companies and the extent to which those rights and powers should be limited, and like questions, all turn upon the manner in which the different policies proposed by opposing parties will affect the interests of capitalists and wage-payers on the one hand and those of workingmen or wage-workers on the other. The wage question, or, in other words, the question how wage-workers may assert and maintain their rights as against wage-payers, has practically become the question of our age.

In the thoughts which we propose to present on this subject we have no intention to attempt to discuss the relation of capital and labor in the abstract. Countless such disquisitions have been written and published, yet seemingly to very little purpose. We doubt whether they have ever really influenced, to any important extent, the action either of employers or of employees in the conflicts which are constantly occurring between them.

The question of wages is a practical one. It cannot and will not be solved by references to abstract principles of political economy or social philosophy, but by concrete facts. It is a question, too, which has become the question of the day in its relation to all temporal or material interests.

This may seem to some persons a very mercenary way of looking at the subject. Yet it is not. At least it is the natural way, and the way the subject is actually looked at by the vast majority of persons. "All that a man hath he will give for his life," and where wife and children are also concerned, he will give it all the more readily. It is mere mockery to concede to a man the right to go to the polls and vote for or against candidates for offices, whilst he himself is virtually a pauper living from hand to mouth, and dependent on the will of his employer whether he and his family shall have bread to eat or not.

The right to live, and to live as a being endowed with reason and will should live, comes first in the natural order. Political rights follow both in the order of nature and of relative importance. Political rights, too, are simply means to secure certain ends, and one of these ends is that of protecting the weak against the strong, the feeble many against the powerful few, in the efforts of the former to secure a certain and a decent livelihood.

We are well aware that many persons will probably dissent from these statements when made in the broad and naked manner in which we have put them. Yet facts of every-day occurrence around us prove their truth. The attempts made from time to time to organize a "labor party" in the United States are all based upon the belief that the "wage question" is of greater practical importance to those who work for wages than any question

of politics which divides the people of the United States into Republicans and Democrats.

These continual attempts to form a labor party may be welladvised or ill-advised; but whichever they be, the attempts themselves show that in the minds of those who make them the wage question dwarfs and subordinates to itself all mere political questions.

And, to adduce evidence of much wider range, it is an indisputable fact that of the many millions of persons who have migrated to this country from Ireland, Germany and other European countries, the vast majority sought our shores less from political reasons than from the hope of improving their material and industrial condition. It was not-at least not chiefly-because they had few or no political rights or privileges in their native countries, but because their labor was poorly recompensed and they hoped to better their condition, in this respect, in the United States.

The truth of this statement is confirmed by the fact that many of these emigrants cherish the hope of returning to their native countries as soon as they can acquire a competency sufficient to enable them to live there in comfort. Moreover, it is a fact that thousands of the native-born citizens of the United States, if remunerative employment and personal safety are assured to them, are willing and ready to leave this country and go to foreign countries, with little or no concern for the differences which such action will make in their political rights and privileges.

Were other proof needed of the prominent position which the wage question now occupies, it would be furnished by the rapidity with which associations of "trades-unions" of various kinds have been organized, and the vast numbers of persons whom they have enrolled. There is scarcely any form of industrial activity in which the wage-workers have not formed one of these societies. Of late years, too, efforts have been made to combine all these associations together into a common confederacy or union. And these efforts seem to be succeeding. One form of this movement, -that of the "Knights of Labor,"-if recent statements respecting their numerical strength can be relied on, have upwards of three hundred thousand members on their rolls.

The wage question is confounded by some persons with communistic and socialistic theories. But this is a mistake. It is true that socialistic and communistic agitators endeavor to win over the wage-workers to their support. But they have met with little success thus far. It is also true that among the wage-workers there are some who are avowed socialists or communists. the number of these is few. There is not only no necessary connection between the efforts of wage-workers to better their con

But

dition, as regards wages and hours of work, and the crazy dreams of socialists and communists, but their fundamental ideas are antagonistic.

Communism aims at the abolition of individual ownership of property. Its leading idea is that individuals have no exclusive personal right in anything they possess; no right in fact to possess and enjoy anything exclusively; that of right there is no such thing as individual ownership, but that all things should be owned in common, and be distributed to individuals to use and enjoy according to rules and regulations of the entire community or of officials which the commune should elect and appoint. The phrase 'property is robbery" states correctly the fundamental notion of communism.

Socialism contemplates such a reconstruction of human society that all human productive action shall be regulated by the State. It would make, were it carried into practical effect, each individual a mere atom of the entire social aggregate, having no rights apart from or independent of that aggregate, and without personal freedom or personal choice as to what he shall do, when he shall work, or to what use the fruits of his labor shall be put.

But the wage question contemplates nothing of this kind. Its fundamental intention is summed up in the phrase, "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work." It does not aim at robbing employers of even a single dollar of property which they have individually acquired. It does not deny to them the right of increasing their possessions fairly and honestly, and without injustice, fraud, or oppression of their employees.

Taken as a whole, wage-workers have no sympathy with socialistic or communistic theories. Wage-workers are just as anxious to acquire individual property as are wage-payers; just as anxious to have houses and lands of their own, which shall be homes for them and their families; just as anxious to lay up money "against a rainy day,” and enough of it to enable them to live comfortably and raise their children decently, and give them a fair start in life when they have grown up.

There are exceptions to this, of course; but these exceptions do not affect the truth of what we have said. Wage-workers look at the subject in a practical way. They know that their labor is the active producing cause of the wealth their employers acquire, and they feel that it is but just that their labor should be fairly compensated.

Until a few years ago, the wage question in the United States was one of easy practical solution in most cases. The demand for labor was such that if a wage-worker was dissatisfied with his work or with his wages, he could easily obtain other employment that

would remunerate him; then, too, there was a constant movement from the position of wage-worker to that of wage-payer.

But this is no longer the case except to a very limited extent. The influx of emigrants from European countries, and the substitution of machinery for hand-work, have increased the supply of laborers beyond the demand for them. Consequently, when a wage-worker relinquishes a situation, or is discharged from it, he usually finds it very difficult to obtain work elsewhere.

Then, too, the rapid accumulation of capital in enormous amounts and the concentration of all our most important industries into the hands of a few persons or incorporated companies, closely united in syndicates or combinations, which exercise an irresistible power over individual action outside of these combinations, make it extremely difficult for wage-workers to exercise any influence, or to have any voice in deciding what wages they shall receive or how long they shall work. There is scarcely any mutuality between wage-workers and their employers. The wages which the former shall receive and the latter shall pay, is no longer a question for free discussion and free bargain and sale. The question is practically decided by the employers looking at the subject from their own point of view, and without reference to their employees, their condition, rights, or interests. The only liberty the wage-workers commonly can exercise, is the liberty of working or not working for the wages and on the terms which are prescribed by their employers.

Under these circumstances, a vast amount of the talk about wage-workers having a right and being free to put their own price upon their work, and to sell their labor or not as they may choose, is simply not pertinent to the question in the shape it has practically assumed. It is true in principle, but it is a principle which the vast majority of wage-workers are entirely unable to avail themselves of under existing circumstances. Naturally and in justice they have the right to exercise and enjoy this freedom, but, circumstanced as they are, they have not the power necessary to its exercise and enjoyment. The superior controlling power of combinations of capitalists and the needy condition of wageworkers unite to create this inability.

In the majority of instances, therefore, it is sheer mockery to say that wage-workers are free to accept or reject the terms and conditions that are proffered to them. As well say that the man who is loaded down with chains and shackles is at liberty to run —if he can. The man who yields up his money under the compulsion of a knife at his throat or a bludgeon brandished over his head, has no true freedom of choice or action. So, too, with the

wage-worker who receives wages prescribed to him under the condition that he accept those wages or starve.

We shall indulge in no rhetorical enlargement upon this truth. We simply state the naked fact. To us it appears to be as arbitrary and tyrannical an exercise of superior power as the act of a slave-owner who prescribes to his slaves the length of time they shall toil and the amount of work they shall do, without regard to their comfort, their health, and their strength.

The slave has the liberty of working or not working, subject to the penalty of being lashed and tortured if he refuses to work. In very many instances the wage-worker has like liberty, subject to the penalty of starvation or pauperism for himself and his family. If he refuses to accept the terms of his employer, the only alternatives left him are to starve, to become a tramp, or a public pauper.

No one who looks actual facts squarely in the face and seriously considers them can controvert this statement or think that we have spoken too strongly. Our daily newspapers are constantly describing the manner of living and the wages paid to hundreds of thousands of wage-workers in our large cities and towns, and in mines and quarries in the country. Are these wage-workers actually free to sell their labor for the price they put upon it? Are they free to work or not to work for the wages paid by their employers? To ask these questions is to answer them.

Let us look at the actual facts of the wage question as it stands connected with some of the leading industries of Pennsylvania.

The mining of iron ore furnishes employment to a very large number of persons, and provides the raw material for one of our most important industries. What the actual condition is of the men who toil in those mines, and what wages they receive, may be inferred from the following remarks on the subject, made by the Secretary of Internal Affairs of Pennsylvania, in his official report upon the industries of the State:

"The mining of iron ore does not afford constant employment, the average amounting to but thirty-six weeks per annum. This allows scarcely sufficient wages per week, for the run of the year, to maintain a single individual. How those wage-workers having families to maintain can accomplish that difficult task is a problem in social economics that can be solved only by those who have been in similar circumstances. Many miners wear belts instead of suspenders to support the weight of their pantaloons, and one of these, in reply to the question asked him relative to his ability to buy food, replied: Lord bless you, we don't always eat when we are hungry, we just tighten our belts."

To show what is the average actual condition of the wageworkers in the iron-ore mines in Pennsylvania, we give two tables