WOMAN IN RELATION TO LABÒR REFORM. BY MAY ROGERS. ENNYSON says: When was age so crammed with menace, madness written, spoken lies? Step by step, we gained a freedom known to Europe, known to all; Most thoughtful Americans, accept the Laureate's verse as a warning for us as well as for England. From the press, the rostrum and the caucus, the communist gospel for the regeneration of our country is being proclaimed with the pretence of inspired originality. A century ago these doctrines were tried to their full and bloody completion. Then, sick and despairing, France so hungered for lawful government that she welcomed the military despotism of a Napoleon. It is but a year last May, since foreigners who could not speak our language returned our hospitality by hurling dynamite at the Chicago police, who died martyrs to social order. Civilization has slowly grown by coral-like accretions and our era is the highest reef that has lifted itself above chaotic elements. To guard and strengthen our sea-walls is the duty we owe the future and I propose to-day to speak of the perilous waves which impinge against our barriers. In society's struggle with disintegrating forces, I protest against woman being counted with the opposition, which is offering her the bribes of suffrage, prohibition and equal pay for equal work. It is flattering to women who have always been politically ignored, to be invited to the platform, and patiently listened to by the sex which claims to be sufferers from her gifts of language. Many emotional women hope to use the methods of the revival in the caucus, and they have been misled by the sensational misrepresentations of agitators, whose consideration for the interest of women they overestimate. As woman cannot throw, the bomb would not be entrusted to her; and the only useful attribute that she could bring to this alliance would be fanatical intolerance, which would justify the Remonstrant's arguments against her enfranchisement. Ouida says: "the invasion of private property under the doctrinaire's plea of general good, would all commend themselves to women in their hysterical moments." Surely it is time for conservative and patriotic women to condemn any coalition between woman suffrage and the conspiracy to coerce our free nation into state socialism. Better that we should be forever disfranchised than seek the ballot through the favor of those who scheme to plunder the property rights of others. To law and justice the suffragists must appeal, and their success will be indefinitely postponed if they sanction measures which are illegal and unjust. Temperance must be inwrought in character, and equal pay to women for equal work waits upon man's enlightened conscience. These moral energies are not entrusted to political faction, they are as eternal as the soul of man. To quicken spiritual life is a more womanly office than to assist the plots of professional agitators. Our regime has been frequently and ably criticised before this Association by those who soared on wings of poetry far up the Mount of Vision, where they proclaim a new heaven and a new earth, invisible to my eyes, which are so dimmed by the dust of the market place, that I can only see the facts of business and governmental experience, with the average man, in the actual world. Having always lived in good fellowship with the money-changers, I was shocked to read in the New Political Economy, money-lenders and property-holders were our criminal classes, and that society was divided into working men, beggar men and thieves. That capital earns its wage as honestly as labor is fiercely denied, and the statement is ceaselessly reiterated that wealth is obtained by superior craft, and that every rich man keeps thousands poor by his disturbance of the equitable equilibrium. All this literature of agitation is written in the dashing style of "your money or your life," and it is lurid with threats of judgment to come, and insinuations that the rich deserve death. Before the guillotine is erected to equalize property, as it once was to equalize rank, let us examine the counts in this indictment against our civilization, viz: The land belongs to all the people. Value is due to labor-meaning only manual toil. The rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, because wealth is diverted from the laborers to the non-laborers. It is difficult for the western pioneer to understand labor grievances. In his lifetime he has seen the epitome of all history, barbarism conquered by civilization. I have heard the late Senator Dodge tell how he fought with the Indian for his right to live on the soil of Iowa. Frontier communities have become great states through the energy of men, under free institutions, with the capital of brains and hands. Nearly all of our western senators, millionaires, and generals were once manual toilers. Wealthy cities have risen on the prairies in whose flowery distance they saw the savage hunt the buffalo. If discontented labor wishes to co-operate, or share profits, it must convince capital that such an arrangement would be advantageous, but labor must educate itself for this step forward, and free itself from the dictates of oath-bound societies. Capital gives the money and the management, and its partner must not be its secret enemy who thinks that their joint product is entirely the creation of labor. At the present time when labor has declared war, capital has no inducements for co-operative undertakings, which at best would be an armed truce. Labor has the other alternative of being its own employer, using the wage system as is apprenticeship, and thus spoiling the Egyptians by competition. The coopers at Minneapolis and our girls' tailoring establishment at Chicago are encouraging ventures, and this I believe will be the outcome of some of the present agitations. The masses will rise as the individuals have, through industry, thrift and sobriety. Only through