Chapter IV: Part 4

Keep that in mind when you work. Remember that you must wind yourself up. The most watchful employer may discharge you. But he cannot wind you up.

Be a self-winding machine, and keep yourself wound up.

Your hardest effort may fail to achieve greatness. But honest work will at least make it impossible for you to be a failure.

Train your brain, nerves and muscles to regular, steady, conscientious effort. Make up your mind that FOR YOUR OWN SAKE you will make every effort your best effort.

You will soon find yourself a more successful, more self-respecting, abler man or woman.

And here is an argument that should be more powerful with you than self-interest:

Remember that the world needs honest, conscientious men and women, able to do good work themselves and to people the earth with children born of honest parents.

Make up your mind to be one of the world's HONEST citizens.

To improve the world begin by improving yourself.

THE STEEPLE, MOVING LIKE THE HAND OF A CLOCK

If you live in the suburbs you devote perhaps two hours each day to travel. Two hours per day means practically one-fifth of your active life.

How many readers make any use of those two hours, and feel each day that they have been well spent? ----

Instead of being wasted, those hours should be among your best. Never mind if you are clinging to a strap because companies are licensed to exploit you. Never mind if you are tired and weary when the day is ended. The tired brain often thinks better than the fresh one. And man, so recently descended from the monkey who had to think while hanging head down, ought to have no trouble thinking as he hangs from his strap--head up. ----

Some in the cars play cards as they travel homeward. Others talk gossip, and tens of thousands waste too much time on this and other newspapers.

Try this experiment: Make up your mind to devote your hours of travel to thinking. The brain, like the muscles, needs definite and well-planned exercise. It must be methodical and regular. There is no limit to its possible results. You would be glad to spend your two travelling hours in a gymnasium on wheels. Make of your homeward car a mental gymnasium. Each night or morning, take up some one line of thought and follow it to its end--or as far as your mind can take you. Learn to observe, to study, to reflect. Don't look at your fellow passengers as calves look at each other on the way to the slaughter house.

Look, as a human being, at other human beings. There they sit or stand or hang. Some chatter, others scowl, fret, fume, complain, brag, grin or otherwise express the strange emotions that move us here.

They are all ghosts, as Carlyle tells you, imprisoned for a time in coverings of flesh, and a car packed full of real ghosts passing over the earth on their quick journey to the grave ought to stir you. ----

The giggling shopgirls whose life of misery is still a joke to them--blessed youth!--should interest you deeply. And the negro, too, with a tired black face, resting for the next day's slavery--slavery on a wage basis, but slavery all the same. Possibly you despise his thick lips. But those lips are carved on every sphinx in Egypt's sand, and if you could go back far enough you would find the ancestors of that negro, before the days of the Pharaohs, laying the foundations of your religion and locating the stars in heaven. At that time your forbears were gibbering cave savages, sharpening bones and gnawing raw flesh. When you see the negro on the opposite seat, the ill-starred one who has gone down in the human race while we have gone up, think about him, study him, speculate as to his ultimate end--and your own. Don't merely say to yourself, "That's a plain negro," and go on chewing gum. ----

The pictures that flash by your car windows should help you to think.

The train rumbles over the switches, and in the dusk a swinging lantern tells you that a man is at work, guiding you safely when your work is done. Can't you take an interest in that human atom, representing the Power that swings our tiny sun in space, lighting us on our journey toward the constellation Hercules? ----

A black steeple is outlined against the dark-blue sky of the evening. That is a finger of stone, built by man to point everlastingly toward Infinite Power. It now points "upward." In twelve hours--as the earth slowly turns--it will be pointing "downward." But there is no upward or downward in the carpentry of the universe. In the twenty-four hours, as it turns round with the earth, that steeple points toward all the corners of space, and constantly it points toward Eternal Wisdom and Justice in every corner. ----

This is tiresome? All right, then we'll stop. But whether we tire or interest you, remember:

As a man thinks, so he grows. Think, study, use all the hours that separate your croupy cradle from your gloomy grave. Those hours are few.

CULTIVATE THOUGHT--TEACH YOUR BRAIN TO WORK EARLY

Two centuries back a young man of twenty-three sat in the quiet of the evening--THINKING.

His body was quiet; his vitality, his life, all his powers, were centred in his brain.

Above, the moon shone, and around him rustled the branches of the trees in his father's orchard.

From one of the trees an apple fell.

No need to tell you that the young man was Newton; that the fall of the apple started in his READY brain the thought that led to his great discovery, giving him fame to last until this earth shall crumble.

How splendid the achievement born that moment! How fortunate for the world and for the youth Newton, that at twenty-three his brain had cultivated the HABIT OF THOUGHT! ----

Our muscles we share with everything that lives--with the oyster clinging to his rock, the whale ploughing through cold seas, and our monkey kinsman swinging from his tropical branch.

These muscles, useful only to cart us around, help us to do slave work or pound our fellows, we cultivate with care.

We run, fence, ride, walk hard, weary our poor lungs and gather pains in our backs building the muscles that we do not need.

Alone among animals, we possess a potentiality of mind development unlimited.

