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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW,
When they strike a village like ours, where we
have over 1550 children who oughtto go to school and
have only one school house that can accommodate
not more than 100 children ; when the principal of
ourschool has to hire out to the farmer during har-
vest time, to make hay at $2 a day, because he can't
live on the scant salary allowed him ; when the trus-
tees of the school district are obliged to hire girls of
fourteen and and fifteen years to teach our boys, be-
cause those girls are willing to teach for S3 a week,
such teaching as you can expect of a mere child,
because the school taxes have to be paid by the hard-
working farmers and working men, who both, per-
haps, have all they can do to pay the interests of
mortgages on their homesteads ; when they will see
that you, the workingmen of this place had to club
together to form a school society, simply for the pur-
pose of securing only the most necessary schooling
for your children ; when they see that you pay vol-
untarily, besides your regular school takes from 10c.
to one dollar and more each month into the treasury
of that school society; whun these gentlemen see all
this ; when they find a similar state of affairs almost
everywhere, except in large cities, I have no doubt
that some of them would come back to Washington
with an idea that it might not be amiss to start a Na-
tional School Commission; start National Teachers
Seminaries, and spend millions of dollars every year
for the education of the poor men's children, and
keep vigilant officers employed who will see that the
children do attend the school, or the parents be pro-
perly called to account, if this has been neglected.
I assure you, if either of the great parties, both of
which are so sorely in need of an issue for the coming
campaign, would take such a movement in its charge
and carry it to a successful conclusion, we would see
and hear very little in future of labor troubles. Every
attempt in any other direction to solve the problem
of the existing "Social Question " will prove a fail-
ure.
Mr. Henry George may proach his doctrines in
every city, village or hamlet, the workingmen may or-
ganize under any name whatever, it will avail noth-
ing, as experience has proved.
The order of the Knights of Labor, which for a
while was looked upon as a timoly organization for
the benefit of wage earners, to guard their rights
against overbearing capitalists and monopolies, soon
became the curse of the country.
As it has always been thu case, and history teaches
it for thousands of years, well-meaning but sanguine
men, who had the welfare of the wage earners really
and honestly at heart, started movements or organi-
zations, by or through which they hoped the working
people would be benefited. Hut these leaders, if hon-
est, forget that the great majority of our wage earn-
ers are lacking the necessary education to understand
their theories and teachings, and that in time of trou-
ble the bad element always will get the upper hand,
and will load the masses to acts of violence, and, in
consequenee, the honest friend of the workingmen is
then pushed aside, the demagogue, the adventurer
takes his place and harangues the masses with shal-
low, but "talking " phrases.
During the late troubles we heard a great deal
about the " right to live." It is one of those talking
phrases of the demagogue : "the right to live." Yes,
every one has the right to live like the Indian, who
never works and yet lives. The right to live nature
grants us, but if we wish to enjoy comfort we must
work, and the more we work, or, rather, the greater
value the work which we perform has In the markets
(because of our ability, our knowledge) the greater
will be the benefit which we derive, the more com-
fort and even luxuries we may enjoy.
These demagogues are doing their best to create
what we have thus far not known here, classes of
people, in the European sense of the word.
It fits their plans to make the workingnien first
feel miserable, for it is their only one step to make
him desperate, and desperate men these dema-
gogues must have to accomplish their objects, name-
ly: to throw everything into confusion so that they
may personally gain advantages by fishing in the
dark and put themselves into power.
Look back at the strikes that have taken place
during the past year. Who has suffered by them ?
The workingman, whilst the Mr. Walking Delegate
and Committee man drew $5 and more per day, be-
sides his traveling expenses. I am confident that if
an honest count could be taken, we would find that
nine-tenths of all the workingmen who engaged in
strikes, did so against their own freewill and against
their better co ivictions, and were frightened and
bulldozed into obeying the commands of those $5 a
day adventurers, who cannot make an easy living
except when their is a strike or trouble.
I do not want to bore you with reading statistics of
the losses suffered by the workingmen during these
strikes. They are simply immense and can never be
made up again.
While these agitators lay so much stress on the
doctrine that every man has the right to live, they
will not accede to the free-born man the right to
work, as has been illustrated in those great railroad
strikes. They ordered thousands of men to lay down
their tools and lose their wages, because one or more
men who were employed by the railroad company or
mill owner who did not belong to and would not join
their secret society, and thereby sell their manhood
and personal liberty.
Not only did they deny to the outsider the right to
earn daily bread for his family, they went further
and by intimidation and force frightened those who
wore willing to work under the conditions to which
they (the strikers) objected.
Tell me, have only the Knights of Labor and union
men a right to live and work, and nobody else?
Have they a right to monopolize every branch of
trade? If so, why not turn back the wheel of pro-
gress, and sink into the darkness and misery of the
fifteenth century? Demolish your machines, blow up
your boilers, destroy your railroads, cut down tele-
graph wires, smash the electric lights, and live in
that blessed darkness again, where there were class-
es such as they are trying to create again, where the
workingman was treated like a brute, where the road
to prosperity was blocked to every poor man, and no
matter how intelligent, how Industrious he was, if he
was born poor he belonged to the lower class and wa»
doomed to stay there for his lifetime, and his chil-
dren and his children's children had no better
prospect.
