threaten me, I shall go, in them, as far as you; but from arson
and assassination I recoil with horror. You see you have very little to
burn, and you are not more than half alive anyhow."

That, I submit, is a pretty fair definition of the position of the
wealthy man who works with his head. It seems worth while to put it on
record while he is extant to challenge or verify; for the probability is
that unless he mend his ways he will not much longer be wealthy, work,
nor have a head.

II.

In discussion of the misdoings at Homestead and Coeur d' Alene it is
amusing to observe all the champions of law and order gravely prating
of "principles" and declaring with all the solemnity of owls that these
sacred things have been violated. On that ground they have the argument
all their own way. Indubitably there is hardly a fundamental principle
of law and morals that the rioting laborers have not footballed out
of the field of consideration. Indubitably, too, in doing so they have
forfeited as they must have expected to forfeit, all the "moral support"
for which they did not care a tinker's imprecation. If there were any
question of their culpability this solemn insistence upon it would lack
something of the humor with which it is now invested and which saves the
observer from death by dejection.

It is not only in discussions of the "labor situation" that we hear this
eternal babble of "principles." It is never out of ear, and in politics
is especially clamant. Every success in an election is yawped of as
"a triumph of Republican (or Democratic) principles." But neither
in politics nor in the quarrels of laborers and their employers have
principles a place as "factors in the problem." Their use is to supply
to both combatants a vocabulary of accusation and appeal. All the fierce
talk of an antagonist's violation of those eternal principles upon which
organized society is founded--and the rest of it--what is it but the
cry of the dog with the chewed ear? The dog that is chewing foregoes the
advantage of song.

Human contests engaging any number of contestants are not struggles of
principles but struggles of interests; and this is no less true of those
decided by the ballot than of those in which the franker bullet gives
judgment. Nor, but from considerations of prudence and expediency, will
either party hesitate to transgress the limits of the law and outrage
the sense of right. At Homestead and Wardner the laborers c