So far as labor expects to be helped by public sympathy, which is always on the side of the unfortunate and oppressed, it cuts its own throat by denying the right of any laborer to work at cheaper rates than his fellows. The abuses and indignities to which so-called scabs have been subjected have alienated public “sympathy” from labor movements to a most deplorable degree. No American, not even the millionaire, is free from the influence of competition in business, and the richest are sometimes those who suffer the most. Competition has been defined as the soul of business, and no one yet has been skilful enough to deny or modify the assertion. If employers may compete, if clerks, teachers, salesmen, lawyers, physicians, even clergymen, may compete with one another for wages or compensation for their services, why may not workmen? Can any one imagine a body of clerks, or dry-goods salesmen, or lawyers, forming a clique and standing at dark corners with clubs and pistols to bully other men of their own profession into demanding certain wages on penalty of refusing to do any business at all?
“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” If one class of labor is entitled to take as much wages as it may get for such services as it can render, why should not another be entitled to the same privilege? It is very true that the laboring man often sees in free competition by a large number of men a possibility that he shall be deprived of his daily occupation. But whose fault is it? That of the competitor who will work for lower wages or of the man who has done so little outside of his daily stint of labor as to be obliged to stand in the position of a highwayman or bully toward any one who can do the same work for less money than he?
Can law improve the condition of the workingman? Can you make a horse drink by leading him to the water? The law has done a great deal for the laborers in many States by giving workmen a first lien upon the results of their work, but it cannot and will not compel the community to regard the inefficient worker as the equal of the good one, which is the point upon which some trade unions and other organizations seem inclined to insist. Neither will it allow the employee to manage his employer’s business. The employer may occasionally find himself “in a hole,” where he must submit to any terms imposed by the only men who can help him out, but if he gets in any such fix a second time his bankers and customers will go back upon him, after which he will have no use for labor at any price.