The Conflict Between Labour and Capital
By Editor
THERE is a tremendous conflict in progress at the present time throughout the world. Practically every nation is feeling the throb of its propaganda and the thrust of its powerful impacts. It is the conflict between Labour and Capital, between employer and employee. Capital clings to the age-old right of profiting from the earnings of all whom it employs. Labour demands a larger share in the products of toil—demands, in fact, that all shall toil alike, and that the employer class shall cease to be. Within the past few decades Capital has so gained control of the currency and the financial functions of the world that the amassing of wealth in the hands of the few has become a hundredfold easier than it was half a hundred years ago. Labour sees the gigantic strides of the Colossus of wealth, and is determined to check his pace even though it be at the cost of a world tragedy that will shatter the very foundation pillars of civilisation itself. Into that disastrous conflict this journal cannot go. It sees the forces of the embattled hosts marshalling for the fray, and knows by the very imminence of the impending struggle that we are nearing the consummation of the age. For decades we have warned the world that this struggle was coming. We have based that warning upon the Word of God. It must come, or God’s Word would write itself a failure. It has come and is coming; and God’s Word in this prophecy, as in a multitude of others equally specific and literally fulfilled, proves itself the utterance of Divinity. We have sometimes been criticised for not taking sides in this contest; and again when we have pointed out the disastrous nature and the hopelessness of the struggle, we have been accused of taking the capitalistic side and joining forces with the oppressors of Labour. This we have not done and shall not do. The oppressor of Labour is the adversary of both God and man; for the principle of the Bible is, “The labourer is worthy of his hire.” The God who forbade man to “muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,” is not insensible to any of the wrongs which the human worker may suffer. But nowhere does the Bible encourage us to drive into this struggle of material forces. God’s admonition to all is, “Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord”; “for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh”; “behold the Judge standeth before the door.” James 5:7-9. How hollow will be the victory when Labour, having destroyed Capital throughout the world as it has in Russia, and with hands, mayhap, imbrued in its brother’s blood, stands face to face with the great Judge of the universe. It has won the struggle, but lost the victory. Equally disastrous would it be for the capitalists of the world to have won a crushing victory over Labour, and stand with greedy hearts and bursting coffers before the same great Judge. To be patient under injustice, to wait for God’s solution of the difficulty, that we may stand approved of Him in the day of final awards, is the wiser course, the only really satisfying course, the only course worth while, and that is real victory—the victory that overcometh the world, the flesh, and the devil.