And for that, with few exceptions, we care nothing. ----

Most of us, sitting in Newton's place and seeing the apple fall, would merely have debated the advisability of getting the apple to eat it--just the process that any monkey mind would pass through.

A Newton, a BRAIN TRAINED TO THINK, sees the apple drop, asks himself why the moon does not drop also. And he discovers the law of gravitation which governs the existence of every material atom in the universe. ----

Young men who read this, start in NOW to use your brains. Take nothing for granted, not even the fact that the moon stays in her appointed place or that the poor starve and freeze amid plenty.

Think of the things which are wrong and of the possibilities of righting them. Study your own weaknesses and imperfections. There is power in your brain to correct them, if you will develop that power.

As surely as you can train your arm to hold fifty pounds out straight, just so surely can you train your brain to deal with problems that now would find you a gaping incompetent.

You may not be a Newton. But if you can condescend to aim at being an inferior Sandow, can't you afford to try even harder to be an inferior Newton?

Don't be a muscular monkey. Be a low-grade philosopher, if you can't be high-grade, and find how much true pleasure there is even in inferior brain gymnastics. ----

Take up some problem and study it:

There goes a woman, poor and old. She carries a heavy burden because she is too sad and weak to fight against fate, too honest to leave a world that treats her harshly.

There struts a youngster, rich and idle.

How many centuries of hell on earth will it take to put that woman's load on that other broad, fat, idle back?

Answer that one question, better still, TRANSFER THE LOAD, and your life will not have been wasted. ----

It is THOUGHT that moves the world. In Napoleon's BRAIN are born the schemes that murder millions and yet push civilization on. The mere soldier, with gold lace and sharp sword, is nothing--a mere tool.

It is the concentrated thought of the English people under Puritan influence that makes Great Britain a sham monarchy and a real republic now.

It is the thought of the men of independent MIND in this country that throws English tea and English rule overboard forever.

Don't wait until you are old. Don't wait until you are ONE DAY older. Begin NOW.

Or, later, with a dull, fuzzy, useless mind, you will realize that an unthinking man might as well have been a monkey, with fur instead of trousers, and consequent freedom from mental responsibility or self-respect.

THE WIND DOES NOT RULE YOUR DESTINY

"There be three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not.

"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; THE WAY OF A SHIP IN THE MIDST OF THE SEA, and the way of a man with a maid."

At sunset a long train of cars waited on a bridge as a sailing ship passed through the draw.

The ship sailed up the river toward the cold Winter sun; another ship sailed past it going in the OPPOSITE direction.

Only ONE wind was blowing. Yet, of those two ships blown by the same wind, moved by the same power, one sailed EAST and one WEST.

It may be of use to you in your career to think for a few minutes about these two ships and the lesson which they teach--especially to young men. ----

The man who has sailed, in his life's journey, toward failure and disaster looks always with envy, sometimes with hatred, and very often with an intense sensation of injustice, at the man who passes him going in exactly the opposite direction.

Yet the FORCES that move men bound toward success are exactly the same as those that move other men to failure, humiliation and defeat.

It is all a question of the way in which you use the forces within you--just as on shipboard it is all a question of the use of the common wind which blows.

IT IS A QUESTION OF THE USE OF THE RUDDER.

Two ships pass, each with its sails filled out by the same wind. The difference in direction is accounted for by the handling of the rudder and the adjustment of the sails.

What the force of the wind is to the ship, our varying emotions, passions, ambitions, appetites and aspirations are to us. All of these constitute the power which may be called HUMAN FORCE.

This power differs in different individuals, as the wind differs on different days. It may blow from the east or the west or the north or the south. However it may blow, it can be forced, by proper steering, to send the ship in any direction desired.

It is harder to beat against the wind, of course, and many men have hard struggles to steer themselves to a good port in the face of an adverse start, a hard beginning, or inclinations difficult to overcome. ----

But in all of us the force exists which can be made to move us in the right direction--the force within us can be MADE to obey our will, if the will be strong and the hand on the rudder steady. This can be proved--for instance:

There is a certain force in human beings called LOVE. This force leads sometimes, and happily it leads usually, to domesticity, morality, care of children and lifelong devotion. Then the force is used properly.

The same human passion leads to murder, suicide, theft, to almost all forms of crime.

There is another human passion called AMBITION.

This human force of ambition, with a Lincoln's conscience to guide it, saves a republic.

The same force guided by Benedict Arnold seeks to betray the nation. ----

Consider yourself a ship launched on the sea of life under certain conditions--but with the essential condition in your own control.

The wind may be feeble, you may drift for a while or move very slowly--move at least in the right direction.

The wind may blow a gale, and you may feel, as so many do, that you cannot control your emotions and your appetites. But if that comes show at least as much interest in yourself as a sailor does in his ship. Take in sail and fight the storm, instead of going willingly to destruction. ----

Four things puzzled and impressed the wise man that wrote the nineteenth verse of the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs.

Think to-day about the third of these things:

"The way of a ship in the midst of the sea"

The way of a human being in the midst of life is like that of a ship on the ocean.

Make up your mind that your own way at least shall be controlled by the rudder of conscience, and learn from the passing ships a lesson of use in your own life.

