p. 10 | WEALTH and WAGE by William N. Glenn

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 7, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 48.

WEALTH and WAGE

By William N. Glenn

THE PRESENT CONFLICT BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOR

BY WILLIAM N. GLENN

IN the present status of the conflict between capital and labor we have it practically demonstrated that peace and harmony can not reign where God’s order is ignored. The divine plan, the naturally equitable plan, in the beginning was the union of capital and labor in the individual; and the more human schemes are devised and urged for utilizing these elements separately, the more intense becomes the friction where there should be harmony. Properly united, the interests of capital and labor are one; separated, and represented by different individuals and different parties, they become antagonistic.

We say that this fact is being demonstrated as never before in the present status of the conflict. The natural result of one class becoming capitalists and another class becoming laborers was that the capitalists became the dominant class. As long as the laborers quietly submitted, there was nominal peace; but the condition was an unnatural one, and could not always exist peaceably. There always were men, however poverty-stricken, who would think for themselves. These men knew they were slaves, and they knew that slavery was unjust. Such a sentiment is bound to grow, and in time it will seek some channel of action. But the effort of an oppressed people to be free is always deemed rebellion—until it succeeds—and therefore it is deemed a subject of official discipline.

Rights of Labor Questioned.

For the long past it has been assumed that labor, as a separate element in social and industrial life, has no rights that capital and its adherent aristocracy are bound to respect. About seventy-five years ago the laborers on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal struck for higher wages, and were arrested and imprisoned. Two or three years later, some of the employees of a factory in Connecticut were arrested for conspiracy, because they incited a strike among their fellow-workmen. And only sixty-four years ago six men in England were exiled to Botany Bay for forming a labor union. The act was adjudged to be in restraint of trade, and therefore unlawful. But the thinking, unrestful class of laborers have continued to increase, and to devise ways and means to be free, while still being willing to occupy dependent positions. Failing, however, to see the cause of the situation, they have sought to enforce another unnatural condition—the subjection of capital to labor. They have assumed that, because capital can do nothing without labor, therefore labor should be master.

The present attitude of the two classes is one of bitter strife. It is a strife, not for equality, but for mastery. Capital will not give up the scepter, and labor (that is, organized labor) claims that anything less than mastery is failure—and no doubt it is; for no position outside of God’s order can be maintained without some kind of force. And in any controversy in which force is an essential element, one party or the other must be the victor, and such victory means mastery. In such contests, too, there is always the theory that the end justifies the means. Therefore imperialism, which is the outgrowth of capital accumulation, always deems it proper to forcibly squelch any resentment of its assumed superiority on the part of the common people. So organized labor, when it endeavors to resent the oppression, deems it essential to employ like methods. In asserting its prerogative, it assumes that its importance is paramount.

Labor’s Weapons.

As weapons of warfare capital employs the black list, the lock-out, and the militia. Organized labor employs the boycott and the strike, and, in anticipation of political power, expects that the military will be its friend, if need be, in course of time. Both parties are using the courts with more or less success. Some men, in advocating the labor side of the controversy, refer to the prophecy (James 5) which foretells labor’s violent uprising in the last days, and infer that because such a course is predicted, it is therefore justified.

The controversy between capital and labor is altogether a conflict of human forces; there is nothing that pertains to Christianity. Men in both parties claim to be Christians, but the Golden Rule is unknown to the methods of either class. It is claimed that Christ sympathized with the laboring man; so He did, but He died for all—for the rich as well as for the poor. “Thou shalt love, thy neighbor as thyself” applies to the laboring man as well as to the capitalist. To His disciples, Christ says, “All ye are brethren;” “resist not evil.” In connection with the violent labor uprising predicted by the apostle James, the “brethren” are not to take any part in it. “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” “Stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”

It is complained that the capital class are selfish and grasping. Of course they are. That is the reason that there is a class of human beings known as capitalists. But one of the leading labor leaders counsels the unions to grasp all they can get, and then look for more. And sometimes it happens that a laboring man passes into the capitalist class, when he becomes as oppressive of the laboring man as any of his classmates. Is it the capital that makes him selfish and grasping? or is it his natural disposition?

Political Phases.

The present conflict between capital and organized labor has taken on a decidedly political phase. Because of the growing influence of the larger capitalists in public affairs, and their ability to secure laws that give them a degree of power over their opponents, the labor unions deem it necessary to seek power in the same way. But their voting for men in the old, established parties, on the promise of help in case of election, has not proved encouraging; hence the “labor vote” has sought, in some instances, to sustain independent candidates. Neither has this proved as encouraging as was expected. As in the cases of the Grangers, and the Populists, etc., so with the labor representatives; when a man becomes an office-seeker, he is quite apt to become a politician, and a politician is a politician, under whatever name. As everybody knows, or ought to know, a professional politician is in politics for the money and the honor that attaches to the position. As a rule, he subserves the interests that are most likely to wield the strongest influence toward continuing him in office.

Moral reform, or a reform that will cause men to esteem the rights of others as equal to their own, does not come permanently through politics. Such a condition can be brought about only through allegiance to the law of God. Therefore it is a condition that never will be realized in this world of selfishness and strife. It pertains to that time (soon to come, we trust) when, the wicked being “cut off,” “the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.”

[In this series there have already appeared the following: “Labor and Capital in the Beginning,” “Labor Reduced to Slavery,” and “Labor’s Efforts to Be Free.”]