experience can labor learn that employers cannot advance wages with a falling market, and that price is not always in their control. Financial talent is so rare that the proportion of business success is very small. We have no bar of prejudice, and many are called but few are chosen "; there is a constant passing to and fro of those who go up from humble places to business management, and those who fail and return to salaried positions, and the workingman's tools. The interests of the laboring class are nearer to Americans than they can possibly be to foreigners between whom and them are centuries of caste tradition. In the branches of the family tree of most of our people there is a near or remote ancestor, who was a working man, and our nation's typical genius is the president who was a rail-splitter. De Tocqueville said that democracies were indifferent to "the rights of persons." We see this now in legislative proneness to interfere with the management of corporations, instead of allowing them to seek the natural channels of demand and supply. All the advocacy of state ownership of railroads, and municipal management of gas supply and street railways, is a dangerous step toward what Herbert Spencer calls Social Slavery. There is no more important study to-day than that of the constitutional limits and functions of our government. How far the state can safely oppress the individual is the question of tyrants, whether they be kings or socialists. The only inquiry of freemen is, how little government is necessary for the permanence of the state, the execution of the laws and the protection of life and property. The United States believe they have solved the problem of the minimum of government with the maximum of liberty. Our government does not keep its pledges if it fails to protect life or property, and it transcends its privilege when it becomes a business corporation and competes with private enterprise. With the stationary bureaus of monarchy, state ownership would be feasible, and it would be a powerful support of absolutism; but in a government resting on popular suffrage, the state is the party in power, and the minority would never become the majority if all the employes of railroads and telegraphs were appointed for partisan reasons. Railroads would be built where they would influence votes, and business interests would be sacrificed to political necessities. It is appalling to think how the public would suffer, if our gas supply and our street railway accommodation depended on the ward caucus. It is the part of wisdom and honesty to protect the tax-payer, and to curtail instead of extend the possibilities of municipal mismanagement. Furthermore, a considerate country ought to shelter aldermen from such a temptation, when we know how they steal with their present opportunities. Much of our present socialistic spirit is explained by DeTocqueville's criticism that democracies are more in love with " equality than with freedom." Trade unions strive to prevent piece work and to discourage all superiority. In the Industrial Confederation even the exclusiveness of the family would be prevented. There would be neither marriage or inheritance, and the children would belong to the state, which would control all the mechanism of production and distribution, and would compel its citizens to produce according to their ability and consume according to their need. Socialism is mediocrity's hope to abolish genius! Prof. Smith in his recent Philosophy of Wealth says it is a "grand error" to claim that labor is the sole originator of wealth, which he says is derived from the Saxon word weal and it "is traceable, not to labor, but to want-satisfying capacities and appropriability of commodities." He defines utility as the capacity to serve, and he says "value is the quantitative measure of utility," and that in the "measure of exchange value" labor considerations only influence the cost "indirectly, approximately and tardily," which, expressed in less technical language, means that in fixing price there will be an estimate of the wages of labor, but a product has value to us according to its power to satisfy our need, and the purchaser pays for this capacity and not for the labor in its production. Supply and demand are elements of price which are ignored by those who insist that labor makes value. Prof. Smith tells us, what merchants and ladies well know, that fashion causes more fluctuations than supply, and "makes and destroys utilities capriciously and on a vast scale." Emil DeLaveleye, writing on Value in his "Socialism of To-day," says: "Using words in their usual sense an article has so much the more value, the more useful it is." In deciding what is utility aesthetic considerations are more and more important and definitions based on physical needs are inadequate for the intellectual and the artistic. There are many orders in "labor's lordlier chivalry." In the front rank of workers are the journalists, whom the Anarchists call the "capitalistic press." Bravely and with keenest vision they stand out on the ramparts of society, guarding the rights of all, jealous of privileges, sympathizing with every real distress, encouraging all noble efforts, exposing sophistry and ridiculing absurdity. They are the Nemeses of those who betray the people's trust and the terror of all wrong-doers. They are much hated by demagogues whose designs they expose, and are excommunicated by false prophets. They do not all see that woman is the saving remnant of the body politic, but they bring a swift vengeance on those who insult or assault her honor. They are the victims of the tyrannous exaction of those they instruct. Their nerves are sensitive to all the sufferings of humanity, and upon them rests the stress and strain of public interests. They see all sides of every question and they are safe and patriotic advisers. Our liberties are safe while they are free to guard them. |