WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
By Editor
HONEST, now, what is the difference? Wealthy men combine to increase profit, to reduce expense, to suppress competition. Their object is solely to benefit themselves. Everything else must bend to their purpose. They have no enmity against rivals, or the poor; they simply regard them as obstacles to be set aside, quietly and without suffering if they can, but ruthlessly and cruelly if they must. Employers and laborers suffer. Workingmen combine to increase wages, to shorten hours, to crush out competition. Other men as honest, who have families as dear, who are good workmen, but who can not conscientiously join a union, are shut out by persuasion, by threats, by force. They are called "scabs," just as if that affected a man's character. More than this, often lives are lost, property wrecked, other persons injured. For instance, in Cleveland, June 20, one non-union street-car man was badly injured by a brick, one was chased into the woods by a mob. "There were twenty policemen at the barns, but they were powerless to handle the mob. Fences were torn down, and the crowd broke into the barns. In the meantime the non-union men had escaped to the attic, and the rioters contented themselves with smashing a few of the cars. By that time several wagon-loads of policemen had arrived, and the mob was dispersed." One non-union motorman and one conductor were beaten into insensibility, and others were injured. "A Euclid Avenue car was attacked. Many women were on board, and shrieked with terror as stones crashed through the car windows. One woman fainted. At the corner of Wilson Avenue and Quincy Street one man was shot, and others had narrow escapes. The passengers escaped as best they could when the stones began to fly, but the conductor and motorman were struck repeatedly. Four hundred employees of the Cleveland Foundry Company struck, late this afternoon, because the company refused to discharge a man who had ridden on a big Consolidated car. The man was a foreman." And there is much more. It is the irrepressible strife waged between capital and labor, with the former almost always victor, except in revolution. But the strife is ever on carnal lines, knowing nothing of the Spirit of God. Now what is the difference in morals of each party? Our sympathies are with the poor, for poverty brings suffering; but in the methods—trust or union, injunction or strike—what is the moral difference? This is a question the Christian must face. No permanent good can come of such methods, either to rich or to poor. The only safe court of appeal is not the Supreme Court of the United States; it is not the arbitrament of strikes or injunctions or war; the only safe court is heaven, the safe advocate Christ Jesus. And He would accomplish for us more than we can ask or think if we would righteously submit our case to Him.