THE NEW SUGGESTION FROM OHIO.
AN armed insurrection of Labour against Capital in the United States is, we take it, in spite of some remark- able appearances, an impossibility. It is true that the Ameri- cans are beginning to learn, and acknowledge in a very grumpy spirit, the old truths that the "land" does not attract everybody, that if it is possible to live in cities large sections of mankind will live in cities, and that a life of labour in cities involves the existence of a proletariat, with views, aspirations, and sufferings of its own. There may be land for millions, with- out the millions being all delighted to plough. It is also true that the American proletariat, now numbering, it is be- lieved, twelve millions out of thirty-six millions of whites, is unusually fierce, unusually determined to be comfortable, and unusually liable, owing to the pressure at once of Protection and of immigration, to sudden " spells " of discouragement and poverty. But still insurrection may be accepted as an impossibility. The distressed section of the wage-receivers, even on the calculation of the New Yoi'k Herald, does not ex- ceed four millions, the cities stand widely apart, the freeholders have twice the physical power of the workmen, and the free- holders are the better armed and organised. The employing class is extremely determined, not to say tyrannical, in its resistance to dictation, the Government, though slow, is very resolute, and the feeling of the people about their flag is of the keenest and most irritable kind. It is next to impossible, as was seen in Pittsburg, Chicago, and St. Louie, for rioters to effect anything considerable 'without firing on the United States flag, and the moment that is done, compromise ends, and half a million of very fair soldiers, most of whom have seen service, stand ready to protect the authority of the Central Government. Victory for the workmen is impossible, and the threats expressed in some of their meetings, especially in New York, matter no more than the rubbish talked by some Irish speech-makers in Glasgow about Irishmen turning out with " spears." Modern campaigns are won with shells, not with sticks having iron points to them. The physical strength of the American Government is amply sufficient to maintain order, whether through a definite increase in the Regular Army, which is the more civilised method, or through occasional appeals to the rural Militia, whom danger would very soon reorganise.
But we do not feel equally sure that the American pro- letariat may not, if its present irritation continues, obtain a great influence at the ballot-boxes, and either profoundly affect legislation, or at all events, try some very striking and probably disastrous experiments. Workmen make up nearly a third of the voters. They are very strongly united in sympathy throughout the Union, though there is the usual division between the party of violence and the party of order, and we do not feel quite so sure that as regards legislation all the freeholders are opposed to them. The eight-hours law nearly established itself in the United States. The Knights of St. Crispin, a Trades Union, very nearly conquered Massa- chusetts. Both political parties shew just now a distinct fear of the workmen as voters. It was thought natural that the Democratic party should do this, because it is always more or less the anti-capitalist party, but in Ohio the Republicans have inserted the following "plank" in their new electoral platform :—
" Itesolved,—That we view with alarm the present disturbed oondi- tion of the country, as evinced by the extensive strikes of working-mon, and followed by the destruction of life and property in different parts of the country ; and while we deprecate each and every resort to vio- lence or disorder, and cordially approve the action of our National and State authorities in their efforts to enforce the supremacy of the law, yet wo do most heartily sympathise with the condition of the honest and industrious labourers who are willing to work, but remain unem- ployed, or are employed at wages inadequate to comfort and independence ; and as an earnest of our desire to find a remedy for their condition, we recommend, first, that Congress establish a National Bureau of Industry ; second, that Congress exert its authority over all national highways of trade, by proscribing and enforcing such reasonable regulations as will tend to promote safety of travel, secure fair returns for capital invested and fair wages to employds, preventing mismanagement, improper dis- criminations, and the aggrandisement of officials at the expense of stockholders, and shippers, and employers; third, that provision be made for statutory arbttrations between employers and employe's, to adjust controversies, reconcile interests, and establish justice and equity between them."
