You assume that the labor question is a question between wage-workers and
their employers. But working for wages is not the primary or exclusive occupation
of labor. Primarily men work for themselves without the intervention of an
employer. And the primary source of wages is in the earnings of labor, the
man who works for himself and consumes his own products receiving his wages
in the fruits of his labor. Are not fishermen, boatmen, cab-drivers, peddlers,
working farmers — all, in short, of the many workers who get their
wages directly by the sale of their services or products without the medium
of an employer, as much laborers as those who work for the specific wages
of an employer? In your consideration of remedies you do not seem even to
have thought of them. Yet in reality the laborers who work for themselves
are the first to be considered, since what men will be willing to accept
from employers depends manifestly on what they can get by working for themselves.
You assume that all employers are rich men, who might raise wages much higher
were they not so grasping. But is it not the fact that the great majority
of employers are in reality as much pressed by competition as their workmen,
many of them constantly on the verge of failure? Such employers could not
possibly raise the wages they pay, however they might wish to, unless all
others were compelled to do so.
You assume that there are in the natural order two classes, the rich and
the poor, and that laborers naturally belong to the poor.
It is true as you say that there are differences in capacity, in diligence,
in health and in strength, that may produce differences in fortune. These,
however, are not the differences that divide men into rich and poor. The
natural differences in powers and aptitudes are certainly not greater than
are natural differences in stature. But while it is only by selecting giants
and dwarfs that we can find men twice as tall as others, yet in the difference
between rich and poor that exists today we find some men richer than other
men by the thousandfold and the millionfold.
Nowhere do these differences between wealth and poverty coincide with differences
in individual powers and aptitudes. The real difference between rich and
poor is the difference between those who hold the tollgates and those who
pay toll; between tribute-receivers and tribute-yielders.
In what way does nature justify such a difference? In the numberless varieties
of animated nature we find some species that are evidently intended to live
on other species. But their relations are always marked by unmistakable differences
in size, shape or organs. To man has been given dominion over all the other
living things that tenant the earth. But is not this mastery indicated even
in externals, so that no one can fail on sight to distinguish between a man
and one of the inferior animals? Our American apologists for slavery
used to contend that the black skin and woolly hair of the negro indicated
the intent of nature that the black should serve the white; but the difference
that you assume to be natural is between men of the same race. What difference
does nature show between such men as would indicate her intent that one should
live idly yet be rich, and the other should work hard yet be poor? If
I could bring you from the United States a man who has $200,000,000, and
one who is glad to work for a few dollars a week, and place them side by
side in your antechamber, would you be able to tell which was which, even
were you to call in the most skilled anatomist? Is it not clear that God
in no way countenances or condones the division of rich and poor that exists
today, or in any way permits it, except as having given them free will he
permits men to choose either good or evil, and to avoid heaven if they prefer
hell. For is it not clear that the division of men into the classes
rich and poor has invariably its origin in force and fraud; invariably involves
violation of the moral law; and is really a division into those who get the
profits of robbery and those who are robbed; those who hold in exclusive
possession what God made for all, and those who are deprived of his bounty? Did not Christ in all his utterances and parables show that the gross difference
between rich and poor is opposed to God’s law? Would he have condemned
the rich so strongly as he did, if the class distinction between rich and
poor did not involve injustice — was not opposed to God’s intent?
... read the whole letter