A clouded understanding of this vital distinction has always played its part in Labor-troubles. Buyers and Sellers of personal services are always on a plane of perfect equality as such exchangers, and no one can be more independent than either of them except the hermit in his cell. Which must look out for the interest of the other beyond the terms implied in the trade itself? Which is the superior party? Which should take off his hat, the other remaining covered? The truth is, and all experience and all analysis brings us up abreast of it, that the two parties to a trade of any kind stand on a footing of absolute equality towards each other then and there in the economical relation about to be knit, and any conception in the mind of either that he has the other "at his mercy" in either the good or bad sense of that phrase, disturbs and destroys the proper conditions and balances of the exchange in hand; and, what is more to the point, it implies that each party has _not_ all he can do to fulfil in the letter and in the spirit what is always implied in the terms of a trade deliberately entered upon by two parties. When B agrees to work for A at skilled labor in his factory for a year at $15 per week, he makes a good deal of a contract; and virtually pledges to A not only the motions of his hands for that period of time, but also the vigorous attention of his mind to that service and to the general interests of his employer so far as these come under his own eye and supervision. Nor is this all: he virtually pledges himself to B to coöperate with the least possible friction in all plans for betterment in his division of the work, and to cordially coalesce with all other employees for the general ends of the business without too much of self-assertion and without too little of courtesy to others. To fulfil this contract in all its spirit rounds up the circle of B's economical obligations to A. He will practically have all he can do, so far as A is concerned, and in consistency with all his various duties to others, to make good to him at all points his simple business pledges. Benevolence, the interests of a common citizenship, and the reciprocal ties of religion, lie wholly outside.