It is all very well to say that Ohio is full of Germans. Germans have votes, like others ; they like to keep their pro- perty, like others ; and they are quite as pertinacious in adher- ing to their ideas as others. In Indiana, again, there was enough feeling on the workmen's side to make the Governor hesitate in his action, while in New England an anti-work- men policy might not improbably bo voted down. It is not by any means clear either that the negroes—a million voters at least—would side with the capitalists, while in the Pacific States there is evidence of strong feel- ing on the workmen's side. The anti-Chinese riots are avowedly got up in their interest, and are not put down. It seems to us much more reasonable to sup- pose that the workmen and their friends, if they pleased, could throw a vote sufficient to tempt both parties into bid- ding for their support by any concessions they, or rather their leaders, could bring themselves to make. They both think an appeal to the ballot fair and constitutional. They both are accustomed to defer to the will of numbers as to the ultima ratio. And they both are insensibly influenced by the feeling that they may go a long way without danger ; that nothing can in the long run impair the prosperity of the United States. If the workmen adhere to their ideas, and can formulate intel- ligible demands, they may yet make the labour question for a moment the pivot of American politics. As to their cohesion, we are, of course, uncertain, but they have some strong reasons to cohere. Protection in America has about done its work,—that is, it has attracted to pro- tected manufactories more people than can be maintained at high wages by the demand from the protected area. New markets must be found, and cannot be found, unless wages are lowered to the international scale. The overplus of workmen who are not wanted to supply the region where prices are artificially raised by tariffs, is already great, and is swollen every day by the crowds who prefer city life to the chiller and more monotonous life of the small freeholder, and by the immigration from Europe which follows every temporary appearance of prosperity in the Union. We say nothing of the
Chinaman and the Negro, and only point to the fact that the Union has based its economic institutions on principles which are only workable—they are never sound—when population does not increase ; and population increases in the United States, and especially in that section which manufactures, in a quite exceptional way. There will, till commerce is flung open again, be a great, though it may be intermittent amount of distress, and this will make the workmen, as a political party, cohere. Their greatest difficulty will be to find reasonable, or rather apparently reasonable, demands, but it is not certain that this is impossible. They cannot, of course, carry an English Poor Law, for the freeholders would not stand it. They cannot carry a State Workshop Law, for Protection would break to pieces under it, even if society did not. But they could, we conceive, carry the law they hint at, -,-the law of compulsory State arbitration between masters and men. They may be very much tempted to do that, for their idea is that with their voting-power the arbitrators would sway to their side, and shareholders in the employing corpora- tions would take reduced dividends rather than shut their mills. Of course, in the long-run, and especially in America, the experi- merit would fail. Capital would recede before such dictation, and the State in which arbitrations ran lowest would acquire the monopoly of the trade—say, shoemaking—arbitrated about, But that result would not be seen all at once ; the American rate of dividend is high, and the skilled men, who would thus exclude the unskilled or half-skilled intruders who now in open competition beat down their labour, could be taught that capital, to be attracted at all, must have its minimum dividend. The attempt is one that may be made, as the Republicans of Ohio think ; and if made, it must inevitably be followed by another law prohibiting or severely taxing immigration. The arbitration scheme, even if it succeeded for a time, solves no difficulty for the unem- ployed, rather it increases their difficulty. The idea at the bottom of it is that the State shall keep the employed workmen from striking by giving them a bit more of shareholders' profits. Sup- posing shareholders to yield, the employed are satisfied, but the unemployed are not employed, but are cut out of their one chance, their right of underselling their rivals by accepting the employers' low terms. Distress, therefore, will be made much worse, unless new supplies of labour can be stopped, and the first and most visible expedient is to arrest the immigration, which is already disliked by many American statesmen, and by the strong body of opinion which expressed itself a few years ago in the sudden rise and sweeping progress of the Know-nothing party. Of course, events may go very differently. Free-trade may preVail, and with Protection the distress it causes will disappear, but we have a rooted distrust of the economic fanta- sies of democracies. They are not enlightened in the United States or Australia, as they were in England, by a severe duty on bread, and they may try many experiments, and some much more dangerous than the one suggested in Ohio, before experience has taught them its bitter wisdom. Of one thing we feel satisfied,—the discontent of the new American proletariat with their economic condition is no passing phenomenon.
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