The great themes of political discussion in our day--the tariff and the
currency--lead directly to a consideration of the conditions of labor,
of the relations between producers and products, of mutual rights and
respective interests of employers and employed. The existence of
extreme destitution and consequent misery in the midst of general
prosperity and plenty, of willing hands vainly seeking employment amid
unsurpassed industrial activity and thrift, cannot have escaped
attention. The disasters resulting from industrial anarchy, from
"strikes" of operatives for higher wages or fewer hours of labor, the
stoppage of work by combinations if not by outright violence, arrest
general attention.
Truly the remedy for these errors and evils has yet been perceived and
embraced by comparatively few, but the conviction that the present
organization of industry cannot be advantageously maintained, and some
radical change is at hand, must have already forced itself upon very
many intelligent and candid minds. The readjustment of the relations of
capital and labor on a basis of harmony and mutual advantage, is
manifestly the great problem of the age. But that a change is at hand
is evident: the practical question regards not its probability or
certainty, but its character.
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