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double injustice of a reduction of the wages of labor, which is, to the laborer, a reduction of life.

Another law of wages is, that "they are regulated in a great measure by the intelligence, education, good conduct, and independent condition of the laborer." This rule is the foundation of the difference between the wages of learned and unlearned labor, the labor of him who works with his head and him who works with his hands-between headcrafts and handicrafts. In defence of this difference, it is said that the learned laborer is entitled to a higher compensation for his labor than the handicraftsman, because he has invested a large capital in acquiring the learning and skill necessary for the fit discharge of his professional functions. But their education is itself an advantage which, in most cases, they receive from the favor of society; and one to which the unlearned laborer is equally entitled, of which he is deprived, in most cases, without his own fault. According to this rule, the one is entitled to a reward for possessing an advantage over another, who, in turn, is subjected to a disability which he has not imposed upon himself, which society has imposed upon him. In another view education is its own reward. Intellect, as its culture is the highest glory of man, gives constant and increasing compensation for its exercise in the exercise itself. According to the law of nature, superior gifts and advantages are to be regarded chiefly as means of larger service to mankind. It is a perversion of their design to make them the grounds of larger demands upon those for whose service they were conferred. This is to make the professions and liberal arts sordid, instead of liberal; to convert the God into Mammon. The natural law of justice would seem to give the unlearned laborer the greater compensation for his work, as a sort of reparation for the manifold incumbrances and necessary social degradation which lie upon and overbear him.

But the last condition of the rule I am considering, breathes the very spirit of feudalism-"the independent condition of the laborer." This places the matter upon the naked ground of force, and makes the law of compensation the degree in which manhood is limited and fettered by animal necessities. Instead of ruling man by the

lash applied to the back, the same end is substantially obtained by founding dominion upon the incessant and uncontrollable activity of the gastric juice.

The subject might be further illustrated by reference to the inequality of the wages of different occupations, to the difference between productive and unproductive industry, manual toil and labor of mere oversight and inspection, between employments more or less sinecure, and those demanding constant activity; in all of which labor is abridged of its rights, and the rule of compensation is nearly in an inverse ratio to the amount and productiveness of the work done. In no occupation, in no workshop, or corn-field, or factory, is it he who is hired and receives wages, that grows rich; but he who hires, and is paid no wages. Capital and the oversight of capital, instead of receiving only its just share, engrosses the largest part of the profits of all business; and that capital not in the hands of him who has created it by his labor, but of him who has been able to purchase and speculate on the labor of others. The sailor exiles himself from home, wanders through all the solitudes of ocean, exposes his life to tempests and tornadoes, and all the dangers of the deep and contrasts of the seasons, that he may bring wealth from every clime to pour into the full coffers of his owners; and of all the wealth which his labor and peril produce, he receives, perhaps, twelve dollars a month. The operative workman, for toiling twelve or fifteen hours a day, receives from three to-in the very fortunate occupations-ten dollars a week. The capitalist who employs him, counts his wealth by thousands, and looks down with curled lip upon the brother whose property he is appropriating to himself. The professional man, the corporation officer and manager, the counting-house proprietor, spurn with scorn that compensation for their labor which they do not blush to offer, and even higgle about with the workman, whose only wealth is in his muscles. The farmer's son has ambitious visions of a higher destiny than his father's; he turns his back upon the degrading plough, and seeks it behind a counter or beneath a learned gown. If, in some of the reverses of fortune, which society boasts of as one of the compensations of all injustice, the capitalist is compelled to earn an honest subsistence

1845.]

What is the Reason?

in what he once deemed a menial occupation; society deplores his sad lot, and reads edifying homilies upon the vanity of wealth,-forgotten the moment after in the unrelaxed pursuit of the vanity. In this development of social equality, as expressed in the relation of labor and wages, the first answer is found to the inquiry, "Why have I none?" Wages are undoubtedly a step in advance of the condition of enforced unpaid labor; but only an advance-not an end. They imply substantially, only a little more decisively than servitude, a denial of manhood and its rights. They attach to the laborer, in the sentiment of society, reflected and responded to in his own heart, the same idea as servitude of inferiority and social degradation. If they were to be the ultimate condition of the laborer, it might well be inquired whether he had made a fortunate escape from serfdom, and might not find repose, and a serener lot, even in slavery.

Another consideration must not be omitted. Wages are the laborer's only resource for subsistence. His right to labor cannot be denied without abridging his right of life. Yet society gives no guaranty of this. The right to labor The depends upon the will of others. opportunity of earning wages is uncertain and contingent, depending upon the uncertainties and contingencies of trade, the state of the markets, the prosperity or failure of speculation;and worse, upon the arbitrary and tyrannical caprice of those who hold in their hands the laborer's bread of life, who have the power to punish the utterance of a free opinion, an honest assertion of manhood, by withholding, or taking away from him occupation, his only resource for existence.

