OCR Text |
Show Capita! and Labor. ; AS THE NEW YEAR dawns upon us the prosperous condition of the country, north and south, east and west, is a cause of congratulation. The great strike in the coal regions is settled, and the country now awaits the final decision of the commission, which will be rendered in the near future. fu-ture. This decision may avert future strikes, or at least set a precedent by which a speedy settlement of all troubles trou-bles and disputes between capital and labor may be agreed upon. Any friction fric-tion between capital and labor is sure to militate against the general prosperity pros-perity of the country. An amicable settlement of disputed questions is rarely reached without some third disinterested dis-interested party to decide who is right. Hence the necessity of a court of arbitration, arbi-tration, with power to make concessions conces-sions on both sides, and whose decision would be final. Such court, if it could be established, would remove a great deal of the friction and bad spirit that springs up from time to time when j strikes are declared. But a final court of arbitration may be, in some instances, impracticable. A decision as tq compensation and the hours of labor would not bind the laborer that is, compel him to work if he decided otherwise: oth-erwise: neither would it be binding on capital to invest money, or to close its factories. The , dividing line between be-tween both is so sharply drawn that our wisest statesmen and ablest lawyers law-yers are unable to reach the matter by legislation. You cannot compel an honest man to work for a fixed sum, nor can you force a capitalist to pay above what he considers fair wages. Between the employer and employe there is no bond of union, no love. The former pays the latter while he is able to work. It may be a year, twenty years or a lifetime; . but be it long or short, when he is unable to work, however how-ever faithful he may have been or how pressing his wants may be, 'the employer em-ployer feels no obligation of extending the hand of charity. This is especially true of capital when controlled by cor porate bodies who are both soulless and heartless. For them there is no moral law, and the civil law cannot reach them. There can be no appeal to conscience, as a corporation possesses pos-sesses none. Individuals who make up the corporate body may and often art generous and warm-hearted, would willingly help an old and faithful disabled dis-abled employe, but they shirk their individual in-dividual responsibility, or moral obligation obli-gation of doing so. The growing tendency ten-dency of the people has been to get rid of religion, and it cannot be denied that the religious state of the people is at a very low ebb. A Christian people who retain a sensibility to moral ideas and to religious considerations which serves as a golden link to unite the rich and poor, compels the former to do justice to the latter. What the civil is unable to do is easily affected by appeals to conscience. But when that link is severed there is no healing up of the breach between capital and labor, which is growing wider each year. Let us hope that the new year will see a better understanding and more amicable relations between these contending elements, and the court of arbitration will settle satisfactorily all disputed questions: |