Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1880 — The Era of Wages. [ARTICLE]

The Era of Wages.

Itis quite within the modern historical stages of development throughewhich the W* has passed, with reference to their in luatrisl advance. ~ •; AM was inevitable at the beginingof this process, the pioneers in this new field of investigation were first struck with the OstMfi side of industry, rather than with the morel and spiritual sides of the investigation—that is, with the tools men have used and the changes in their material, intfoduoed a« the growing experience ot generations widened man’s knowledge of the world about him, than with tho moral and spiritual changes in- man him—or u the growing conception of his own powers of the increasing privilege of life, rendered aew institutions necessary as the expression of the new life of the people. Thus the terms “tee stone age,’’ “the bronze age,” “the iron age,” the steam age” and “the press age,” were first consciously used to typify the various tools of industry by which the race has advanced, wit', a thorough unconsciousness that they implied, at the same time, the steps by which mankind has also advanced, spiritually. A similarly careful study of the institutions by which the race has sought to harmonise its social relations with its growing conceptions has not yet been made but has been begun so admirably that it is quite justifiable to hope that an equally accurate and suggestive nomenclature ior the archeology of institutions, if we may use such a term, will be invented as has been for the archeology of tools. Serfdom, slavery, peonage, villainage and wages ate the terms generally used to express the ascending steps by which industry has grown to its present condition. The terms themselves arc hardly definite enough, nor have they' been so carefully discriminated that the mention of an v one of them expresses so clearly the relation it held to the other institutions contemporaneous with it as to give an accurate picture of the moral ana spiritual position of thepeoplc living under it. With the archaeology of tools tineas* la subject has been studied.’ We can" tett, fpr example; with quite proximato accuracy, that in the stone age, men could have had none of the appliances of life, the very existence of which presupposes a better chtiing tool than stone could aftord. They conld not have had a smoothed plank/for example, and in the construction of their houses could not have bnilt such buildings as require planks. .It is the same with each succeeding invention. Before its practical realization, men must have dene the best they could Without it Of course, during the later periods, say dqring the iron age, good use may have been still made of stone or bronze tools, and there most probably ■were large numbers so well satisfied with these as not to conceive the need for better.

It is tho same with the institutions upon which industry is based. While serfdom was the only possible relation conceivable in society for obtaining the necessary production, ft was impossible tor the serts to conceive the need of their political freedom. But eventually the education of life itself—the longing fora better life—the inherent desire to improve the condition of our children, led the serfs to rebel against their condition. As it was the sword that held them down by the tyranny of the feudal system, it was through the sword only that they could hope to gain their freedom. The peasant wars in England and on the* Continent, though their aims and motives have generally bean misunderstood and carefully misrepresented, are now becoming recognized as the most important steps, taken for the inauguration of the modern era—vastly more important in the study of the social development of the race than all the wars for dynastic and other purposes undertaken by the kings and nobles. And so it is tp-day. The very general movement, all over the civilized world, of the wage workers to liberate themselves and their children from their absolute dependence upon wages as their sole reward for the efficient aid they take in general production, is a most significant and cheering sign for the future. They find themselves bound to-day in the tyranny of a network oi customs, traditions, legal enactments and superstitious reverence for institutions, and they are steadily strengthening themselves in the conviction that it is by the destruction or transformation of these that they shall gain their end. They know that it has been the dominance of the law oi violence which has prepared the conditions in which they find themselves caught, and t s at it is only in the substitution of the la# of love and sympathy that so different a conception of life can he made general as shall lead instinctively to the organization of a higher set of institutions than the* competitive war of industry, which has succeeded to the armed warfare which prevailed at the opening of the modern era of history, f