ONE OF THE MANY CORPSES IN THE JOHNSTOWN MINE

The widow says to the mine owner: "Here he is, dead--killed working for you. Where were you when he was killed? Driving in your carriage, enjoying the difference between his EARNINGS and his PAY. Was one dollar and thirty cents per day too much to pay him for this risk? Was it too much to let him save something for us--who now have nothing? Is there nothing to arbitrate when the man who risks his life and gets nothing asks arbitration of the man who risks nothing and gets all? ----

There are many men in America--honest and sincere--who believe that strikers are nearly always right, that failure of a strike is a calamity.

Other men, less numerous, but also honest and sincere, consider strikes an evil. They believe that labor unionism threatens "capital," threatens national energy, and our national industrial supremacy. ----

Let us endeavor to take a clear view of the strike question, and to discuss--as free from bias as may be possible--some of the main viewpoints of those interested.

We may, at the start, accept two statements as sound:

First. The employer wants as much money as he can possibly get.

Second. The workman wants as much money as HE can possibly get.

It is impossible for both or for either to win absolutely. The success of one must leave the other penniless.

Let us look at the matter of a coal strike only, for simplicity's sake.

In a coal mine you have three factors:

First. The COAL given to men--presumably for the use of mankind in general--by Divine Providence.

Second. The WORKMEN who dig the coal, haul it, screen it, etc.

Third. The OWNER, who through money, or intelligence, or both, gets control of mines and works them for his profit.

The mine owner resents the suggestion that he and his men are partners.

Ought he to resent that suggestion? We think not.

Miners without any capitalist could certainly get coal out of the ground.

The capitalist without miners could not possibly get coal out of the ground.

The labor is at least as important as the mine. ----

The capitalist who wishes to acquire a mine is willing to grant certain rights and conditions to him who has the MINE for sale. He treats with that person as with an equal.

WHY WILL HE NOT GRANT RIGHTS AND EQUALITY TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE LABOR FOR SALE?

If a hundred men own the mine, and elect a certain agent to represent them in the sale, the capitalist will willingly treat with that agent EVEN THOUGH HE BE NOT ONE OF THE ACTUAL MINE OWNERS. It becomes simply a question of the agent's AUTHORITY.

Why does the capitalist haughtily refuse to treat with the accredited agent of the men who have the LABOR for sale,

Is it not because he resents the workman's attempt at emancipation and equality? Is it not because the capitalist in his heart demands SUBMISSION from the man who works for a daily wage?

Is it not because the powerful among us fail to admit that workers have passed from slavery to equality?

A man owns vast mining properties. He lives in New York and in Newport. Comfortably, and at a distance, he runs and rules his mines. He is good-natured enough, kind-hearted. He means well. He does not see the corpses brought up from the fire-damp. He does not notice the hollow chests of young children with the pores of their skin and the pores of their lungs full of coal dust.

This owner--who rules and draws his profits from Newport--has one bitter complaint against his striking men. He cannot forgive them BECAUSE THEY CALL IN A LABOR LEADER FROM CHICAGO TO SETTLE A LABOR DISPUTE IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Imagining himself most condescending, he expresses willingness to treat personally and individually with his men. But he will not tolerate interference "with my business" on the part of the workmen's agent, whom he calls "an agitator from Chicago."

WHY should he feel so badly about it?

If the Pennsylvania workman is willing to let a NEWPORT man manage the capitalistic end, should not that Newport man allow a CHICAGO labor leader to manage the labor end?

Is not one explanation the fact that the owner considers his workmen, in every possible respect, financially, morally, legally, ethically and eternally, his inferiors?

If one mine owner disagrees with another, each will treat with the other's chosen agent, whether he be Tom Reed, corporation lawyer from Maine; Joe Choate, corporation lawyer from New York, or Levy, corporation lawyer from Chicago.

Why not accord to the workman the right to choose his accredited representative?

So much for the much-talked-of "interference in MY business by labor agitators."

What about the interests of the country? There are in Pennsylvania, let us say, one hundred square miles of coal lands OWNED BY ONE MAN, and WORKED BY TEN THOUSAND MEN.

The working of this mining region develops an annual net profit, perhaps, of five million dollars, AFTER the workmen have been paid as little as they will work for.

The owner lives in a house of a hundred rooms.

The miner's family lives in two rooms. The owner has a yacht, a private car, a fast automobile, fine carriages, many servants.

The miner WALKS. He has a wife who cooks, sews, scrubs, washes, mends while he and his boys work in the mines.

We wish to arouse no "maudlin sympathy" for the miner, no "anarchist loathing" of the owner.

We ask an answer to this question:

Which would be better for America: to let one man have five millions a year, and keep ten thousand men on the edge of want; or to let the one (and, if you choose, SUPERIOR) man have one million a year, and divide the four millions among ten thousand families, adding four hundred dollars to the income of each family? That is a plain, simple question.

Remember, we suggest and advocate no COMPULSION. We state a situation. The STRIKER is trying to get a little more for himself and family. The OWNER is trying to keep the vast sum for himself and his family. Each is convinced of the righteousness of his cause. The striker does not try to TAKE AWAY money or property from the owner. He simply strikes, saying:

"I will not work for less than such a sum, unless you starve me into working."

