A LESSON FOR LABORING MEN.
By Editor
FROM the standpoint of mere secular expediency, to say nothing of the higher view from the standpoint of the word of God, there is a striking lesson for the laboring class in the results of the great strike. Here are a few items which it will pay them to read and digest:— "We are not surprised that the great strike turned out to be a failure. The leader, Mr. Debs, is a graduate of 'Keeley Cure,' and afterwards became a 'backslider.' This whole Western country was held under bondage for three weeks by a slave to a saloon."—The Occident. "One of the American daily papers presents a vivid picture of a Chicago merchant craving the permission of Mr. Debs, of the Railway Union, to ice his meats on the cars, and being refused by this man permission to ship them; and also of the Governor of California asking consent of one of the deputies of this Mr. Debs to travel from San Francisco to the capitol at Sacramento."—Ib. "According to the Baltimore American, Mr. Debs receives a salary of $3,000 a year as president of the A. R. U. The vice president receives $2,000, the secretary $2,000, and six directors $1,500. Seventy organizers are paid $5.00 a day, and ten clerks $4.00 a day."—Ib. "Honest laboring men of California, let me beseech you, in the name of common sense, avoid an adventurer in any form."—Governor Markham. In all these great labor organizations we have the absurd spectacle of a few well-paid adventurers holding the power to order thousands of men to stop work and become objects of charity at any moment. And not only so, but holding the power to stop the commerce of the country, and beggar honest men of every industrial calling. The tyranny of the corporations, or of capital in any form, bad as it is, is not to be compared with that of anarchy, or adventurers vested with power. Will the laboring classes learn the lesson? A few of them will, but the masses will continue to follow the ignis fatuus of "organization" until it becomes armed revolution. And then—but the rest of the lesson is for those who know the meaning of these things from the standpoint of God's word: "Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh."