Let it not be understood that I would take from the operative or the artisan one of the chances of education. But I would have them taught how to use wisely those privileges, forced, we might almost say, on them and on their children. I would also have them taught how inwardly to digest what they are made to learn. The tools are given them; but as they are not taught how to use them, these prove but an additional weapon of defence against employers, and make them more discontented, and ready to listen to the political demagogue, or the so-called labor reformer. Then strikes ensue, which usually end, as the first Lowell one did, for the time being at least, in the success of the employer, rather than of the employee. The solution of the labor problem is not in strikes, but, as another has said, in “bringing the question down to its simplest form, a practical carrying out of the golden rule; by the employer elevating the working-man in his own esteem by fair dealing, courteous treatment, and a constant appeal to his better side; and, on the other hand, in the working-man himself by the absence of malingering, by honest work, and a desire to further his employer’s interests; and finally, to cement the two, a fair distribution of profits.” “Not what we give, but what we share,” is a good motto for the employers. Treat your employees as _you_ would be treated, if, by the “accident of birth,” loss of employment, or hard luck, _you_ were in their condition. Treat them as if they, too, had something of God in them, and, like yourselves, were also His children. This is the philosophy of the labor question. The factory population of New England is made up largely of American-born children of foreign parentage,--two-thirds it is estimated; as a rule, they are not under the strict control of the church of their parents, and they are too apt to adopt the vices and follies, rather than the good habits, of our people. It is vital to the interests of the whole community, that they should be kept under good moral influences; that they should have the sympathy, the help, of employers. They need better homes than they find in too many of our factory towns and cities, and a better social atmosphere, that they may be lifted out of their mental squalor into a higher state of thought and of feeling.