Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/610

592 great advantages of Nature and land. If, according to Mr. Thornton's theory, employers do not compete for, but combine against labor, or, if they do not compete forcibly enough. Nature does now, and must for centuries to come, open her arms to the sons and daughters of toil. It must be remembered that the thrifty laborer is always a capitalist here. The struggle is not between labor and capital, want and plenty; it is between the employed with a little capital and the employer with more. I throw out of the estimate the improvident and reckless; if socialists or unionists have discovered a method which will give these classes an even chance, they have found a principle which Omnipotence itself has never ventured to put in practice.

If these principles be true, one may ask, Why do we have strikes or discontented laborers in America? I answer, they are the diseases of health; inflammations come from turgid arteries as well as from sluggish veins. Our abounding life has compelled an eager competition among employers. Employers have invariably tended to overproduction, as capitalists know to their cost. Strikes have hardly ever advanced the price of labor; they have never long increased its exchange value, as I indicated above. There is very little communistic sentiment in the United States, but many socialistic theories of a vague sort. That astute public servant, General Butler, would hardly be found uttering such nonsense, if it were not wanted in the sociopolitical market. The "glittering generality" of equality has partially corrupted the good sense of the citizen; only in part, but the effect is positive. Things are free, they say; why not have a better chance for all? Not through communism; property is both new and old here; it is sacred as a treasure, arid dear as a newly-born babe in Anglo-American eyes. Let there be new property; give us all a new chance; the bird of freedom is so 'tarnally strong, why not roast-beef and two dollars a day? The American love of speculation tends in the same direction.

Then there is another principle moving in harmony with this. In great emergencies, when the state or social order is threatened, every American citizen becomes great, and views the State as belonging to all. In petty affairs, and every-day political matters, the average citizen, small capitalist as well as laborer, views the State as belonging to the many considered apart from the few. "The rich have enough; let the poor of the State lean to us," they would say. This blind instinct has entered into strikes and labor-struggles.

The agitators felt that in some way the masses would win, the constable's club would wait on the bayonets, and the militia would sway with the voters for the poor and against the rich; therefore a striker might knock a peaceful laborer on the head with impunity. The common-weal feeling, the American union sentiment as Mr. Wasson puts it, "the sovereignty of rational obligation," must stamp out this atrocious delusion. I regard this issue of fact in the late Fall