Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1877 — The Kernel of Commnnism. [ARTICLE]

The Kernel of Commnnism.

The Communists—lbr it b they we *r» dealing with and will have to deal with again -are not without a preienae ol logic I* that labor has created all at fating wealth, and therefore labor b entitled to exact an equitable distribution ot it, so that Sie producer may not raffer in the mkbt f the wealth he has produced. They assert for labor a sovereign authority over the subjects of its creation, and by virtue of this they claim not only that the employes in a producing eatabUslimantahull regulate it* working and arbitrarily te its rate of wagdfi, but that they may claim an equitable internet to its profile— Other words, that they jiossess a proprietary interest in it which must be recognized. Let us see about this. Here are two laborers, starting out with nothing but their natural powers , ot body and mind. They earn each $1.50 a day; one declares that this wages b not more than .enough to barely subsist on, .end therefore spends it all as fast as be makes it, and probably goes in debt beside for the spirits, beer, tobacco or other luxuries which he insist* on having 1 . The other denies himself 'all these luxuries, and thefeby' saves fifty cents a day out of his earnings. Wages unspent are capital, and the frugal laborer is accumulating capital at the rate of fitly cents a day, or $l5O a year, while his fellow is consuming all his earnings in comforts which he might manage to get along without. Iu ten years the two men are thirty years old, and one has a small factory or shop of liis own, bought ana paid for with the savings irom his wages and the Interest thereon, while the other has nothing at all, and is, perhaps, SIOO in debt. Now, according to the doctrine at the bottom of the late strike, the thriftless laborer, who is a laborer still, has a light to demand an eqnal share of the property of bis fellow who, from being a laborer, has become a proprietor ana employer pi laborers—a capitalist, if you will. Is there any justice in such a demand ? The one had no advantage ever the other;both started as workingmen, and both might have bbfcorac property-holders by pursuing the same course of frugality ana Sctfdenial. The property or capital wmeh one possesses represents the ten veaih of abstemiousness and self-denial he has practiced, and the other’s lack of property is the result of spending fifty cents a day, for ten years, in indulgences which he would have been as well off without. Is there any show of reason or equity in the doctrine that because one is, through his own mismanagement, a laborer still, he should have a share of the property of his fellow who is now a proprietor? If two boys are given each an apple, and one rats his, on the snot, has he a right to come ti e next day and exact half the apple which his companion has saved? This would violate even Communistic theories, for it would give one boy more than his share; it would give him an apple and a half, and the other only one-half. The same injustice would be committed in the case of the two » orkmen, in giving to the thriftless one an interest in the property of the other. The two cases illustrate the general question. All capital is earnings saved, and there is hardly one active, wealthy owner of a mill, foundry, factory or other producing establishment in bt. Louis, whose wealth does not represent his hoarded savings of thirty, forty or fifty years ago. Inquire into the personal history of all these wealthy proprietors, and you find the same unvarying fact; each was born a poor boy and earned his first money hy working for fifty cents' a day, saving a little out ot the stipend and increasing the amount set aside as his wages grew, first to seventy-five cents, then to one dollar, till, in the course of years, the hoard augmented into the incipient capital which was the corner-stone of the present wealth. It is true, there are many in actual life, where laborers, inclined to lie thrifty and frugal, are kept down by adverse fortune —sickness, losses or lack of work in hard tjmes; but this is not the fault of society; it is their misfortune, and misfortunes, while entitling the victim to sympathy, are not ground for a general claim on the property of others. The general cause for poverty in this country, where work is usually plentiful, wages good and living cheap, is indulgence and -shif'lcssness—the spending of earnings for comforts and pleasures which, while not culpable in themselves, keep a poor man always poor by preventing him from accumulating money in the only way it can be accumulated —saving it; so that when we come to the kernel of Communism we find it to he a claim that-tliose who squander their wages in comforts shall be equal partners with those who have saved theirs, through self-denial and privation.— St. Louis Republican.