494. Epidemic of Strikes

Epidemic of Strikes

1Co_12:21 : ’93The eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of thee.’94

Fifty thousand workmen in Chicago ceasing work in one day; Brooklyn stunned by the attempt to halt its railroad cars; Cleveland in the throes of a labor agitation; and restlessness among toilers all over the land have caused an epidemic of strikes; and somewhat to better things I apply the Pauline thought of my text.

You have seen an elaborate piece of machinery with a thousand wheels and a thousand bands and a thousand pulleys all controlled by one great water-wheel, the machinery so adjusted that when you jar one part of it you jar all parts of it. Well, human society is a great piece of mechanism controlled by one great and ever-revolving force’97the wheel of God’92s providence. You harm one part of the machinery of society, and you harm all parts. All professions interdependent. All trades interdependent. All classes of people interdependent. Capital and labor interdependent. No such thing as independence. Dives cannot kick Lazarus without hurting his own foot. They who threw Shadrach into the furnace got their own bodies scorched. Or, to come back to the figure of the text, what a strange thing it would be if the eye should say, ’93I oversee the entire physical mechanism. I despise the other members of the body. If there is anything I am disgusted with it is with those miserable, low-lived hands.’94 Or, what if the hand should say, ’93I am the boss workman of the whole physical economy; I have no respect for the other members of the body. If there is anything I despise it is the eye seated under the dome of the forehead doing nothing but look.’94 I come in and wave the flag of truce between these two contestants, and I say: ’93The eye cannot say to the hand, ’91I have no need of thee.’92’93

That brings me to the first suggestion, and that is that Labor and Capital are to be brought to a better understanding by a complete canvass of the whole subject. They will be brought to peace when they find that they are identical in their interests. When one goes down, they both go down. When one rises, they both rise. There will be an equilibrium after a while. There never has been an exception to the rule. That which is good for one class of society eventually will be good for all classes of society, and that which is bad for one class of society will eventually prove to be bad for all. Every speech that Labor makes against Capital postpones the day of permanent adjustment. Every speech that Capital makes against Labor postpones the day of permanent adjustment. When Capital maligns Labor, it is the eye cursing the hand. When Labor maligns Capital, it is the hand cursing the eye. As far as I have observed, the vast majority of capitalists are successful laborers. If the capitalists would draw their glove, you would see the broken finger-nail, the scar of an old blister, the stiffened finger-joint. The great publishers of the country for the most part were bookbinders or typesetters on small pay. The great carriage manufacturers for the most part sandpapered wagon-bodies in wheelwright shops. While, on the other hand, in all our large manufacturing establishments you will find men on wages who once employed a hundred or five hundred hands. The distance between Capital and Labor is not a great gulf over which is swung a Niagara suspension bridge; it is only a step; and the capitalists are crossing over to become laborers, and the laborers are crossing over to become capitalists. Would God they might shake hands while they cross. On the other hand, laborers are the highest kind of capitalists. Where are their investments’97in banks? No. In the railroads? No. Their nerve, their muscle, their bone, their mechanical skill, their physical health are magnificent capital. He who has two eyes, two ears, two feet, two hands, ten fingers, has machinery that puts into nothingness carpet and screw and cotton factory, and all the other implements of the planet. The capitalists are laborers, the laborers are capitalists. The sooner we understand that the better.

Again, there is to come relief to the laboring classes of this country through co-operative associations. I am not at this moment speaking of trades unions, but of that plan by which laborers put their savings together and become their own capitalists. Instead of being dependent upon the beck of this capitalist or that capitalist, they manage their own affairs. In England and Wales there are eight hundred and thirteen co-operative associations. They have three hundred and forty thousand members, they have a capital equivalent to eighteen million dollars, and they do a business annually having a gross return of sixty-three million dollars. Thomas Brassey, one of the foremost men in the British Parliament, on the subject says: ’93Co-operation is the one and the only relief for the laboring populations. This is the path, I believe, by which they are to come up from the hand-to-mouth style of living to reap the rewards and the honors of our advanced civilization.’94 Lord Derby and John Stuart Mill, who gave half their lives to the study of the labor question, believed in co-operative institutions. The co-operative institution formed in Troy, New York, stood long enough to illustrate the fact that great good might come of such an institution if it were rightly carried on and mightily developed.

