LABOR AND CAPITAL

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 23, 1878

LABOR AND CAPITAL.

Bishop Stevens, addressing the Annual Convention of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, which met on Tuesday, May 7, referred to the threatening troubles between labor and capital, in the following language:—

“I now refer to an approaching evil which, like the cloud which the prophet’s servant saw in the west as he stood on Mount Carmel, though now no larger than a man’s hand, may soon, like that, burst in its fury upon us before we are fully conscious of its approach. I allude to the effort now being made, ostensibly in behalf of the laboring men, but really by communistic infidels, to bring about a conflict between labor and capital, the rich and the poor, the workman and the capitalist, which cannot but result in devastation and ruin. We experienced the first-fruits of this outcropping evil in the labor strikes and derangements of trade and travel which so startled us last summer. The power which then put itself forth was comparatively harmless, because not well organized and consolidated. That defect of last year is being remedied by the party leaders this year. We hear all around us, and especially at the West, of associations and gatherings, and drillings with manuals and arms, of this dangerous and inflammable element. We see it showing its ghastly

face in the efforts to make their new policy felt in the State and general government, and even the sacred seat of justice is being made to do the work of lawlessness and wrong. This evil looming up in our midst may, before we are aware of it, darken our sky and redden our fields. It can be met, not by argument, not by legislative action, but only by physical force to quell its outbreaks or overawe its movements; or, better still, by moral force, which shall bring to bear more clearly and closely on the hearts of all men that gospel of peace and love and salvation wrought out for us by the working-man’s divine friend, Jesus of Nazareth. The clergy should study the most pregnant question of social science, viz., How far, and by what means, can the gospel reach and leaven the masses? They should bring their thoughts to bear practically in the several parishes, and so rightly mold the minds of the parishioners and others, and thus create a sound and healthful sentiment, based on the only true social and moral science, the word of God.”