He calls upon YOU, the public, to give him moral support. He entreats other workmen not to take his place while he strikes.

It is for YOU, the public, and for YOU, the idle, hard-pressed workmen, to answer conscientiously the question:

Is it better for one man to have four extra MILLIONS a year, or for each of ten thousand families to have four extra HUNDREDS a year, that they need sadly and sorely?

If this question were answered as Christ would answer it, there would be no smug respectabilities scoffing at the striker. There would be no heartless scabs taking the places of men struggling to support wives and children.

Leave out sentimentality, if you will, and Christianity, and our hollow pretence of following Him who called every poor man "my brother."

What about the cold utility? Four millions more for an owner mean what?

Some bogus antiquities, and perhaps a bogus title brought to America.

Another palace, with a dissatisfied owner.

A dissipated son; money spent by this son to promote vice, and by the father to corrupt legislation. Four hundred dollars more for a workman's family mean wholesome food for children. And the children go to school and have a chance.

This sum means a self-respecting life for a father, and for the mother it means everything. She can hire some woman to help her when her babies come. She can give her husband and her children good food, rejoice in their comfort, add good, healthy citizens to the nation. ----

The owner in his struggle makes various statements of which only a few must be answered, and very briefly, for the sake of the impatient reader.

"If capital goes on granting the demands of union labor there will be no more capital, no more big manufactures, our prosperity will die as England's prosperity is dying--killed by union labor!"

Thus speaks the indignant, would-be patriotic and unselfish capitalist. Let us see:

What becomes of the established FACT that a nation is prosperous in proportion as the average individual citizen (NOT its few millionaires) is prosperous? There are nowhere on earth stronger labor unions than in the United States. There are no such unions in Mexico, none such in South America, none as powerful in Canada. Why are we not eclipsed industrially by those countries?

You say that labor unions have killed English industry? No. They have kept England alive in the face of fierce competition. Millions upon millions of Englishmen live on a little foggy northern island incapable of supporting them. By their courage, their mental power, their genius, their UNION, they have kept the nation great. It is as though in one corner of New York State we had the greatest industrial power on earth. What the Gulf Stream has been to England's agriculture, labor unionism has been to England's industry.

It is not the English WORKINGMAN who has been beaten. The English workmen did not sell the English mercantile navy to J.P. Morgan. English capitalists did that.

Get this in your heads, you who talk against unions. Morgan and his fellow American capitalists have formed themselves into financial UNIONS, which we call trusts. And they have beaten the English capitalist, who did not know enough to take lessons from his workman and form unions of his own.

The American FINANCIAL union, not the English LABOR union, has beaten England in the race for industrial supremacy.

Union is strength everywhere and forever. The remaining strength of England is in her labor unions, which give men time to think, food to grow on, and give real men to the nation. You say that powerful unions kill nations.

Why is not China a great industrial power?

She has vast fortunes and no unions. Li Hung Chang was richer than Morgan, and could cut off the head of any striker. His coolies got five cents a day and worked fourteen hours--is THAT your ideal system? ----

Last of all (and we apologize for this unforgivably long editorial), let us discuss the question of foreign labor. The capitalist complains that the Hungarian, "the brutal, ignorant foreigner," makes much of the trouble, and "wants as much as an American."

Loud is this cry against the foreign laborer. And the ignorant, know-nothing American workman joins in the cry only too willingly.

Who brings in those foreign laborers by the shipload, Mr. Mineowner?

Who rounds up cargoes of Slavs on the other side and brings them here to cut the wages and the living of the native-born?

Who shrieks dolefully, Mr. Miner, when the Slav shows that he is a MAN brave and willing to prove worthy of freedom by joining the army of union labor?

The Slav and the Hungarian ARE HERE, and their children will be here when we are dead.

Which is better, to underpay them, treat them like cattle, fill them with just hatred of unjust discrimination, or give them a chance to be men?

Shall their children grow up ignorant mine slaves? Or shall they go to that factory of honest citizenship--the public school--to be improved as we have all been improved, whether we came originally from Hungary, Ireland, England, France, Russia, or elsewhere?

The struggle of the strikers, like all great struggles, is sometimes unjust. It has not always the wisest or the most unselfish leaders.

But it is an effort to improve the AVERAGE CONDITION OF HUMANITY. Help that effort.

"LIMITING THE AMOUNT OF A DAY'S WORK" THERE'S A GOOD DEAL OF NONSENSE TALKED ON THIS SUBJECT

An honest, well-meaning clergyman talked the other day on labor unions, and wandered out of his depth. As a rule, clergymen, having studied the teachings of Christ, are aware that they ought to be on the side of the workingman. Hence the strongest supporters of the union are found among the clergy.

The mistake of the clergyman whom we mention is discussed here, because it is often made by well-meaning, but narrow-minded, citizens.

He spoke of "the custom union labor has of limiting a day's work AND OTHER DISHONEST PRACTICES."

By limiting a day's work, the reverend gentleman referred to the rule existing in certain unions regulating the maximum day's labor.

