers of life," he says, "leads us inevitably to connect the shifting points of maximum increase with the development of some industry, the discovery of some local springs of activity, a new appreciation of previously unrecognized facilities for the application of more efficient processes of labor. Some change makes it possible for more life to be sustained at a given spot, or to be more favorably sustained than elsewhere, and immediately more life appears there."