’93But,’94 says some one, ’93haven’92t these institutions sometimes been a failure?’94 Yes. Every great movement has been a failure at some time. Application of the steam power a failure, electro-telegraphy a failure, railroading a failure, but now the chief successes of the world.

’93But,’94 says some one, ’93why talk of savings being put by laborers into co-operative associations when the vast multitude of toilers of this country are struggling for their daily bread, and they have no surplus?’94 I reply: put into my hand the money spent by the laboring classes of America for rum and tobacco, and I will establish co-operative associations in all parts of this land, some of them mightier than any financial institutions of the country. We spend in this country over one hundred million dollars every year for tobacco. We spend over one billion five hundred million dollars directly or indirectly for rum. The laboring classes spend their share of this money. Now, suppose the laboring man who has been expending his money in those directions should just add up how much he has expended during these past few years; and then suppose that that money be put into a co-operative association; and then suppose he should have all his friends in toil, who had made the same kind of expenditure, do the same thing, and that should be added up and put into a co-operative association. And then take all that money expended for overdress and overstyle and overliving on the part of toiling people in order that they may appear as well as persons who have more income’97gather that all up, and you could have co-operative associations all over this land.

I am not saying anything now about trade-unions. You want to know what I think of trade-unions. I think they are most beneficial in some directions, and they have a specific object; and in this day, when there are vast monopolies’97a thousand monopolies concentring the wealth of the people into the possession of a few men’97unless the laboring men of this country band together they will go under. There is a lawful use of a trade-union, but then there is an unlawful use of a trade-union. If it means sympathy in time of sickness, if it means finding work for people when they are out of work, if it means the improvement of the financial, the moral or the religious condition of the laboring classes, that is all right. Do not artists band together in an art-union? Do not singers band together in Handel and Haydn societies? Do not newspaper men band together in press clubs? Do not ministers of religion band together in conferences and associations? There is not in all the land a city where clergymen do not come together’97many of them once a week’97to talk over affairs. For these reasons you should not blame labor guilds. When they are doing their legitimate work they are most admirable; but when they come around with drum and fife and flag and drive people off from their toil, from their scaffoldings, from their factories, then they are nihilistic, then they are communistic, then they are barbaric, then they are a curse. If a man wants to stop work, let him stop work; but he cannot stop me from work.

But now suppose all the laboring classes banded together for beneficent purposes in co-operative association, under whatever name they put their means together. Suppose they take the money that they waste in rum and tobacco and use it for the elevation of their families, for the education of their children, for their moral, intellectual and religious improvement? What a different state of things we would have in this country, and they would have in Great Britain!

Do you not realize the fact that men work better without stimulant? You say, ’93Will you deny the laboring men this help which they get from strong drink, borne down as they are with many anxieties and exhausting work?’94 I would deny them nothing that is good for them. I would deny them strong drink, if I had the power, because it is damaging to them. My father said: ’93I became a temperance man in early life because I found that in the harvest-field, while I was naturally weaker than the other men, I could hold out longer than any of them. They took stimulant and I took none.’94

Everybody knows they cannot endure great fatigue’97men who indulge in stimulants. All our young men understand that. When they are preparing for the regatta or the ball club or the athletic wrestling they abstain from strong drink. Now, suppose all this money that is wasted were gathered together and put into co-operative institutions’97oh, we would have a very different state of things from what we have now!

I remark again, the laboring classes of this country are to find great relief when they learn’97all of them learn’97forecast and providence. Vast numbers of them put down their income and they put down their expenses, and if the income meets the expenses that is all that is necessary. I know laboring men who are in a perfect fidget until they have spent their last dollar. They fly around everywhere until they get it spent. A case came under my observation where a young man was receiving seven hundred dollars a year, and earned it by very hard work. The marriage day came. The bride had received five hundred dollars as an inheritance from her grandfather. She put the five hundred dollars in wedding equipment. Then the twain hired two rooms on the third story. Then this man, who had most arduous employment’97just as much as he could possibly endure’97got evening employment so he could earn a few dollars more; and by this extra evening employment almost extinguished his eyesight. Why did he take this extra evening employment? Was it to lay by something for a rainy day? No. Was it to get a life-insurance so that if he should die his wife would not be a pauper? No. It was for the one purpose of getting his wife a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar sealskin sacque! I am just giving you a fact I know. The sister of this woman, although she was a very poor girl, was not to be eclipsed; and so she went to work day and night, and toiled and toiled and toiled almost into the grave, until she got a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar sealskin sacque! Well, the news went abroad all through the street. Most of the people on that street were laboring, hardworking people, and they were not to be outshone in this way, and they all went to work in the same direction, and practically said, though not literally: ’93Though the heavens fall, we must have a sealskin sacque!’94