That rule does exist, and sometimes undoubtedly--labor union men not being angels or cherubim--the rule may be pushed to extremes.

But on the whole the rule is necessary, and it works for good.

We shall tell this clergyman and other citizens one special reason for limiting the day's work.

The contractors want to make all the money they can. When the unions forced them into recognition of certain hours of labor as constituting a day's work, THAT was looked upon as a dishonest practice. It was felt in the old days that a workman should be only too glad to get out of bed at daybreak and work until dark. Now even the stupidest and most selfish have come to recognize limited hours as a feature of American industry. And the enlightened gladly admit that the well-paid, well-rested, independent worker usually does more in his eight or nine hours than he used to do in his twelve or fourteen.

After the inauguration of the limited-hour day the contractors invented what is known as a "rusher."

The "rusher" is a young workman, in his prime, marvellously quick in his work as compared with the ordinary, good, capable workman.

On a job of bricklaying, carpentering, or other work, it was customary for the shrewd contractor to hire one or more "rushers." Nominally the "rusher" was paid regular union wages. But secretly the contractor paid him double wages, or more than double wages. The "rusher" worked at high pressure hour after hour, day after day. The others could not possibly have kept up with him had he worked his fastest. But his instructions were to keep just a little ahead, that the others might struggle and do their best to keep even in their task, in order not to lose their work for apparent idleness. Thus the "rusher," a man of unusual skill, getting double wages, went along well within his forces, while the others were working themselves to death in order to keep up and not lose their jobs.

The limitation of the day's output is based originally on the desire to squelch this "rusher" idea, or to put the quietus on the very young and able workman anxious to curry favor with his "boss" by making the pace too hot for the men working beside him.

----

Our friend, the clergyman, and many others say that it is dishonest to limit the day's output. But is it dishonest? What is the difference between limiting the DAY'S output and limiting a YEAR'S output?

In the middle of the Summer the clergyman says, "I have worked enough; I ought to go to Europe," and he goes.

The bricklayer does not criticise the clergyman for limiting his YEAR'S output to forty sermons. He does not say to him, "You are ABLE to preach fifty-two sermons a year. If you preach only forty, you are dishonest and rob your parishioners."

What business is it of the clergyman's if the bricklayers, among themselves, decide that it is better for them in the long run to set only a given number of brick per day?

The trouble with some clergymen and many others is that they forget one important thing--namely, THAT THE WORKINGMEN NOW HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY.

When it comes to a question of laying brick, it is no longer the squire or the local clergyman who decides what shall be done. The BRICKLAYER DECIDES WHAT SHALL BE DONE.

And when it comes to carpenter work, the CARPENTER decides what shall constitute a day's work.

In olden times the clergymen, the lawyers, the rich, the lucky class in general, decided for THEMSELVES what THEY should do, and then they decided for their so-called inferiors what those INFERIORS should do.

Our prosperous class are having a very painful time indeed getting into their minds the fact that such a thing as the right of the majority REALLY EXISTS. And they find it very hard indeed to believe that the doctrine of human equality is to be taken seriously in matters of business.

Labor unions are performing an important educational function when they drive into the heads of these would-be superiors the fact that this nation is becoming actually a republic in which the workingmen shall decide for themselves questions affecting themselves, and in which they shall no longer be guided by the whims or financial interests of would-be "superiors."

CATCHING A RED-HOT BOLT

Men were working on the roof of a Pennsylvania ferryhouse, overhanging the North River on the Jersey side.

The passengers on one of the big ferryboats watched with admiration the work of the fearless young mechanics.

The men stood on a board not more than a foot wide. They had nothing to hold to. Sixty feet below them was a mass of rough piles. A misstep would have meant death.

One of the men, standing perfectly at ease on his narrow ledge, swung a heavy sledge-hammer, while the other held in place the bolt to be driven home in the iron-work. ----

The work on that bolt was finished, and one of the young men, a wiry giant over six feet tall, picked up in his arms a small wooden keg which stood on the board beside him. It was a keg such as nails are packed in. About forty feet away from the bridge, up among the iron beams, a smith was at work heating the bolts red-hot.

This smith saw the young man on the narrow board holding the wooden keg in his arms. He knew that another bolt was needed.

The bolt, white-hot, was seized with a pair of tongs, thrown violently through the air, sending off a shower of white sparks as it went.

As the white bolt shot toward the metal worker, he held out the wooden keg in a matter-of-fact way, caught the bolt, picked it out of the keg with a pair of pincers, and soon the heavy sledge- hammer was at work driving the metal, still white-hot, into the hole. ----

Passengers who make their living in a less exciting way watched with great excitement as one after another of these heavy red-hot bolts came flying through the air, each in its turn caught by the mechanic standing on the narrow board.

If the bolt had struck or burned him, he must almost inevitably have fallen. He must have fallen had he made a misstep reaching out the wooden keg to catch the flying iron.

Among those who watched him were very prosperous men come in from the seaside on the flying express, bound for Wall Street. These men were sorry when their boat pulled out, so deeply interested were they in the skill and courage of the mechanics working so high up on so narrow a footing.

