WHAT WILL THE HARVEST BE?
THE object of the trusts is to concentrate the productive institutions and commercial enterprises and to carry all lines under as few heads as possible. A number of factories combined under one management, and under one roof, it is argued, can do the same work with a less number of hands, and therefore at less expense. The railroads combine so as to save the employment of officers and clerks at a number of places of management. So the argument goes all the way through. And the trades unions aim to secure for themselves the positions that are thus being minimized, and which they are constantly helping to minimize. The harvest will be an increasing mass of unemployed men and women who have been so educated to occupy dependent positions that they are unfitted for any other means of livelihood. The true interest of the masses of laboring men lies in an increase rather than a decrease of employing establishments. But the capitalists and the unions are laboring for their decrease. When the line is fairly drawn between capital and labor, in the current contest, the unions can not be unqualifiedly reckoned on the side of labor.