Such is society's protection to proper-
ty. A great part of its legislation, and
," its
even the "perfection of reason,'
common law, is founded on, and aims
at the security of these falsehoods. As
the system originated in force and fraud,
in the power of the strong and the
subtleties of the cunning, so it can be
maintained only by force, and by de-
ceiving the masses as to the nature and
extent of their rights. Hence, all our
statute books bristle with laws recogniz-
ing property as of more worth than
man; making the want of it more or
less a civil disqualification, and the
possession of it a condition of political
rights; creating wealth by special favor

for a few, by modes which it is made a
crime for others to pursue; giving to
corporations and money-making associ-
ations unusual facilities for accumulat-
ing and concentrating wealth; and in
various other modes, making labor more
the laborer, is
and more dependent on capital. The
circle of injustice to man,
completed by making property, thus ac-
quired, hereditary, placing it at the ab-
solute disposal of its possessor after his
bones have mouldered in the grave,
and securing it to his heirs, if he should
chance to die and make no sign.

A society thus organized is, of neces-
sity, a state of selfish competition for
material interests, with little thought of
generous and enlarged co-operation in
the pursuit even of these. Man is not
looked upon as a brother and a helper,
but as a rival and an enemy in interests.
Occupations and employments are hos-
tile, circumventive, watchful for private
advantage, forgetful of the great law of
justice and love, seeking to profit by the
ignorance and inexperience of others.
The law of war, "all stratagems are
just," is the rule of business; the legal
maxim, caveat emptor, is the authentic
scripture of trade. The acquisition of
wealth is the chief good, and avarice the
predominating passion of society. The
great strife is Capital against Labor, in
which the latter is, for the most part,
passive, and the necessities and impera-
tive wants and holiest affections of man
are the fund upon which cupidity and
cunning speculate. A show of political
unity and equality may be maintained,
but social unity and equality are impos-
sible. Society is a system of cliques,
parties, professions, trades, with differ-
ent and rival interests in most respects,
and none united by any common bond
of private interest. Industry is solita-
ry, selfish, antagonistic. Man is placed
in the isolation, without the freedom
and independence, of the savage.

Poverty is a necessary incident of such a social organization,-not as the result of casualty or crime, but directly and inevitably of the institutions of society. Poverty is the inevitable lot of multitudes,-of multitudes, which the clearly induced necessity of things and constant experience testify, must be enlarging in every generation,—of multitudes, who, for no fault of their own or their fathers in the third or fourth generation, have no inheritance but poverty and toil, and before whose earliest path

physical and spiritual obstructions lie
yawning, like bottomless abysses, on
every side. Poverty, in itself, is by no
means the greatest of evils. So far as
it consists in the mere deprivation of
physical comforts, it is not always an
evil. To the soul which has learned
and feels its freedom and power, it is
scarcely at all an evil;-at the worst, of
the lightest. The dry crust, eaten by
the gushing fountain, is a full equiva-
lent and compensation for all that luxu-
ry lavishes upon its feasts,-as the
leathern vesture of George Fox was, in
the eye of the universe, more gorgeous
apparel than all royal robes. The mo-
ment a man acquires the self-conscious-
ness of manhood, he is the master of
destiny. The environments of fortune
are, in truth, mere accidents ;-with
them, or without them, he is infinitely
rich, for the eternal treasures are his.
But the development of this sentiment
is the fruit of a culture, to which the
condition of poverty presents constant
and increasing obstructions. In one
who is born in destitution, and must, in
the most favorable circumstances, waste
the hopeful energies of youth, and the
strength of manhood, in ceaseless toil,
before he can redeem himself from the
bondage of care for mere animal necessi-
ties, it will hardly be less than a miracle,
if this self-consciousness should be
awakened. Poverty, then, is an evil
only in the consequences it brings in its
train; of which the worst and most bit-
ter are the necessity of excessive toil,
and the ignorance which that involves.
Labor is a dignity and a blessing.
It is an essential condition of man's
being, to be inferred, if from no surer
premises, from the fact that he has a
stomach and a pair of hands. The
stomach can only be fed by the labor of
the hands, and, as every man is fur-
nished with these organs in both kinds,
every man is created to labor. It is
every man's duty to feed his own mouth;
no man has a just claim npon another
to do it for him. "If a man will not
work, neither shall he eat," is the rule
in this behalf revealed by common
sense, as well as by the more imposing
inspiration. If any one violates this
law, and eats without producing, or
more than he produces, the harmony of
things is disturbed, and somebody must
suffer. Under the present arrangement
of all societies, the suffering does not
fall upon the transgressor. The drones

