The Strife and Its Settlement
The Strife and Its Settlement.—It has not been the aim of this paper to present the sensational nor to foment prejudice. We believe there are good men on both sides of the great controversy. We believe that there are many who wish to do just right. But we do not believe that this great strife will ever be settled as long as men's hearts are selfish. We know it will not, all compromises to the contrary. There will be temporary lulls and truces and combinations, but the smoldering fires of selfishness and class hatred will again burst forth in greater malignity. As long as the negative is left out of the Eighth and Tenth Commandments in men's creeds, so long will this strife continue, and every commandment will be broken. So long as the Golden Rule is perverted to mean "Do others or they will do you" the conflict will continue till it is lost in the battle of Armageddon. The only way it can be permanently settled is in each individual soul in Christ Jesus. Capital and Labor Troubles.—In 1897 T. De Witt Talmage said: "You may pooh, pooh it; you may say, This trouble, like any angry child, will cry itself to sleep; but it will not; . . . it is the mightiest, the darkest, the most terrible threat of the century. All attempts at pacification have been dead failures; the monopoly is more arrogant, the trades union more bitter." What would Mr. Talmage say if he had lived in 1903? Have Men a Right to Unionize?—They have. Let them form unions so good, on so broad a basis, so truly educational, elevating, and helpful, so free from dictatorship and imperialism, that every true man in the trade will feel it a privilege to belong to it; but let them never seek to coerce him who is outside to join; let them never take from him one right which he has in common with them. His right not to belong is as sacred as their right is to belong. His right to be a solitary or to form a union alone with his employer is as sacred as their right is to combine together. The right not to join a union is as sacred as is the right to join. I may be a dozen, and he may be one. His conscientiousness which prevents him from joining me may seem strange and narrow to me, but I have no right to coerce it. It is as sacred in the sight of God as mine, and it may be altogether true, while mine may be selfish. The same principles apply equally to trusts.