DANGER AHEAD by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1902

DANGER AHEAD.

By Editor

THERE have been mentioned in these columns from time to time the dangers which we have seen, or which have shown themselves, in connection with the clashing interests of labor and capital. We are not the only ones who have seen danger ahead in the present economic conditions. The increasing influence of capital as manifested in the seemingly endless power which it possesses of multiplying itself upon itself, is regarded by labor as a distinct menace to the interests of labor; and in the hand-to-hand encounters which have occurred, labor has shown itself unable to cope successfully with the power which resisted its demands, and to which it must look for employment. While capital has generally triumphed in these encounters, the triumphs have but served to whet the edge of the bitter feeling that stirs the breast of organized labor. Labor has not behind it the power that capital possesses to shape legislation and consummate its plans; but it has the power to store up its wrongs, or its fancied wrongs, and lay tremendous plans to avenge them. The danger is that capital will continue to give occasion for the widening of the breach until labor, in very desperation, will strike out with terrible blows against that power which it feels has goaded it past endurance. Capital's demand will continue to be for the right to conduct its own business in its own way.

Labor's demand will continue to be for the right to share more fully in the profits which its toil produces, and the management of the business in which it is engaged. Capital, flushed with previous victories, will refuse to harken; labor, exasperated over past defeats and a forbidding future, will fling aside self-control and a calmer judgment, and open that strife which has been long in preparation. This is what we have seen in the present situation.

Here is how it is looked upon by one who has long had to do with these very things, an English observer who writes his views to the New York Iron Age. After speaking of the "passive resistance" feature of the great strike of English machinists, a resistance which was made possible by the perfect organization of the strikers, he says:—

One has only to ask what would have been the result in the United States of a prolonged strike in one of the leading industries, wherein a great majority of the men were without any means of subsistence and under no proper control. As one who has had a long and varied experience of men and things, I should tremble for the result, and to my mind in this direction lies one of the serious dangers to America's future. . . . From what I gathered while in the States from sources well calculated to form correct opinions, I fear that the most momentous danger before America is an industrial war such as the world has never seen before. The stronger the trusts grow, the more powerless will labor become. As it can not obtain redress from Congress, . . . it may, perchance, strike out fiercely, wantonly, and madly, like a blind, enraged giant. Sooner or later that well-organized body [the trusts] will stand face to face with the horny-handed, undisciplined multitude of workers, and then the real trial of strength will begin, and after that—the deluge.

Organized capital seems madly rushing on to that very consummation. How long it will be before these forces clash, we can not tell. The prevalence of the conditions which are to bring it about has been pointed out faithfully in the infallible Word—pointed out, too, as an indication of the time of the end. We are in that time now, and we need not be in darkness concerning its approach. Truly there is danger ahead; but the danger is to those who will not heed the warnings of God that would make it possible for men to be hid in the time of trouble.