it. No honest workman objects to paying a
good price for good tools. It is not the purchase of tools by one set
of workmen of another that causes the unequal conditions.

(_d_) It is the usurer or interest taker that perverts the conditions.

He lays hold of those great inventions and discoveries, like railroads
and telegraphs and telephones, and demands a perpetual compensation.
He asks that the laborer shall be forever buying his tool, yet it
shall be never bought, that the public shall be forever paying for
privileges and the obligation remain forever unmet. This is but one of
the forms of usury, by which wealth is heaped from the earnings of the
many.

4. The difficulties between employers and their laborers do not cease.
The continued strikes and lock-outs show how general and deep the
trouble is. Laborers organize into unions to protect themselves from
discharge and to promote their interests. They ask for better wages
and shorter hours. They urge their petition with forceful arguments;
they make demands with an implied threat; they stop work or "strike."
Then follows a test of strength and endurance in which both parties
greatly suffer and both are embittered and neither is satisfied.

The correction of this common evil has received close study from those
who have the welfare of all classes at heart and wish to be
benefactors of the race. The remedies have not been thorough but
superficial, and the benefits temporary. The branches have been cut
off but they grow again.

(_a_) The complaint of too small wages implies that more is earned
than is received; but there is no standard recognized by which what a
man does earn can be measured. The capitalist claims the output as the
earnings of his capital and his claim is allowed by the workmen. The
workmen may claim that wages are too small for a comfortable living.
This is not a plea of free workmen, but of slaves begging to be better
fed.

(_b_) They may complain of too many hours of labor; but the number of
hours of labor is arbitrarily fixed. There is no valid constant reason
why one should wish to work less. In the management of one's own work,
and the collection of his own earnings, there are times when long
hours, of the strain of labor, are necessary, and there are other
times when ease can be taken. With no standard of earnings or time, it
is impossible to arrive at a just and satisfactory settlement.

The reasons given sound to the employers like the p