are made kings, and fed with the choicest of the hive, instead of being driven off into the outer spaces. The great strife of society is to escape from the allotted duty of labor with the hands. The demand for this kind of labor continually increases with the advancement of society in refinement and arts. More elegant mansions are to be built, more sumptuous furniture, finer apparel, daintier food, richer equipages, and an elaborate variety of costlier elegancies and luxuries, to be provided. All these create new demands upon labor, and at the same time extend the desire to escape from it. Those who possess these refinements, are they who, by superior intelligence or cunning, or the inheritance of wealth from those who thus acquired it, have escaped from the common lot of labor, yet who require a vastly increased amount of the results of labor. The demands of their household and private splendor must be borne by labor

the labor of others, whose fruits they consume. Every luxury, possessed without having been earned, is a wrong to somebody, is enjoyed at the expense of injustice to a man-of the debasement of a man. For excessive toil debases man; and excessive toil must be the lot of multitudes in a social organization which takes wealth out of the hands which create it, and gives it to those who have no share in producing it. Labor, though necessary, honorable and a blessing to the soul and body, is in its abuse a terrible punishment and curse, fulfilling literally the awful imprecation, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake." It exhausts the body prematurely, blunts, dwarfs the intellect, makes it the mere slave of the hands, and reduces the man to only a little more intelligent machine than the plough or spinning-jenny, that is made up of wood and iron. The mind is enlarged only by exercise; only those faculties grow which are kept active and cultivated. By the laws of the mysterious union between the material and spiritual in man, each requires, for their just and harmonious development, alternate seasons of action and repose. If either of these is denied to either, it suffers, and its growth is stinted. Excessive labor of the hands is, therefore, by no accidental sequence, a robbery of the laborer's opportunities of moral and intellectual culture. The toils of the

day leave him at night weary and exhausted, incapable of anything but sleep sleep "that is broken by no dream." None but a heroic soul could grow but feeble, stinted, dwarfish; nay, though the oaks bore books instead of acorns, and there were literally sermons in stones. Even the flowers in his path utter no prophecy in his ears, and he cannot hear the eternal song of the

stars.

Resulting from the necessity of unnatural, excessive labor, and the intellectual obstructions it occasions, is the prevailing sentiment that labor in itself is disgraceful, and a curse. That sentiment is seldom expressed in words, and is avoided with very special care by popular orators, when they appeal, on the eve of an election, to the "intelligence of the hard-handed, huge-pawed yeomanry." It is, nevertheless, the concealed spring of much of the life and activity of society. What has produced here, in the free States, where the laborer is acknowledged to be a man, and the equal of all other men, the deathlike apathy concerning the existence of that institution of slavery which crushes the body and soul of the laborer under an iron yoke, but the secret thought of the leaders of opinion, that labor is the natural badge of slavery, that slavery and wages are but different modifications of the same natural and essential condition? The sentiment is uttered, though unspoken, by the eager crowds everywhere found, who seek to escape from the manual occupations into the more respectable headcrafts; in all the distinctions which are made in legislation, custom, or social opinion, between the handicraftsman and others; in the rules of wages in all their details; in every condition, other than that of being a man, annexed to the possession of political rights or social communion; in the deference paid to mere wealth, to the ability to live without occupation, which is, in other words, to live without having fulfilled the first condition of life; in the idea that any honest labor can be menial in itself, or one kind of labor more honorable than another, if it is labor according to the worker's gifts, and well and honorably done. If I accept a service from another, which I would not render him, my action affirms that I consider his office menial and disgraceful. If James gives John a sixpence for a coat of Day & Martin

VOL XVI.NO. LXXIX.

3

applied to his boots, and will not polish John's boots, and pocket John's sixpence, when the fit occasion offers, James considers John's office servile. If John, knowing that to be James's opinion, brushes his boots, and takes his sixpence, and hesitates to require the same service for the same compensation, because James thinks it servile, John admits that James's opinion is right; John's office is servile, and John, as a man, is degraded. Or, if John, possessing equal skill in his business with James in his, receives a sixpence for a certain amount of timeexcluding the cost of materials-occupied in James's service, and both parties are satisfied that the service is well remunerated, and James refuses to receive a sixpence as an equivalent for the same amount of time bestowed in John's service, he looks upon that employment as dishonorable, and John, by giving more as James's right, acknowledges that it is so. The relation might

