Applied Christianity; Moral Aspects of Social Questions Volume 20 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ...his employers family-faring sumptuously, and walking or riding abroad in the most gorgeous array, he is not, naturally, in the proper mood to sing the same hymns and pray the same prayers. Nothing is more certain than that the wageworkers of this country feel that they are falling behind in the race of life. They know that the nation's wealth is increasing with almost mirac-_ nlous rapidity, the figures of the census tell them so, and the fact thrusts itself upon their senses on every side. They know, moreover, if they have memories reaching back twenty or thirty years, that their condition is not greatly improved; that the real wages of labor are but little increased; and that, relatively to the rest of the community, they are worse off than they were thirty years ago. The annual expenditure for living purposes of the average employer has enormously increased, the annual expenditure of the average mechanic or operative has not greatly increased. The workman feels that this tendency is due to the pitiless action of natural forces which the employing classes do not try to restrain. If he does not reason much about it, he has a pretty strong notion that the fates are against him, and that his employer is on the side of fate. He knows that money, when it is massed in great corporations or companies, or heaped up in accumulations, is power; that concentrated capital has the power to dicate terms to singlehanded labor, and that it is by no means certain that any combination of labor can successfully hold its own against the power of capital; it looks to him as though a bitter and deadly conflict were in progress under the law of the survival of the strongest; and if he has ever heard of Ricardo's " Iron Law of Wages, ..".