If their opinion had been asked then and there they would have said that no reasonable rate of pay would be too high for such mechanics, and that eight hours of work catching red-hot bolts and driving them home, on a narrow plank sixty feet in the air, ought to be considered a fair day's work.

We trust that if these men read in the future that the structural iron-workers or the house-smiths are striking for a little more pay and for eight hours' work they will remember those men working on the ferryhouse, and remember that all of these iron-workers, like all miners, and many others, earn their bread at the risk of their lives.

We hope that those who watched the red-hot bolts flying through the air will remember their sensations when they hear of a strike among those men, and not say, as they usually do:

"The impudence of union labor must be suppressed. The men are lazy; that's what's the matter with them. It is all nonsense to talk about working eight hours. Union labor, if it keeps on, will ruin this country's commercial supremacy." ----

The trouble with human beings is that their lives are widely separated and sympathy is killed by ignorance.

The banker does not see, therefore cannot appreciate, the courage of the man working on an iron beam at the top of a steel frame 300 feet in the air.

The mechanic cannot understand, and therefore cannot appreciate, the worry, the mental stress of the money man, who must make ends meet, pay bills, arrange mortgages, find tenants and settle his union troubles at the same time.

Better acquaintance with each other is what human beings need.

It would be well if more very rich men had seen that young mechanic catching his red-hot bolts.

It would be well if more young mechanics who like their beefsteak and onions could see John D. Rockefeller sipping his glass of milk and seltzer (his whole dinner), or know what Rockefeller feels when he lies awake half the night. He has found pretty well-paid employment for a hundred thousand men who sleep soundly while he tosses and turns and feels the weight of a ton on his chest.

THE TRUSTS AND THE UNION-- HOW DO THEY DIFFER?

A letter signed "Several Democrats from St. Paul" reads, in part, as follows:

"In order to convert several rank Republicans it is necessary that we should be able to explain the difference between a trust and a labor union. Will you kindly, through your columns, make a clear explanation of this distinction? Our opponents holdthat both trusts and unions are combinations, which appears to be true, but there is apparently a weak point in our ability to definitely show the difference, and we beg that you explain it." ----

Trusts and unions are both combinations, beyond question. But a pronounced difference distinguishes them, and we shall endeavor to make it clear.

You see a horse after a hard day's work grazing in a swampy meadow. He has done his duty and is getting what he can in return.

On the horse's flank you may see a leach sucking blood.

The LEACH is the trust.

The HORSE is the labor UNION.

Possibly you have read "Sindbad the Sailor," with its story of the Old Alan of the Sea. The Old Man of the Sea rode round on the sailor's back squeezing his neck with his tightly twisted legs.

The OLD MAN is the TRUST.

The SAILOR is the labor UNION. ----

In Chicago two combinations are fighting. One is a combination of citizens--the Citizens' Union. The other is a combination of public robbers--the Gas Trust. Each combination is trying to get what it wants. Surely you can see the difference between the two combinations.

The citizens are striving in a purely legitimate way to obtain their RIGHTS.

Similarly, Labor Unions, when soundly organized, are striving properly and legitimately to obtain their RIGHTS.

Gas Trusts and other Trusts endeavor improperly and illegitimately to obtain what does not belong to them. ----

In old times, on the high seas, there were two classes of vessels. The great majority were honest vessels of commerce, doing good to the world, while striving, of course, to benefit their crews and owners.

Those honest SHIPS were the Labor UNIONS. On the same waters there sailed other ships--fast, daring--manned by unscrupulous, although able, men.

Those were the pirate ships.

The TRUSTS compared to Labor UNIONS are the pirate ships compared to honest ships of commerce.

FRANCE HAS LEARNED HER LESSON

The employes on the Paris underground railroad had a strike and have settled their strike.

The terms of the settlement amaze the outside world. The terms are especially amazing to the American--and well they may be.

The employes of the underground railroad in Paris are GOVERNMENT employes.

Their strike inconvenienced the public, and even the radical French people were annoyed with the strikers.

In other European countries and in this country, as the news reports very truly say, the strike of those Government employes would have been dealt with very summarily. Three engines of civilization would have been brought into play effectively.

"First the police, second the cavalry, third Gatling guns." ----

But the police, the cavalry and guns were tried on the French people long ago, and that little matter was fought out and settled. The men who govern France know that at a certain stage in the proceedings a courageous people will not stand Gatling guns, cavalry or police. They have found out in France that the way to deal with striking workmen is just the way the Government official would like to be dealt with himself if he were a striking workman instead of a well-paid public officer.

The striking men complained that their day's work was too long and their pay too small. The pay was increased and the day shortened--which was perfectly right.

Each employe is now allowed one day off in seven, and ten days' vacation every year with full pay--which is perfectly right.

The young men employed on the road are compelled to do twenty days' work in the army each year. Their wages are paid while they are doing this compulsory military work--which is perfectly right.

If a man is ill through no fault or vice of his own he gets his pay as long as he is ill up to three hundred and sixty-five days, and the company in whose service he has become ill pays his doctor's bill, his drug store bill and any extra expenses involved--which is perfectly just and fair.