In it

be placed in various other lights. Now, essentially, no labor is menial, or dishonorable, which contributes to the rational enjoyment of man. self, the employment of James is no worthier than that of John, if John's also contributes to the comfort and improvement of social existence. It is not the work a man does, but only the spirit in which he works, that makes it honorable or mean. Those reckoned the lowest offices of society, are readily performed for the relief of suffering, or at the demand of friendship, even by those who scorn them most as occupations. Love ennobles the deed, and makes it heroic. In this view, John the boot-black, or the poorest tinker, with his rude kit and coarse manipulations, may be greater in his work, if we consider the reality and endurance of things, than he whose voice chains senates in attention, or hushes tumultuous crowds in reverent stillness. This man's work may perish with the dispersion of the crowd, while his is done for the eternal years, whose splendors illuminate and hallow it. In the present arrangement of the social state, scarcely a chance for this heroic work is permitted to the laborer. The dignity and respectability of the laborer are measured, almost exclusively, by the ability to pay, and the necessity of getting, the sixpence. Those employments are reckoned the most worthy of the

aspirations of young ambition, which offer it the best prospect of being able to be the giver of the coin. James is a gentleman, and John is a menial, because the one has a sixpence, by which he can save himself from the dishonor of brushing his own boots, and the other has a stomach whose ever recurring hunger he can appease only by getting the sixpence into his hands on the required terms. Neither of them stands upon the ground of his manhood. The clear relation of brotherhood and equality is forgotten on both sides. The intrinsic dignity of labor is implicitly denied ; a dishonorable service has been demanded and rendered; and they stand in an acknowledged relation of preeminence and inferiority.

The worst effect of all this is the impairing of the sentiment of manhood in those thus condemned to hopeless toil, and regarded as degraded by their social position; and of the self-respect and reliance which are both the manifestation and security of that sentiment. The feeling of manhood, in its essence and highest development, approaches, if it be not identical with, religious reverence. Its perfect utterance is, "Know ye, that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwells in you?" It is the foundation of personal virtue, the only efficient restraint upon the lower appetites. So far as it is weakened or impaired, man's higher nature loses the dominion over him, and the animal rules. Man is no longer a man, living in free obedience to his divine intuitions; but an animal, subject to the sway of his animal propensities. Whose fault is it, then, that men, thus fettered and borne down by unnatural limitations and denials, are ignorant, vicious, degraded, brutalized, slaves of sense and passion, and possessed in the depths of their souls by an indignant feeling of injustice, issuing in hatred and defiance of society? Smothered, but unextinguished, manhood thus unconsciously avenges itself upon the power that has crushed it; and the evil seeds, which its unnatural institutions have sown in man's heart, are returned to society in poisonous harvests. In vain does it build its penitentiaries and scaffolds. These are the crown and consummation of all other injustice, and only aggravate the evils they profess to remedy. Society has no right to punish, but what is de

rived from the equity and justice of its organization,-the paternal characterof its administration. Its jurisdiction is unjust and tyrannical, when not grounded on the truth of the relations it maintains with man.

pe

The evil influences of this unnatural state of things, are not confined to those who outwardly seem to suffer most. The worst effects are not physical, but moral. The other extreme has its culiar forms of evil. The standard of virtue is not the standard of manhood. Good and evil are not reckoned from the absolute, but from the expedient. Decorums, proprieties, factitious fitnesses of position, rank, office, income, take the place of the universal law of the good and true. Man is here no more a man than in the other extreme; but in his most favorable aspect, a wealthy man, a man of birth, an educated, official, or some other accidental man. Here, as there, hedged in and controlled by his circumstances, he is little more than a bundle of accidents,

superior advantages regarded not as conferring the means of greater benefit to the race, or the society, but as personal distinctions, conferring a real superiority, and just claims for larger demands of reverence and service from mankind. Contempt for the supposed inferior is a characteristic of such a society; and in a truthful view of things, the want of reverence for humanity in any of its manifestations, is not a more venial crime, nor a less prolific seed of evil, than the loss of the sentiment of manhood itself. "Whosoever shall say to his brother, thou fool,' shall be in danger of hell-fire." Even the refinements and elegances which indicate the distinction of the favored classes, are a snare and a curse. Luxuries are not in themselves an evil; they are good and desirable. The palace is a fitter residence for man, than the hovel. Within it he may have freer opportunities for large development. Surrounded by the elegances of architecture and household embellishments, he is in a situation much more favorable for self-culture, than if his senses are conversant only with uncouth and ungraceful forms. In a natural state of society, the burnished mirror of the present day would be intrinsically a better and fitter appendage of the female toilet, than the nicely scoured pewter platter, before which

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