THE industrial affairs of the country have, for some months, been in a condition of peculiar and serious perturbation. For the first time in our nation's history, the masses of laboring people have become strangely restless and dissatisfied, and are plunged into a state of social and financial turbulence. In many places they have ceased work and demand more wages. Labor associations have been formed in years past for the protection of wage-workers in almost every department of industry. Bakers, barbers, hatters, Crispins, saddlers, and many others, even to undertakers, have each formed associations for the mutual protection of their members. These, with other associations for a similar object, now enter as an important element into this foaming flood of industrial movements. There are complaints everywhere of monopolies, and of a tyranny resulting from them which presses down the laboring classes to a point so far beyond endurance that a recoil has become inevitable. The wages of labor have, from time to time, been reduced, until the extreme point has been reached, and now comes resistance with its complaints and its demands. It comes in the form of "strikes," or a suspension of labor by workingmen in large bodies, with a view of compelling their employers to give them better wages for their labor. Good may result from movements of this kind; but on this point it is impossible to speak with any accuracy while the agitation continues.

Next comes a question relating to the origin and the causes of all this trouble. Everybody is inquiring and everybody is endeavoring to answer the inquiry, What has stirred up so suddenly this great industrial commotion? The answers given and the suggestions offered are various and not always in harmony with each other. There are evidently two sides to the question, each clear and each obscure, as seen from different standpoints. These are the side of capital and the side of

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labor; or really the side of wealth and the side of poverty. Each side has its own excuses, its own vindication, and its arraignment of the other side, as to its duties and delinquencies. It may not be possible for either side to see the other side exactly as those standing there behold it.

There can be no question that the inordinate desire for wealth lies at the bottom of this whole matter. That desire, no more active in capitalists and corporations than in any other classes, whether in public or in private stations, has doubtless had much to do in preventing strict fairness and equity in dealing with the laboring classes. Ever since the opening of the California mines, the whole community has been shaken to its very centre. Thousands have been moved and influenced by the irrepressible desire to become suddenly and immensely rich. The vast numbers of people who flocked to the mines, whatever may have been their standard of morals when they left their early homes, soon fell into a lower stage, and the deterioration continued until they reached a state of depravity unendurable even by themselves. Law fell into the hands of bad men, thieves, gamblers, swindlers, and other villains, and was utterly unheeded, or administered solely for their benefit.

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At length resort was had to private methods for compelling order and punishing the most open and flagrant crimes. Committees of vigilance, as they were called, were organized for that purpose, and for a while were quite successful. San Francisco was the first community to adopt such methods to organize secret committees in order to rid itself of villians. But the morals of the people had run to the lowest extreme of looseness; and lawlessness, as the inevitable result, still prevailed. Everybody was still anxious to get rich, caring little for the methods employed, if only the end was attained. Some of the worst features of the old domination of slavery, as "Lynch Law," were also transferred to the golden fields and interfused into the habits and practices of a people already sadly demoralized.

It was not long before this state of public morals began to roll back upon the old Puritan commonwealths, and loosen

there the sanctions of public law in the minds of the people. “Smartness" in acquiring wealth by methods at least tricky and of questionable honesty, if not positively dishonest, soon came to be considered as a graceful and even a necessary qualification. This feeling lessened still further in the public estimation the sacredness of all legal restraints. It is not needful to inquire here how much the talk of politicians and and others about a "higher law" had to do with lowering the general estimate of the restrictions imposed by constitutional and statutory law. Then came the War of Rebellion, and the whole country was thrown into ferment and martial agitation. With the demands of war, the flood of immorality and the greed for gain rose higher than ever. The desire to become vastly rich received a new and profounder impulse. Out of all this has grown up in this country a class of men immensely rich. It is safe to say that within the last twenty years the men possessing millions of money have increased at a rate of at least two hundred per cent. It is not to be presumed that this vast concentration of wealth has occurred on the strictest basis of severe Puritanic honesty.

