From my earliest arrival in the city I had been aware of something about the laboring element--something connected with the Union, yet different from what I had been accustomed to elsewhere. I had ever been an advocate of the union of workingmen to protect themselves against the tyranny and insolence of those who, possibly by fortuitous circumstances, were their employers. I had seen the evil of the uncurbed insolence added to the unlimited power of the boss to take on or to fling off whom he pleased and, while the occupation lasted, to give or reduce wages as he pleased. And I had seen the tyrannous exercise of this power--had seen men turned off for nothing but the whim of a superior; had seen them hacked about; ordered around as if they had been beasts of burden, and if they ever murmured, told to go elsewhere, as though a poor man with a family of children could "go elsewhere" at an hour's notice; hundreds of men, thousands of men "laid off," because, it was said, "times were dull," though the returns from their work in good times had made their employers rich beyond anything their fathers had ever dreamed of. And I had witnessed with that joy that a man feels in seeing justice meted out, the rise of a power able to exact, if not complete, at least, measurable justice for the down-trodden. But here was something different. It was still the Union; but bore a new complexion and a different relation alike to the workingman, the employer, and the public. It was a strange power and its manifestation was different. It was not in active exercise when I first went among the workingmen. Yet it was ever present. A cloud appeared to hang over the population; there was a feeling that a volcano, as yet quiet, might burst forth at any time, and no man could tell what the end might be. It was ever in men's minds, not only the workingmen's, but the tradesmen's, the middlemen's. It appeared to keep on edge a keen antagonism between all laboring men as such and all other men. It was nearer and more important than politics or religion. It had entered into their lives and created a power which they feared and obeyed. To a considerable extent it had taken away their liberties, and their lives were regulated by their relation to it. I saw the growth of the system and was mystified by it, for I saw individuality and personal liberty passing away--men deliberately abandoning their most cherished privileges to submit to a yoke that was being put on them. I noted the decline of excellence in the individual's work and of ambition for excellence in himself--the decay of the standard of good workmanship. I marked the mere commercial question of wages--higher wages irrespective of better work--take the place of the old standard of improved workmanship and witnessed the commercialism which in large figures had swept over the employer class, now creep over and engulf the laboring class to the destruction of all