No striker is to be dismissed because of having taken part in the strike. A benefit fund is provided for the employes of this Government enterprise--and the company pays the membership subscription to the benefit fund with NO DEDUCTION FROM THE WORKMEN'S PAY.

The above seems a horrible narrative to the energetic American exploiter of labor.

It would have seemed very stupid, in fact quite incomprehensible, to the French Government at any time before the Revolution.

But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation is agitated. The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of working people, and that foundation the French have learned to respect and treat well.

We shall learn as much here some day. Let us hope we shall learn it more peaceably than the French did.

UNION MEN AS SLAVE OWNERS WHAT PLANS HAS THE FIVE-DOLLAR-A-DAY MAN MADE TO HELP HIS POORER FELLOW-CREATURES?

Every addition within reason to wages, every reasonable reduction of working hours, must help the whole nation. Working human beings have been looked upon through the ages as slaves, either on an actual slave-owning basis or on an insufficient wage basis--which is about the same thing. Each recognition of the worker's rights moves us a little farther from slave days. Every time a new class earns decent treatment by hard fighting we see increased the number of those who may properly be called men.

The blind employer asks: "Shall men be allowed to fix their own wages?"

OF COURSE they shall. And until they do fix their own wages they are not men at all. The ox does not fix his hours of labor or the quantity of his corn. But the man does. The man controlled like an ox is nearer an ox than a man.

We delight in the efforts of unions. We are advocates of every movement that tends to divide among a still larger class the good things of the world.

But this newspaper is no mere labor union organ. We care more for the welfare of the humblest, non-organized, underpaid, underfed citizen than for the finest, most highly paid, most intelligent mechanic.

The man who is least well off needs our help most. He needs, above all men, some practical PROOF that he lives where men are equal. He should be the object of earnest thought on the part of the five-dollar-a-day man.

It is the five-dollar-a-day man, the able mechanic, whom we address to-day: ----

Many of your thoughts and words, Mr. Five-Dollar Man, are devoted to plutocrats. You are not free from envy. You consider, and with perfect justice, that you do not--even with your five dollars--get your share of the world's good things.

But, for a change to-day, will you look DOWN instead of UP? You work hard at five dollars per day "to fatten in comfort the happy millionaire employer." All right; admitted.

But did you ever think who works hard to fatten YOU?

Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very numerous and decided plutocrat? Do you ever wonder what you will answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand eight hours and fair wages of YOU?

You keep a servant girl to help your wife. Does she work eight hours a day? No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal of grumbling because she does not do better. Does she get union wages? No; she gets about thirty cents a day. Does she get double pay on holidays? Can she put on any substitute if she chooses to wander off for two or three days a week?

The woman who works to make your life comfortable works just as many hours as you can make her work, and she gets just as little pay as you can get her to take. Is that all right? ----

And the servant girl is not the only one. Some farmer's hand works to raise the wheat, the potatoes that you eat. What is he paid? What are his hours? Fifty cents a day, twelve or fourteen hours of work. And your bootmaker in the factory, and the sweat-shop slave who makes your coat, and the long list of other poor devils who work for about one-tenth of your salary. Do you know why you are comparatively well off? Simply because the man for whom YOU work pays you ten times as much as you pay the men and women who work for YOU.

You pay indirectly? True. But what difference does that make? You are well-to-do because you purchase without question the product of men who are really slaves. You have brains, and by combination have FORCED your employer to treat you decently. Yes, and you deserve credit. But you are not fundamentally superior to the other men around you. What are you going to do when they demand treatment as good as yours? What are you going to reply when they class you with the other plutocrats?

You enjoy the work of only ten or twenty underpaid men--that is so. But you are in the same class with the plutocrat who enjoys the profit on the work of ten or twenty thousand men.

Utter disregard of others--where it does not affect your own wages--is your rule, and you know it. What better joke is there than the joke about the union label? How many hats on your rack have union labels in them? How many of you can swear no sweatshop ever saw your clothes? How many of you would apologize for not offering your friend a "union-made" cigar?

It is the nature of man to think earnestly of only one thing at a time. If one pursuit really engrosses his attention he has little time to think of anything else. In the hard struggle for a living the workingman has little time for any thought save for his OWN wage, his OWN stomach, his OWN welfare.

As union men you will continue to struggle for your five dollars a day--restricting apprentices, that others may be shut out from your field; opposing changes threatening you, however beneficial they may be generally.

But as individuals you must THINK. You study, and, being free from the grind of real poverty, you should be less hardened than the unfortunate, and inclined to feel for others.

You have made a good fight against the slavery that used to oppress you. In England you destroyed mills, endured shooting and hanging. All over the world, by hard fighting and wise voting, you have established the fact that the top class of mechanics must no longer be treated as cattle.

Now, what are you going to do for the others who are still cattle? You have demanded in the name of holy justice that others help you. In the same name, what do you propose to do for those still oppressed? Will you use your big voting power for the millions who are still at the bottom?

Will you combine for the benefit of the vast army as you have combined for your OWN benefit?

Or will you wait--as did the employers--to be FORCED into decency? Will you free your own collection of underpaid, overworked slaves, or wait for them to organize and beat you into decency, as your representatives did with your oppressors long ago?

