Capital and Labor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1904

Capital and Labor

Capital and Labor.—Altho some of the prophets of "smooth things" (Isa. 30:10) would fain convince the people that there is no conflict between capital and labor in this country, those who are nearest the greater battle-grounds know better. Judge Grosscup, of the United States Circuit Court at Chicago, in a recent address, sketched the present conditions and complaints of employers, employees, and the general public, and, upon the relations of employers and employees, said:—

It has come to pass that, instead of peace, the standing relations between them is that of war. They look upon each other, not as neighbors or co-partners, but as belligerents. When they sleep, it is upon their arms. When a truce comes, and indemnity is laid, it falls, not on the belligerents, but on the outside public—the great neutral who, up to that time, supposed it had only a moral interest in the conflict.

As showing the growing lack of confidence in financial conditions, the speaker said:—

During the last twenty-three years the capital deposited in the banks of the country has increased nearly ten billion dollars. This capital, largely, has come from men in ordinary circumstances of life. It measures the capital detached during this period by this class of our citizenship from active proprietorship in the industries of this country. It marks a tremendous shift in the personnel of active proprietorship. The shift is due to the sense of insecurity the people feel in the ownership of corporate property, as corporations, under existing State policies, are now permitted to be organized.

The tomb of Napoleon I. was recently visited by Mr. W. J. Bryan, while on a short tour of Europe. A sentence from his description of the place is significant. He says: "The sarcophagus is made of dark red porphyry, a fitly chosen stone that might have been colored by the mingling of the intoxicating wine of ambition with the blood spilled to satisfy it." Incidentally these few words describe the career of one who made the most noise and the greatest failure of any character of modern times, and yet is the object of more hero worship than any man of the two centuries in which he figured. A man of peace will naturally join in Mr. Bryan's soliloquy on this occasion, as he says:—

Looking down upon the sarcophagus and the stands of tattered battle flags that surround it, I reviewed the tragic career of this grand master of the art of slaughter, and weighed, as best I could, the claims made for him by his friends. And then I found myself wondering what the harvest might have been had Napoleon's genius led him along peaceful paths, had the soil of Europe been stirred by the ploughshare rather than by his trenchant blade, and the reaping done by implements less destructive than his shot and shell.

But this man whom the world calls great had no genius in that way. He simply did not know anything to do in time of peace but to plot for more war and prepare for it. And his councillors were at a loss to know what to do with him during the intervals of war. It is said that they agreed to his Egyptian campaign, which resulted so disastrously, just to get him out of the country for awhile. The awful failure of Napoleon ought to have been a cure for human hero worship, but it wasn't. The disease is still epidemic.