And why? Because the guilds, the trade unions
and the knights of labor of those days were just as
tyrannical and despotic as their miserable epigones
of the present day. They would m t allow a man to
make a shoe unless he belonged duly to their guild,
and when these guilds became powerful they dictat-
ed laws according to which, in each town, only a lim-
ited number of mechanics designated by them,
licensed by them as you may say, could follow a cer-
tain trade. The rest of the workingmen could starve
to death or quit the country. They had no place for
them, and hence we see that for hundreds of years
mankind lived in ignorance and misery, because the
poor man had no chance to better his condition, the
right to do so being denied him by his own brethren.
Exactly the same state of affairs all the present 11-
bor organizations are either trying to establish, or un-
knowingly drifting towards. The knights and union
men say nobody can get employment unless he is a
member, and has sworn allegiance to their doctrines,
and obedience to their laws; where they have the
power, they dictate to their employer that he must
not take any apprentice to learn their trade, because
there are enough already following their trade in their
opinion, an they do not care what becomes of the
coming generation, their own children.
Do you desire to return to that again? If so, keep
up the cry of the classes. I have heard some of those
very smart agitators, who learned nothing and forgot
nothing, say we had classes already.
They argue that because we have some rich, yes
very rich people in this country, and also some poor,
very poor people, as a matter of course, the rich take
care that the poor shall always remain poor. But who
are the rich of this country? By the thousands, nay,
hundreds of thousands, I can count the rich of the
present day who were born poor and have worked
their way up simply and only by the strength of their
energy, ability, thrift, economy, aided by the free in-
stitutions of this great Kepublic.
Just twenty years ago I stood In New York city
penniless and friendless, a mere lad but eighteen
years of age. I was poorer than the poorest of you,
because I was a stranger in this counnry, did not un-
derstand the language, had no one to guide me. But
I had two strong arms, and that is all anybody needs
in this country to keep the wolf from the door.
Some of you have seen the small beginnings of the
business which I have built up. Every one of you
had the same chance, every one of you has the
same chance this very day, if he has the ability
for I was not aided by capital, capital in the sense of
the walking delegates interpretation had nothing
whatever to do with my success. Work, hard work
and economy was my only capital. I sold my work,
my knowledge, always at the highest price obtaina-
ble; and if there is one amongst you who works In
my factories at less wages than he can get elsewhere,
I say to him he is a fool if he stays here another
day, because he is not making the best use of his
capital.
Every one of you is in possession of that capital to-
day, and if every one of you does not succeed as
well as I did, he can certainly not blame our laws and
institutions or our order of things. The fact that
thousands of poor men made their marks, built
up large enterprises, accumulated wealth, furnishes
proof that our institutions are thoroughly democra-
tic, that the Utopia which the agitators promise is an
utter impossibility; I will show you that in a few
words, I think, to your entire satisfaction. When I
started the pension fund for your benefit several
years ago, the New York Volkazeitung, an anarchistic,
socialistic German newspaper noticed it in its editori-
al columns and called me a "white raven" among the
capitalists, and in the same breath cautioned my
workmen not to omit to inspect my books carefully,
as I might cheat them.
I could not help smiling. Knowing the editor to be
an ordinarily clever fellow, I did not think for a mo-
ment that ignorance had prompted these lines; it was
malice, pure and simple.
Imagine yourself coming to my office and demand-
ing my books for inspection, threatening me with a
strike; or, more in harmony with the anarchists,
threatening the destruction of my machinery, build-
ings, etc., if I refused your demand.
Supposing now, further, that you were solidly or-
ganized, bound to one another by solemn oath, de-
termined to carry your point at all hazard ; and sup-
posing, furthermore, that I would be so miserable a
coward as to lose all courage and give up all and
everything to you, the machinery and the whole
property; or, if you please to take it milder, suppo ;-
ing you organize and say to me, we demand an in-
terest in your busines-, we want our share of the
profits, we will not allow you to pocket all, tee are
really the men that earn the money, and demand that
you accept us as partners. Or milder yet, suppose
you come to me and tell me that in your opinion I am
depriving you of your true earnings and pay you only
a share, keeping the balance unjustly to myself; you
propose to form, according to socialistic principles,
a company in which each workingman has equal right,
equal share of the profits—in fact, a company which
runs the entire concern simply and only for the equal
benefit of each workingniau employed in the concern.
This would naturally constitute every one his own
boss, and you would be a company of 500 to 600 boss-
es. You would, as honest men, not take my property
from me, but you would allow a certain rent and per.
haps finally ask me to remain as manager with you,
on equal shares with the most unskilled workingman
we have. Suppose all this.
I would certainly refuse such an offer and would
tell you that I consider my services worth at least
$25,000 per year—at least that is what I could earn
elsewhere—and as true socialists you must admit
that I have a right to sell my labor at the highest
price that can be obtained. You, would, therefore,
dispense with my services and choose some one from
your midst as a manager. But who can manage six
hundred bosses, pray? Naturally, some one would
be willing if it were only for the glory of the thing,
to accept that position. Do you think you would
make as good felt, as good shoes, when everybody Is
boss, as you are making now? Do you believe that
the money would be as promptly at hand when pay-
day comes, as now? Do you suppose the factory
would be managed. profitably enough by all those
bosses so that you could draw the same wages as
now? No, gentlemen; your first yearly business
meeting would be a sad affair, and your leading men
would say, •' Let us look around for a good manager
for boss; " and when they look around and find that
such a one cannot be picked up on the roadside, how
many votes do you think would be cast for getting a
good boss, even at a salary of $25,000 a year. I tell
you every single vote would be cast for the $25,000
man, and I even venture to say that If I were in the
market you would all ask me to come back on my own
terms; every one of you would be willing to transfer
your stock to me unreservedly, if I only would oome