A clergyman in Iowa told me that his church and the entire neighborhood had been ruined by the fact that the people mortgaged their farms in order to go down to the Philadelphia Centennial, in 1876. First, one family would go, then another family; and finally it was not respectable not to go to the Centennial at Philadelphia, and they mortgaged their farms. The church and the neighborhood ruined in that way. Now, between such fools and pauperism there is only a very short step. In time of peace, prepare for war. In time of prosperity, prepare for adversity. Yet how many there are who drive on the verge of the precipice, and at the least touch of accident or sickness over they go. Ah! my friends, it is not right, it is not honest. He that provideth not for his own, and especially those of his own household, is worse than an infidel. A man has no right to live in luxury and have all comforts and all brightness around him’97taking his family with him at that rate’97everything bright and beautiful and luxuriant, until he stumbles against a tomb and falls in, and the family go to the poor-house. That is not common honesty. I am no advocate of skinflint saving; I abhor it. But I plead for Christian providence. There are some people who are disgusted if they see anything like economy, such as a man might show in turning down the gas in the parlor when he goes out. There are families actually embarrassed if you ring their door-bell before they have the hall lighted. There are people who apologize if you surprise them at the table. Now, it is mean or it is magnificent to save, just according to what you save for. If it is for the miserly hoarding of it, then it is despicable; but if it means better education for your children, if it means more house-help for your wife when she is not strong enough to do much work, if it means that the day of your death shall not be a horror beyond all endurance because it is to throw your family into disruption and annihilation and the poorhouse’97then it is magnificent, if it is to avoid all that.

Some of the older persons remember very well Abraham Van Nest, of New York, one of its Christian merchants. He was often called mean, because he calculated so closely. Why did he calculate closely? That he might have the more to give. There was not a Bible society, or a tract society or a reformatory institution in the city of New York but he had his hand in supporting it. He denied himself many luxuries that he might give to others the necessities. He has been many years reaping his reward in heaven; but I shall never forget the day when I, a green country lad, came to his house and spent the evening; and at the close of the evening, as I was departing, he accompanied me to the door, accompanied me to the steps, came down off the steps and said: ’93Here, De Witt, is forty dollars for books; don’92t say anything about it.’94 It is mean or it is magnificent to save, according as you save for a good or for a bad object.

I know there are many people who have much to say against savings-banks and life-insurances. I have to tell you that the vast majority of the homesteads of this country have been the result of such institutions; and I have to tell you also that the vast majority of the homesteads of the future for the laboring classes will be the result of such institutions. It will be a great day for the working classes of England and the United States when the workingman can buy a barrel of flour, instead of flour by the small sack; when he can buy a barrel of sugar, instead of sugar by the pound; when he can pay cash for coats and hats and shoes, rather than pay an additional amount for the reason that he has to get it all charged.

Again I remark, great relief is to come for the laboring classes of this country by perception on the part of employers that they had better take their employees into their confidence. I can see very easily, looking from my standpoint, what is the matter. Employees seeing the employer in seeming prosperity do not know all the straits, all the hardships, all the losses, all the annoyances. They look at him and they think, ’93Why, he has it easy and we have it hard.’94 They do not know that at that very moment the employer is at the last point of desperation to meet his engagements.

I know a gentleman very well who has over a thousand hands in his employ. I said to him some years ago, when there was great trouble in the labor market: ’93How are you getting on with your men?’94 ’93Oh,’94 he said, ’93I have no trouble.’94 ’93Why,’94 I said, ’93have not you had any strikes?’94 ’93Oh, no,’94 he said. ’93I never had any trouble.’94 ’93What plan do you pursue?’94 He said: ’93I will tell you. All my men know every year just how matters stand. Every litttle while I call them together and say, ’91Now, boys, last year I made so much; this year I made less; so you see I cannot pay you as much as I did last year. Now, I want to know what you think I ought to have as a percentage out of this establishment, and what wages I ought to give you. You know I put all my energy in this business, put all my fortune in it and risked everything. What do you really think I ought to have and you ought to have?’92 By the time we come out of that consultation we are unanimous; there never has been an exception. When we prosper we all prosper together; when we suffer, we all suffer together, and my men would die for me.’94 Now, let all employers be frank with their employees. Take them into your confidence. Let them know just how matters stand. There is an immense amount of common sense in the world. It is always safe to appeal to it.

