One of the important problems with which you will have to deal in the future is the labor question, and it is probable that your very first experience with it may be in direct antagonism with the opinions of many with whom you have heretofore been associated.  It is an honor to the feelings of those who stand outside and witness this so-called struggle now in progress between capital and labor, that they believe the whole question can be settled by kindly treatment and reasonable argument.  There are some cases that will yield to such treatment, and one’s whole duty is not performed till all possible, reasonable, and humanitarian methods are adopted.  There has been an excuse for the organization of labor, and it, to some small extent, still exists.

Time was that the surplus of unskilled labor was used on a mercantile basis to reduce wages to such an extent that it was almost impossible to rear a well nurtured, much less a well educated and well dressed family, and, moreover, the hours of labor in some branches of business were so long as to shorten the lives of operatives and make self-improvement impossible.  The natural progress of civilizing influence did much to abate many of these evils, but the organization of labor removed sores that had not and perhaps could not have been reached in other ways.  Having then an excuse for organization, and supported by the success made in directions where public sympathy was with them, is it to be wondered that they have gone too far in very many cases, and that the leadership of such organization has in many instances been captured by designing men, who control the masses to accomplish selfish ends?  Whatever may have been the method of evolution, it is certain that the manufacturing operations of the present day have to meet with elements entirely antagonistic to their interests, and in very many ways antagonistic to the interests of the workingman.  The members of many organizations, even of intelligent men, are blindly led by chiefs of various titles, of which perhaps the walking delegate is the most offensive one to reasonable people.  This class of men claim the right to intrude themselves into the establishments owned by others, and on the most trivial grounds make demands more or less unreasonable, and order strikes and otherwise interfere with the work of manufacturers, much in the way that we have an idea that the agents of the barbarbous chieftains, feudal lords, and semi-civilized rulers collected taxes and laid burdens in earlier historical times.  Necessarily these men must use their power so as to insure its permanency.  If strikes are popular, strikes must be ordered.  If funds run low, excuses for strikes, it is believed, in many cases are sought, so as to stir the pulses of those who sympathize with the labor cause.