g chains is echoing through the
world, and still a mighty multitude of the world's workers is in bondage
under the old system, the others, for whose liberation was all this
"expense of spirit in a waste of shame," are sharply challenging the
advantage of the new. The new is, in troth, breaking down at every
point The relation of employer and employee is giving but little better
satisfaction than that of master and slave. The difference between the
two is, indeed, not nearly so broad as we persuade ourselves to think
it. In many of the industries there is practically no difference at all,
and the tendency is more and more to effacement of the difference where
it exists.

Labor unions, strikes and rioting are no new remedies for this insidious
disorder; they were common in ancient Rome and still more ancient Egypt.
In the twenty-ninth year of Rameses III a deputation of workmen employed
in the Theban necropolis met the superintendent and the priests with
a statement of their grievances. "Behold," said the spokesman, "we
are brought to the verge of famine. We have neither food, nor oil, nor
clothing; we have no fish; we have no vegetables. Already we have sent
up a petition to our sovereign lord the Pharaoh, praying that he will
give us these things and we are going to appeal to the Governor that we
may have the wherewithal to live." The response to this complaint was
one day's rations of corn. This appears to have been enough only while
it lasted, for a few weeks later the workmen were in open revolt.
Thrice they broke out of their quarter, rioting like mad and defying the
police. Whether they were finally shot full of arrows by the Pinkerton
men of the period the record does not state.

"Organized discontent" in the laboring population is no new thing under
the sun, but in this century and country it has a new opportunity and
Omniscience alone can forecast the outcome. Of one thing we may be very
sure, and the sooner the "capitalist" can persuade himself to discern it
the sooner will his eyes guard his neck: the relations between those who
are able to live without physical toil and those who are not are a
long way from final adjustment, but are about to undergo a profound and
essential alteration. That this is to come by peaceful evolution is a
hope which has nothing in history to sustain it. There are to be bloody
noses and cracked crowns, and the good people who suffer themselves to
be shocked by such things in others