Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May 1899: Volume LV, No. 1, May 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May 1899: Volume LV, No. 1, May 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
May not it be possible that the outcome will be that associations of
wage-earners are to be treated as the equals of the employer? Will not
the democratic spirit of the age to come so permeate the industrial as
well as the political world that the laborer and the employer will
each have a share in the business they together carry on?
I have tried to make a very broad sketch of the change which has taken
place in the condition of the laborer, with a consideration of some of
the means by which that has come about. No longer is he a serf--no
longer even the servant of a ruling class. He at length has risen to a
share in the government of his town and country. No longer are laws
passed against him specially, but in his favor. The laborer has become
free--free to follow along the path of his predecessors, to gain full
justice, but not to oppress others. Before the law at least he is the
equal of his employer. I have implied at least that he has but
followed the spirit which led his older brother of the middle class up
from practical subjection to power. The craft guilds of the one, the
labor unions of the other, are in the same line as the old town
guilds. They all are manifestations of that democratic independence
which seems necessary for political freedom. They all imply the
capacity for organization as they all have shown its power. Let us
believe that, like the old guilds, these labor organizations are
helpful parts of the machinery of human progress. They force upon us
the fact that there have been and are injustices which must be
righted. We are beginning to learn that we can not depend upon one
side alone for our political economy or our facts; that we need an
organization strong enough to compel respect in order to protect those
who without it would be, as they have been, helpless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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