People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1895 — CAPITALS VICTORIES. [ARTICLE]

CAPITALS VICTORIES.

ARE LIKE THOSE OF PYRRHUS OF OLD. A Few More of Them and the Whole Structure of Corporate Wealth Will Crombie to Kuiiu —An Encouraging Feature of the Labor Crista. When the great Pyrrhus went to war with the Romans he learned what real fighting was. He defeated one great army, but his own losses were so great that he exclaimed, “Another such victory and I am ruined!” The most brilliant of capital's victories nowadays are Pyrrhic ones. An economic despotism sustained by the military, which is the form of government we live under, must, in the nature of things, go the way of all other desoptisms. The process is hastened with us by the seething discontent engendered by every recurring dispute of the laborer with the capitalist. Every strike that fails breeds enemies of our social system. The working classes are forced to see how little there is for them in the institutions under which we live. The clergy prosper, the military prosper, the capitalist prospers, and the toiler grows hungrier. We may call out the soldiers as numerously as we please but we cannot destroy the hatred inspired “by such an act. Class hatred is the germ of social revolution and if capital and the military had united in a league for the development of class hatred they could not be accomplishing the object more effectively. From one point of view, then, the failure 01 a strike is positively a good thing. This fact does not justify an inference that sympathy should not be extended to strikers. Strikes are the most encouraging symptoms of the industrial situation. To be sure, some shallow reasonCrs, even among the labor leaders, are contending that it is not advisable to strike, that they always fail and that they are too costly. It is a trifle odd that so many union workingmen are misled by this casuistry. The strike is the one instrument feared by capital. The capitalist is always contending that strikes are costly to the workingman and lose him bread, butter and employment. How very altruistic is the capitalist! He is influenced solely by considerations for the workingman’s welfare in deprecating strikes. The great trouble with the strike is the dftlculty in leading it. There can be no doubt that at some not distant day the laborers will secure a competent leader who, profiting by the experience of his predecessors, will organize a brilliantly successful strike. What the capitalists fear is a strike organized six months in advance, with preconcerted plans to prevent the transportation of scabs to the scene of hostilities. In other words, it is a principle of the art of war, that military science can only be met by military science. The strike of the near future will be organized on strictly military principles and led by a man who is capable of planning a campaign on strategical principles. The coming man will be a tactician, in short. Not that there will be pitched battles. There are the courts to deal with. The most gigantic strike could be maintained for weeks without involving any breach of the statutes. • What has been said implies no reflection upon the brave, able and disinterested men who have led the strikes of the past. Theirs has been a hard lot and they will not be forgotten. But it is to be hoped that no workingman will permit himself to be convinced by the capitalist that he should never go on a strike. The strike is the coming power. The Napoleon of labor may be in his cradle now.—Alexander Harvey in Twentieth Century.