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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 23, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 42

Paternal Tendencies.

It is astonishing to contemplate the growing tendency toward paternalism in government in our country during the last ten years. The demand is that the Government shall be everything and do everything. In a recent discourse before the Young Men's Christian Association, Rev. Thomas Dixon, appealed for the legal abolition of strikes. He would have the Government raise its hand against them, even to the expediency of bringing the railroads and their operations and responsibilities, including the actions of their employes, under its indisputable power of management and restraint. “The public has the right to demand the cessation of strikes,” Mr. Dixon thinks, and the simplest way would be for the Government to enforce this demand by depriving the strikers of the freedom that now makes strikes possible.

Commenting upon this, the Sun says—

This would be the tyranny of slothful despotism. There is nothing that a despot hates so much as disturbances of any sort, except those of his own making, and force is his means of preventing or suppressing them. If there is a principle established in great manufacturing countries, it is the right of men to organize labor unions. The right to strike and to exert all the pressure upon employers which a strike carries with it, is just as incontestable. It would be a fine commentary on a land like the United States, if we should extend the rigor of military discipline over our various great enterprises; with the result that a man might be shot for leaving his post. The freedom which lies beneath the right to strike is one of the most vital concern to the public. Its preservation, and seeing that strikes are conducted according to the rules of public order, constitutes the State's entire duty.

The Hon. James G. Blaine, at the time when the commotion of the Missouri Pacific strike of 1886 had scarcely subsided, laid down a remarkably concise form of the fundamental law by which all labor unions and their demonstrations must be regulated. It was: “One man's right ends where another man's right begins.” While that principle is observed strikes represent a right at the very root of liberty.

And this is sound. The Government cannot undertake to regulate all the business of the country, but it can and should protect from violence the person and property of all its citizens.