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Show 1 1 " LABOR AND MONEY. The poor man works to obtain money. If he is prudent and prospers and acquires a little surplus fund, he loans it that he may obtain the interest, or invests it where he hopes it will return re-turn to him a profit. He says to himself: "I earned that money by my toil, it is mine, and no; man should envy me in my possesison of it." That is right, too, but if another man who has more money invests it in a mine, adds to Ihe amount in developing the mine and building reduction works, the poor man does not think tho rich man's money is like his; he is liable to say: "I earned my money, that other money was inherited or came through speculation." And still the purpose of the poor man is precisely the same as that of the rich man, it is to increase the money volume, vol-ume, while behind the act of the rich man there may be a vastly more generous motive than ever came to the poor man's thought. Real money is but labor, or the product of labor put in imperishable imper-ishable form. The labor may have been performed per-formed by patient toilers sometime in the past. Men toiled in field or mine or off on the sea, somewhere, some-where, to create it. When it was converted into gold and silver it became imperishable, a monument monu-ment in witness of the exertions of men who possibly pos-sibly have been dust since before the pyramids were upreared. Hence the rich man's money is just as precious pre-cious as the poor man's, both came originally from the same source, and while more sympathy may attach to the effort and the success of the poor man to increase his little store, it is entitled to only the same protection as the rich man's. Its possession is not an evidence of good will or of a generous purpose on the part of its holder, but merely a proof that some time, somewhere, one man or a thousand men obeyed nature's law that man must earn his bread by the sweat of his face. Then, too, when the man who has much money invests it in business, no matter how selfish his motives may be he is entitled to credit, because ho B provides a means through which men, not blessed fl as he is, may begin the creation for themselves B ot the capital whidh human beings so much covet. fl Hence a strike is always, even when necessary, fl a painful spectacle for it is the uplifting of the fl working man's hands to arrest' the work that he 9 and his childron need, and ofteu leads to striking fl down the product of the work of other hands fl which, perhaps toiled when the Shepherd kings fl ruled Egypt or when David tended 'those few fl sheep in the wilderness." The best minds ought to put forth their best exertions to formulato the fl needed rules to settle peaceably the differences fl between men and nations that all the products fl of honest labor may be saved. . H |