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There is another thing not to be overlooked in the estimate of causes which has done its part, and perhaps a great part, in procuring this general deterioration of public morals. is the extensive introduction of foreign atheism, agnosticism, nihilism, and scientific materialism. A lack of faith in a Supreme Being, with a rejection of Bible authority in morals, takes away all divine sanction as a basis of human duty. A system of ethics without God as its foundation has no stability and is liable to run into all the phantasms of popular thought and feeling. To this may be added the importation of habits and customs, with sports and pastimes on the Sabbath day, which are sanctioned by the Church in Catholic countries, but here become a very great step in the downward course to Avernus.

These are not all the evil forces which tend to loosen the moral sanctions of the people. More openly deleterious, as far as their influence is concerned, yet more recent in appear

ance, is the immigration of a class of desperate men, bringing with them a desperate philosophy, who seek the overthrow of all government and a return to the chaos of the world's earliest childhood. But into that chaotic state they would necessarily bring all the villianies, all the lechery, and all the murderous appliances of the present hour. These could not be eliminated or avoided, unless the men themselves, with their philosophy, and all the rest of the world were thoroughly changed, regenerated and morally reorganized.

All these things, by corrupting the public morals, could scarcely fail to affect injuriously the working classes. They have infused into all minds the same irrepressible craving to be rich, that has stimulated the wealthier classes. Wealth, as known everywhere, is power; it gives leisure and all the enjoyments springing from it, whether innocent or criminal. With the increase of wealth, there has arisen also an increase of poverty, and it may be said, too, an increase of social depravity. What else could have caused the frequent maiden murders and other infamous acts with which the country abounds? The rich are envied by the poor and the working classes. They are envied for the very leisure and enjoyment which their wealth secures and which the poor cannot have. That envy creates a reckless ill-feeling against the rich, and a desire for more wages, that the poor may have practically an occasional taste, if nothing more, of the leisure and the pleasure which the rich enjoy. Yet this desire is often, perhaps too often, left entirely unsatisfied.

Almost all men engaged in business and employing operatives, are disposed to bring down the price of labor to its minimum of endurance. They want the profits. A controlling member of an accident insurance company once wrote to me: "We go into this business to make money!" The same may be said of almost all men of business in the land. To make money is the impelling motive of corporations, capitalists and men of every other station and of all avocations in life. many cases corporations and even private capitalists endeavor to monopolize particular industries, and seek in various ways

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to ruin and drive out all competitors in that department of labor. If success attends them the prices for the people and the wages of their operatives are regulated solely according to their own pleasure.

Nor do the troubles all end here. Men obliged to work for a livelihood in this country, have been seriously affected by foreign immigration. For the last twenty years or more there has been an influx of population from other lands beyond all precedent in the nation's history. At the very lowest estimate, not less than four hundred thousand annually, on an average, from all European and many Asiatic nations, have landed at the various ports of the country. The total number could not be much less than ten millions- a great sad heritage from many nationalities, and a heterogeneous multitude to mingle with, and modify our antebellum population.

These alien and adventitious multitudes have been drawn hither by various considerations. First of all, there is a widespread impression that this is a land of freedom, where every one may do as he pleases. It has, therefore, been really a joy and a privilege for many people, greatly oppressed in their native land, to get away from the espionage and the exactions of governments that swallow up by taxation their toilsome earnings and leave them but a mere pittance for the coarsest fare to support life and avert starvation. Next, the prospect of higher wages has, no doubt, brought millions to the land of reputed freedom and of plenty. It has long been known everywhere that wage-workers in this country have in general received better pay than in other lands. It has not, however, been known that the greater expense of living here is, and has been a near counterpoise of all the increase in the wages of labor. This point is left entirely under shadows.

Ostensibly for the benefit of the working-classes, a tariff, and in some instances a prohibitory tariff, has been imposed on almost all imported articles of foreign manufacture. This is done, as is alleged, to protect our infant industries and guard the working-classes against the "pauper labor" of Europe. Such a tariff-tax may have been very useful and