Well, if this controversy between Capital and Labor can not be settled by human wisdom, if to-day Capital and Labor stand with their thumbs on each other’s throat—­as they do—­it is time for us to look somewhere else for relief, and it points from my text roseate and jubilant, and puts one hand on the broadcloth shoulder of Capital, and puts the other hand on the homespun-covered shoulder of Toil, and says, with a voice that will grandly and gloriously settle this, and settle everything, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”  That is, the lady of the household will say:  “I must treat the maid in the kitchen just as I would like to be treated if I were down-stairs, and it were my work to wash, and cook, and sweep, and it were the duty of the maid in the kitchen to preside in this parlor.”  The maid in the kitchen must say:  “If my employer seems to be more prosperous than I, that is no fault of hers; I shall not treat her as an enemy.  I will have the same industry and fidelity down-stairs as I would expect from my subordinates, if I happened to be the wife of a silk importer.”

The owner of an iron mill, having taken a dose of my text before leaving home in the morning, will go into his foundry, and, passing into what is called the puddling-room, he will see a man there stripped to the waist, and besweated and exhausted with the labor and the toil, and he will say to him:  “Why, it seems to be very hot in here.  You look very much exhausted.  I hear your child is sick with scarlet fever.  If you want your wages a little earlier this week, so as to pay the nurse and get the medicines, just come into my office any time.”

After awhile, crash goes the money market, and there is no more demand for the articles manufactured in that iron mill, and the owner does not know what to do.  He says, “Shall I stop the mill, or shall I run it on half time, or shall I cut down the men’s wages?” He walks the floor of his counting-room all day, hardly knowing what to do.  Toward evening he calls all the laborers together.  They stand all around, some with arms akimbo, some with folded arms, wondering what the boss is going to do now.  The manufacturer says:  “Men, times are very hard; I don’t make twenty dollars where I used to make one hundred.  Somehow, there is no demand now for what we manufacture, or but very little demand.  You see I am at vast expense, and I have called you together this afternoon to see what you would advise.  I don’t want to shut up the mill, because that would force you out of work, and you have always been very faithful, and I like you, and you seem to like me, and the bairns must be looked after, and your wife will after awhile want a new dress.  I don’t know what to do.”