Sensible Talk by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1879

Sensible Talk.

By Editor

The Oakland Evening Tribune speaks as follows of the recent labor troubles:—

"The recent labor strike at the railroad pier has come to naught. One or two policemen daily overlook the situation. Fifteen or twenty white men are employed in unloading rock and earth, very glad, it is presumed, to get $1.50 in these hard times on a regular job. Probably, the Company could obtain five hundred more men at the same wages. The “revolution” however, served for a number of speeches from that class of men who hate honest work as the devil does holy water. The idle element is always a dangerous one. There are no men so voluble about their grievances as those who won't work when they have opportunity, and can't live honestly unless they are earning something. California is afflicted with some thousands of this sort. They remember the old times when an ounce of gold could be dug out of a crevice in a day with an old case knife, and when unskilled labor commanded from five to eight dollars a day. Those opportunities will never return. We have all come down to the bed rock. The capitalist cannot get as large returns for his money, and the laborer cannot earn as large wages, while the necessary cost of his living is not half as great. The best remedy for hard times is for every man to do his best. If he cannot earn as much money as formerly, earn something if there is an opportunity. Small wages are better than nothing. Striking in these times is the poorest business that was ever adopted by laboring men."