I remark again: great relief will come to the laboring classes of this country through the religious ratification of it. Labor is honored and rewarded in proportion as a community is Christianized. Why is it that our smallest coin in this country is a penny, while in China it takes a half-dozen pieces of coin, or a dozen, to make one of our pennies in value, so the Chinese carry the cash, as they call it, like a string of beads around the neck? We never want to pay less than a penny for anything in this country. They must pay that which is worth only the sixth part or the twelfth part of a penny. Heathenism and iniquity and infidelity depress everything. The Gospel of Jesus Christ elevates everything. How do I account for this? I account for it with the plainest philosophy. The religion of Jesus Christ is a democratic religion. It tells the employer that he is a brother to all the operatives in his establishment’97made by the same God, to lie down in the same dust, and to be saved by the same supreme mercy. It does not make the slightest difference how much money you have, you cannot buy your way into the kingdom of heaven. If you have the grace of God in your heart, you will enter heaven. So you see it is a democratic religion. Saturate our populations with this Gospel, and labor will be respectful, labor will be rewarded, labor will be honored, capital will be Christian in all its behavior, and there will be higher tides of thrift setting in. Let me say a word to all capitalists: be your own executors. Make investments for eternity. Do not be like some of those capitalists I know who walk around among their employees with a supercilious air, or drive up to the factory in a manner which seems to indicate they are the autocrat of the universe with the sun and the moon in their vest pockets, chiefly anxious when they go among laboring men not to be touched by the greasy or smirched hand and have their broadcloth injured. Be a Christian employer. Remember those who are under your charge are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh; that Jesus Christ died for them and that they are immortal. Divide up your estates, or portions of them, for the relief of the world before you leave it. Do not go out of the world like that man died in New York, leaving in his will forty million dollars, yet giving how much to the Church of God? how much for the alleviation of human suffering? He gave some money a little while before he died; that was well. But in all this will of forty million dollars how much? One million? No. Five hundred thousand? No. One hundred dollars? No. Two cents? No. One cent? No. These great cities groaning in anguish, nations crying out for the bread of everlasting life. A man in a will giving forty million dollars, and not one cent to God! It is a disgrace to our civilization. Or, as illustrated in a letter which I have concerning a man who departed this life leaving between five and eight million of dollars. Not one dollar was left, this writer says, to comfort the aged workmen and workwomen, not one dollar to elevate and instruct the hundreds of pale children who stifled their childish growth in the heat and clamor of his factory. Is it strange that the curse of the children of toil follow such ingratitude? How well could one of his many millions have been disbursed for the present and the future benefit of those whose hands had woven literally the fabric of the dead man’92s princely fortune! Oh, capitalists of the United States, be your own executors. Be a George Peabody, if need be, on a small scale. God has made you a steward; discharge your responsibility.

My word is to all laboring men in this country: I congratulate you at your brightening prospects. I congratulate you on the fact that you are getting your representatives at Albany, at Harrisburg and at Washington. I have only to mention such a man of the past as Henry Wilson, the shoemaker; as Andrew Johnson, the tailor; as Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter. The living illustrations easily occur to you. This will go on until you will have representatives at all the headquarters, and you will have full justice. Mark that. I congratulate you also on the opportunities for your children. I congratulate you that you have to work, and that when you are dead your children will have to work.

I also congratulate you because your work is only prefatory and introductory. You want the grace of Jesus Christ, the carpenter of Nazareth. He toiled himself, and he knows how to sympathize with all who toil. Get his grace in your heart and you can sing on the scaffolding amid the storm, in the shop shoving the plane, in the mine plunging the crowbar, on shipboard climbing the ratlines. He will make the drops of sweat on your brow glittering pearls for the eternal coronet. Are you tired, he will rest you. Are you sick, he will give you help. Are you cold, he will wrap you in the mantle of his love. Who are they before the Throne. ’93Ah!’94 you say, ’93their hands were never calloused with toil.’94 Yes, they were. You say, ’93Their feet were never blistered with the long journey.’94 Yes, they were; but Christ raised them to that high eminence. Who are these? ’93These are they that came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.’94 That for every Christian working man and for every Christian working woman will be the beginning of eternal holiday.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage