Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/479

Rh better way to safeguard property than to give every man a fair start and an even chance in life. No class can so ill afford to disregard the forms of law as the owners of property. To throw labor agitators into jail or to railroad them to the penitentiary on trumped up charges, to seize their persons and deport them from the community by an unlawful exercise of force, or to interfere unwarrantably in any way with their freedom of speech, is undisguised anarchy. Those property owners who make undue exactions, who entrench themselves in positions of privilege, who use the state for their own aggrandizement and for the exploitation of the weak, or who stand out against much needed reforms, are among the worst enemies of their class.

The sooner employers abandon all pretensions to being a superior class appointed by Providence to look after the interests of labor, the better it will be for the property-owning class.

These are the words of the leading spokesman of the coal operators during the anthracite strike of 1902. They betray a feudalistic frame of mind, and they did more to undermine the right of private property than the numerous acts of violence committed by lawless strikers in the coal fields. It is nothing less than amazing that so astute a business man should have made so glaring a mistake. The divine right of property to rule is no less objectionable than is the divine right of kings. It ill becomes a spokesman of capital to uphold a monopoly in a necessary of life while refusing to treat with a combination of labor, or to lay the responsibility for his own mistakes at the door of Providence. The industrial leadership of the country is in dire need of men of broad intelligence and sympathy, men who are not blinded by class interest and who have a due sense of social responsibility.

Changes in our fundamental law can not be indefinitely postponed by a difficult mode of amendment. In the long run the effect is to irritate the public mind and to accentuate such changes. Until the constitution of Ohio was overhauled in 1912, no amendment could be added unless it received a majority of all the votes cast at an election. Every vote that was not cast for an amendment counted against it. Hence, it was next to impossible to amend the constitution. It is true that several amendments were added during the early part of the last decade. The veto power was given the governor, and the double liability of stockholders in certain domestic corporations was withdrawn. But this was done by the Republican and Democratic parties endorsing the amendments and placing the word "Yes" opposite them on the state tickets. As a result of this strategy, large numbers of uninformed and indifferent voters voted for the amendments. It was only on very rare occasions,