Conversely, take the workman settled down to work in the mill, at the best wages attainable at the time.  He has a house and family.  He has given pledges to society.  His employer has incurred certain duties in regard to him by the very nature of their relations.  Suppose the workman and his family cannot live in any comfort on the wages he receives.  The employer is morally bound to increase the wages if he can.  But if, instead of sympathizing with the situation of his workman, he forms a combination with all the mills of his sort, and reduces wages merely to increase his gains, he is guilty of an act as worthy of indictment as the strike.  I do not see why a conspiracy against labor is not as illegal as a conspiracy against capital.  The truth is, the possession of power by men or associations makes them selfish and generally cruel.  Few employers consider anything but the arithmetic of supply and demand in fixing wages, and workingmen who have the power, tend to act as selfishly as the male printers used to act in striking in an establishment which dared to give employment to women typesetters.  It is of course sentimental to say it, but I do not expect we shall ever get on with less friction than we have now, until men recognize their duties as well as their rights in their relations with each other.

In running over some of the reasons for the present discontent, and the often illogical expression of it, I am far from saying anything against legitimate associations for securing justice and fair play.  Disassociated labor has generally been powerless against accumulated capital.  Of course, organized labor, getting power will use its power (as power is always used) unjustly and tyrannically.  It will make mistakes, it will often injure itself while inflicting general damage.  But with all its injustice, with all its surrender of personal liberty, it seeks to call the attention of the world to certain hideous wrongs, to which the world is likely to continue selfishly indifferent unless rudely shaken out of its sense of security.  Some of the objects proposed by these associations are chimerical, but the agitation will doubtless go on until another element is introduced into work and wages than mere supply and demand.  I believe that some time it will be impossible that a woman shall be forced to make shirts at six cents apiece, with the gaunt figures of starvation or a life of shame waiting at the door.  I talked recently with the driver of a street-car in a large city.  He received a dollar and sixty cents a day.  He went on to his platform at eight in the morning, and left it at twelve at night, sixteen hours of continuous labor every day in the week.  He had no rest for meals, only snatched what he could eat as he drove along, or at intervals of five or eight minutes at the end of routes.  He had no Sunday, no holiday in the year.