A FEW days ago, in San Francisco, a man shot and instantly killed a big capitalist contractor. The man who did the shooting was rendered desperate because of the condition of himself and wife and two children. He was in poor health. He had done work for the contractor that amounted to something like $17. Not being able to go to the office on pay-day, he did not secure his money. His illness confined him at home for a little while. Then he went to the contractor for his pay, telling that he and his family were without food and in a starving condition. He went again and again; and finally the contractor gruffly turned him away, and as he claims, struck at him, when he shot and killed him. The advertising that has been given to the matter has brought hosts of people to supply the wife and the children with an abundance of everything needed, including money. More than half a score of attorneys—some of them leading lights in their profession—have offered their services to the murderer. The newspapers condone the action, and speak in the strongest terms of reproach against the man who was killed. The labor-unions are taking the subject up, and are proposing to present the strongest defense that can be made in behalf of the man under charge of murder. This incident is calculated to appeal to the sympathies of most people, but our peculiar interest in referring to it is to call attention to the deep-seated spirit of hatred that many men of wealth are bringing upon themselves. There is no defense to be made for this person who held back the honest wages of a man who was not only suffering himself but whose wife and children were starving because he could not get what was justly his due. On the other hand, it is also true that this case may give many other men who have been treated unjustly by exacting employers, license to obtain vengeance in the same manner. If this case were an isolated one, it would be less worthy of mention; but the country is full of similar ones, and the Bible, in addressing those who would heap together treasures in the last days, says to them: "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." James 5:1-8.
We already see a little of the popular sentiment in the world against the grinding process of the men of wealth. The heartlessness they have manifested toward their employees is the seed-sowing for the harvest that, according to the foregoing text, they must soon reap. The crop is sure to follow the sowing of the seed. The effect must follow the cause. This is not incidental theory, but it is a statement of fact that is supported by the prophetic declaration of the Word itself. When the storm finally breaks, there will be scenes of rioting and revolution that will endanger every member of the whole social fabric; and it behooves men and women to understand the meaning of these things, and to know what they all portend.