THE OPPRESSION OF THE POOR.
By W. R. G.
WHATEVER may be the reason for labor strikes, as a rule it is the poor who suffer—the laboring class bears the burden. The most short-sighted feature of the strike principle is that those who have no grievance quit work because others in a different part and in different lines of work have done so. A man or a firm is giving wages and allowing time that is satisfactory to his employees, and they are dependent upon his employ for a living; yet they will give up their own places at the risk of ruining the employer’s business, just because some other class of laborers is dissatisfied. In San Francisco the strike of certain teamsters calls out men of other lines of labor. The longshoremen, for instance, will not work nor let others work. In consequence, the produce of farmers in no way concerned in the controversy rots on the wharves. The food is needed by the families of all classes in the city, and the money for it is needed by the farmers, who have a hard enough time at best. Yet this loss and suffering is caused by a few men who imagine that they are striking a blow at the rich. Why do men “strike” and quit work?—Just because some so-called labor officials order them to do so. They think they are being oppressed by capital, and there is that tendency; in some places and in some institutions oppression is actual and grievous. But why should laboring men combine to make matters worse? Their own self-elected agents, by a word of command, are often their worst oppressors. Thousands of men are made to strike who do not want to do so. They are satisfied with their employment, but they have given away their liberty by joining some organization, and have obligated themselves to throw up their means of support at a moment’s notice, at the beck of some autocrat whose tyranny is beyond that of the most powerful combination of capital. Thousands of men in the strikes now agitating the country deplore the situation, but they are bound in the fetters of the associations to which they are united, and they fear to leave them. They are led to believe that there is protection against the growing encroachments of the rich upon the rights of the poor. They are led to believe that relief lies in placing their liberties in the hands of agitators who can do them no good, and seem to care only for easy positions. The man who joins a labor union for protection against the heel of capital, only flies from one evil to a worse one. In his imaginary refuge he is but a piece of machinery; he can do absolutely nothing unless the whole machine goes. Whatever opportunity might offer in case of need or emergency, he must first get the sanction of some leading functionary before he can help himself. If he ever again dares to assert his natural rights as a man for the purpose of providing the necessaries of life for himself or family, he is at once subject to the persecution of his former clan. The black-lists of the great corporations are not a whit worse than the viciousness of a labor union toward a “brother” who should seek honest labor that had been black-listed by the union. We are not discounting the divine prophecies concerning the terrible times that are even now upon us because of the greed of wealthy men and combinations. Their oppressions of the poor are plainly foretold in no uncertain language. But these things ought to teach the laborers that they can not evade the evil by putting themselves under the lash of other oppressors whose course only hastens the evils which their combinations seek to avoid. Why should honest, innocent employers have their business ruined? why should honest producers have their products destroyed? why should poor laboring men be deprived of work, and their dependents become paupers—just because a few irresponsible officials decide that such is the best way to redress grievances against certain classes of employers? Surely the treatment of the poor at the hands of the rich, foretold in the Word of God, is bad enough without the poor themselves forming associations for their own oppression. W. R. G.