COMBINATION OF CAPITAL AND LABOR.
WHEN organized labor forces up the wages, producing corporations must put up the prices of their products. Little or nothing is gained by even organized labor, for while the wage is increased, the purchasing power of the wage is diminished. But the larger number of workers can not combine. Some of them conscientiously will not; many can not. Of this class Mr. Baker, in his article "Capital and Labor Hunt Together," in McClure's Magazine, for September, 1903, well asks:— But the unorganized public, where will it come in? The professional man, the lecturer, the writer, the artist, the farmer, the salaried government employee, and all the host of men who are not engaged in the actual production or delivery of necessary material things, how will they fare? No one can deny that already the great public has had the worst of the labor dispute and the labor combination. The public put its hand down in its pocket and paid the price for an agreement in the anthracite coal fields—is paying to-day, will pay to-morrow. Now, is there any doubt that the income of organized labor and the profits of organized capital have gone up enormously, while the man-on-salary and most of the great middle class, paying much more for the necessaries of life, have had no adequate increase in earnings? We have been sighing for labor and capital to get together; we have been telling them that they are brothers, that the interest of the one is the interest of the other. Here they are together; are we any better off? What will be the effect? Simply this: It will help to prepare the world for that awful battle of Armageddon, in which all governments and organizations of earth will sink to utter destruction; "For the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low. . . . And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low; and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day."