ommitted
robbery, pillage and murder, as striking workmen invariably do when they
dare, and as cowardly newspapers and scoundrel politicians encourage
them in doing. But what would you have? They conceive it to be to their
interest to do these things. If capitalists conceive it to be to theirs
they too would do them. They do not do them for their interest lies in
the supremacy of the law--under which they can suffer loss but do not
suffer hunger.

"But they do murder," say the labor unions; "they bring in gangs of
armed mercenaries who shoot down honest workmen striving for their
rights." This is the baldest nonsense, as they know very well who utter
it. The Pinkerton men are mere mercenaries and have no right place in
our system, but there have been no instances of their attacking men not
engaged in some unlawful prank. In the fight at Homestead the workmen
were actually intrenched on premises belonging to the other side, where
they had not the ghost of a legal right to be. American working men are
not fools; they know well enough when they are rogues. But confession is
not among the military virtues, and the question. Is roguery expedient?
is not so simple that it can be determined by asking the first preacher
you meet.

It would be very nice and fine all round if idle workmen would not riot
nor idle employers meet force with force, but invoke the impossible
Sheriff. When the Dragon has been chained in the Bottomless Pit and we
are living under the rule of the saints, things will be so ordered, but
in these rascal times "revolutions are not made with rosewater," and
this is a revolution. What is being revolutionized is the relation
between our old friends. Capital and Labor. The relation has already
been altered many times, doubtless; once, we know, within the period
covered by history, at least in the countries that we call civilized.
The relation was formerly a severely simple one--the capitalist owned
the laborer. Of the difficulty and the cost of abolishing that system
it is needless to speak at length. Through centuries of time and with
an appalling sacrifice of life the effort has gone on, a continuous
war characterized by monstrous infractions of law and morals, by
incalculable cruelty and crime. Our own generation has witnessed the
culminating triumphs of this revolution, and of its three mightiest
leaders the assassination of two, the death in exile of the third. And
now, while still the clank of the fallin