Take a look downward once in a while. Study those below you. Glance over your own little collection of "wage slaves" in your kitchen and wherever your money is spent.

There is a problem there for you when you shall have finished hurrahing for your own eight hours.

AGAIN THE LIMITED DAY'S WORK WISELY HANDLED, IT MEANS EMANCIPATION FROM INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY.

We refer again to the much discussed rule in labor unions limiting the amount of work that a man shall do in a day. As a matter of fact, in many unions no such rule exists. In some it does exist, and MUST exist.

There is nothing in the notion that limiting the day's work will diminish the excellence of American workmen. On the contrary, the BEST work is done slowly and carefully. The WORST work is done at high speed.

That very aristocratic financier who denounces the regulations as to a day's output will say to the man who is doing something FOR HIM, "Take your time; I want this done very carefully."

Why should not EVERYBODY'S work be done carefully?

But it is not merely careful work that is involved in the regulating of the day's work. The welfare of the nation and of the nation's future is involved.

Go with the man who denounces labor unions for limiting the amount of work that a good American mechanic should do in one day, to the stable in which that man keeps his fine horses. You can easily bring about this dialogue:

"That mare in the box stall is a beautiful horse. Is she fast?"

Rich Owner--"Yes, very fast. I value her more highly than any horse I have. "

"How many miles do you drive her every day?"

"Oh, I don't drive her EVERY day. I drive her one day, and have her jogged quietly the next. When I do drive her, I jog her for two or three miles to warm her up, then speed her a mile or two, and then take her home. She covers perhaps six or seven miles in an entire day's work."

"But you COULD drive her twenty-five miles, couldn't you, and drive her as far as that EVERY day?"

"Oh, yes, I COULD, of course, if I was only thinking of using her up and getting all I could out of her now. But, you see, I mean to use her for a brood-mare; I expect to get some splendid colts from her, and I don't want to wear out her vitality. I might get a little more fun or a little more work out of her just now, BUT I WOULD LOSE IN THE LONG RUN." ----

Now, gentlemen, the labor union rule limiting a day's work simply considers the workingman as that imaginary rich person considers his beautiful horse.

And the feeling of the labor unions should be shared by the entire country.

The highly skilled American mechanic is one of the chief assets of this country; the intelligent, scientific, up-to-date American farmer is another highly important asset. These two classes of citizens ARE THE UNITED STATES. Between them they are more important than all the rest of the nation put together.

AND YET THEY ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS THEIR CHILDREN.

The workingman of to-day is the father of the future.

The trouble with us is that the employer, unlike the owner of the fine horses, has no interest in that workingman's future or in his future family.

He employs and treats the workingman as the casual heartless customer would treat that fine horse if it were rented by the day at a livery stable.

There is much to be said, no doubt, on the side of harassed employers, many of whom are fair-minded men, and many of whom are put to unjust annoyance by some of the labor unions' mistakes.

But, first of all, the employer must realize the RIGHTS and the EQUALITY of his workmen. And as a patriotic citizen he must realize that the welfare of the future is in the health and vitality of parents to-day.

By limiting the amount of work which they do in one day our mechanics enable themselves to preserve some of their vitality for mental work, for educating talks with their children. THEY GIVE TO THEIR CHILDREN THE VITALITY WHICH THE SWEATSHOP SLAVE CAN NEVER GIVE.

What are our laws against sweatshops but laws acknowledging the justice of regulating the amount of the day's work?

And why do we refuse to permit unions to do for themselves what we do on a sentimental, philanthropic, haphazard basis, through our "sweatshop laws," for the miserable, unorganized workers of the slums?

TO THE MERCHANTS PLEASE LISTEN PATIENTLY TO A DISCUSSION OF THE LABOR UNION FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW.

We invite the merchants to consider the question of unions and of high wages from THEIR OWN point of view.

If we err in our statements or conclusions we shall be glad to print replies and criticisms from responsible merchants over their own signatures.

This we maintain: THAT IN PROMOTING THE WELFARE AND INCREASING THE WAGES OF THE GREAT BODY OF WORKINGMEN, WE PROMOTE THE WELFARE AND INCREASE THE PROSPERITY OF ALL LEGITIMATE MERCHANTS AND BUSINESS MEN.

The unions make mistakes. The employers make mistakes. The unions are often unreasonable. The employers are unreasonable sometimes.

No doubt in America the workingman is more exacting and more highly paid than anywhere else.

But in America, also, the merchant is more quickly and numerously successful than anywhere else. ----

As a subject for our text to-day we shall take the street-car lines--surface, underground or elevated--of any great American city.

The success of every street-car system is made BY ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE CITY. Every woman who brings a baby into the world in a great city adds so much value to the stock of that city's street railroads. She increases the gross income of that railroad by about three dollars and sixty-five cents a year with each child to which she gives birth.

Therefore the street railroad should properly serve the public that gives the road its value.

Next in importance to the traveling public come the human beings that work on the street railroad--the conductors, motormen, gatemen, gripmen, engineers, etc.

This newspaper fights constantly to improve within reason the pay and the hours of work of the street railroad employes.