Social sciences; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
¶The question of securing a healthy, self-respecting, and mutually
sympathetic attitude as between employer and employee, capitalist and
wage-worker, is a difficult one. All phases of the labor problem prove
difficult when approached. But the underlying principles, the root
principles, in accordance with which the problem must be solved are
entirely simple. We can get justice and right dealing only if we put as
of paramount importance the principle of treating a man on his worth as
a man rather than with a reference to his social position, his
occupation, or the class to which he belongs. There are selfish and
brutal men in all ranks of life. If they are capitalists their
selfishness and brutality may take the form of hard indifference to
suffering, greedy disregard of every moral restraint which interferes
with the accumulation of wealth, and coldblooded exploitation of the
weak; or, if they are laborers, the form of laziness, of sullen envy of
the more fortunate, and of willingness to perform deeds of murderous
violence. Such conduct is just as reprehensible in one case as in the
other, and all honest and farseeing men should join in warring against
it wherever it becomes manifest.
¶Individual capitalist and individual wage-worker, corporation and
union, are alike entitled to the protection of the law, and must alike
obey the law. Moreover, in addition to mere obedience to the law, each
man, if he be really a good citizen, must show broad sympathy for his
neighbor and genuine desire to look at any question arising between them
from the standpoint of that neighbor no less than from his own; and to
this end it is essential that capitalist and wage-worker should consult
freely one with the other, should each strive to bring closer the day
when both shall realize that they are properly partners and not enemies.
To approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely
from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of
the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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