THE LABURER NOT A COMMODITY.

The following contribution to the discussion of the Labor Question, by Rt. Rev. HENRY C. POTTER, was read at the Summer School of 1886, at Key-East, N. J., and has appeared in an Epistle addressed by the Bishop to the clergy of his diocese.]

CHRISTIANITY brought into the world a new law of

brotherhood, and both by precept and example taught men that they to whon, has been committed the stewardship of exceptional gifts, whether of rank, wealth, learning or cleverness, are not to treat the.n as their own, but as a trust for the whole community. "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ;" "Ye that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak;" "Charge them that are rich in this world that they be ready to give, glad to distribute;" these words and others like them did not mean the mere giving of doles and indiscriminate distribution of alms It is not by gifts such as these that the wounds in the body-politic are to be healed, and the parted tendrils of a dissevered humanity bound together; and it is an open question whether municipal and institutional charity has not irritated as much as it has soothed or healed them. What the laborer wants from his en ployer is fair and fraternal dealing, not alms-giving, and a recognition of his manhood rather than a condescension to his inferiority. And it is at this

point that the outlook is most discouraging. The growth of wealth among us has issued not in binding men together but in driving them apart. The rich are farther from the poor, the employer from his workmen, capital from labor, now, than ever before. Too many know less and less how the poor live, and give little time, or none at all, to efforts to know. The wage of the laborer may be, doubtless in most cases it is, larger than it was thirty years ago; but his wants have grown more rapidly than his wages, and his opportunities for gratifying them are not more numerous, but less. He knows more about decent living, but his home is not often more decent, and daily grows more

costly. His mental horizon has been widened, but fit food for it is no more accessible. Instincts and aspirations have been awakened in him which are certainly as honorable in him as in those more favorably situated, but wealth does little either to direct or to satisfy them. The manners of the poor, it is said, are more insolent and ungracious than of old to the rich, and this discourages efforts to know and serve them. I do not see why poverty should cringe to wealth, which is as often as otherwise an accidental distinction, and quite as often a condition unadorned by any especial moral or intellectual excellence. But we may be sure that the manners of the poor, if they be insolent, are learned from those of people whose opportunities should at least have taught them that no arrogance is more insufferable or unwarrantable than that of mere wealth. And if we are reaping to-day the fruits of these mutual hatreds between more and less favored classes, we may well own that the fault is not all on one side, and that it is time that we awaken to the need of sacrifices which can alone banish them.

These sacrifices are not so much of money as of ease, of selfindulgent ignorance, of contemptuous indifference, of conceited and shallow views of the relations of men to one another. A nation whose wealth and social leadership are in the hands of people who fancy that day after day, like those of old, they can "sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play," careless of those who earn the dividends that they spend, and pay the rents of the tenement-houses that they own, but too often never visit or inspect, has but one doom before it, and that the worst. We may cover the pages of our statute-books with laws regulating strikes, and inflicting severest penalties on those who organize resistance to the individual liberty whether of employer or workman; we may drill regiments and perfect our police; the safety and welfare of a state are not in these things, they are in the contentment and loyalty of its people. And these come by a different road. When capitalists and employers of labor have forever dismissed the fallacy, which may be true enough in the domain of political economy, but is essentially false in the domain of religion, that labor and the laborer are alike a commodity, to be bought and sold, employed or dismissed, paid or

underpaid as the market shall decree; when the interest of workman and master shall have been owned by both as one, and the share of the laboring man shall be something more than a mere wage; when the principle of a joint interest, in what is produced, of all the brains and hands that go to produce it is wisely and generously recognized; when the well-being of our fellow-men, their homes and food, their pleasures and their higher moral and spiritual necessities, shall be seen to be matters concerning which we may not dare to say, "Am I my brother's keeper?" then, but not till then, may we hope to heal those grave social divisions concerning which there need to be among us all, as with Israel of old, "great searchings of heart."

THE LABOR TROUBLES AND THE SABBATH LAW.

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[This contribution to the discussion of the Labor Question at the Summer School at Key-East, August, 1886, made by CHARLES F. DEEMS, the President of the Institute, has since been published in the Methodist Review, edited by Rev. Dr. Curry.]

So many impertinent and nonsensical things have been said

and written on the Sunday question, that not a few intelligent people are tired of it and turn away from its study. So, likewise, has the Sabbath Question been so generally discussed from the religious side as to divert attention from its scientific importance. Let us, then, examine briefly the scientific aspects of the case, and the connection of the fundamental law, known from earliest times, with the Labor Question of the present times.

First of all, it must be observed that, if we had no inspired books and no religious teaching in regard to the Sabbath, it is plain that our scientific investigation would lead us to the detection of the fundamental law in the case. Thus it is observed, in regard to the toughest materials which can be manufactured into utensils of civilization, that there is in them the equivalent of a seventh-day law. A rail-car or private carriage, a vehicle made of wood and iron, will last longer in its separate parts and

in their combination provided perfect rest be given them every seventh day. A steam-boiler will do its work longer and better if cooled every seventh day. It is found that more can be got out of an estate descending in a family if its fields be left fallow every seventh year. Now these fields are made up of a soil combining several elements. It does not seem to have been determined whether this requisition for the seventh-day rest be in the elements or in the atoms thereof, or in the combination of the elements into what we call soil. As yet that has eluded scientific investigation; but the fact remains, that acres of soil contain in themselves this virtual sabbatic requisition.

Repeated experiments have shown that the same thing is true of animals. A draft-horse will pull as much on the seventh day as on the first if he have good stabling, good grooming, and good food. The same may be said of his capabilities on the fourteenth day and on the twenty-first day under similar favorable conditions; but in the long run of five years he shows the effect of the neglect of the observance of a law written in every fiber of his body. A railway company using two hundred horses, as near the same age as they can be procured, and running one hundred of them continuously and resting the other hundred each seventh day, will soon begin to discover the difference, and the tables of the broken-down and prematurely superannuated horses will begin to tell their story.

The same holds good in regard to men, whether considered as to their physical labor or their mental exertions. Two lawyers of equal physique and brain power, as nearly as can be determined at the beginning of their course, may go on working; one devoting himself to his profession three hundred and sixtyfive days in the year, and the other carefully abstaining on every seventh day from all thought in regard to questions connected with either the theory or the practice of his profession, will not require a score of years to show the difference of the two treatments. Religion does not seem to have anything to do with it. A clergyman may be a saintly man, as saints are counted, and yet if he do not set apart one day in each week of seven days in which he will persistently abstain from all theologic study and all pastoral work, he will by and by begin to endure the penal

ties of a violated law. This is one reason why there are so many and such early break-downs among Christian ministers. There is, perhaps, no body of men so largely Sabbath-breakers as is the Christian ministry. The regulations of society compel other men, in some degree, to abstain from work one day in the seven The banks and exchanges are closed one day in the seven; so are the courts. There are many other brakes put upon human activities; but the clergyman may begin on Monday morning, and work every day and night of the week, sitting up late on Saturday night to finish his sermon, and then attending to his Sunday-school and preaching, and administering the sacraments and, perhaps, officiating at a funeral on Sunday, and the next morning commence the same round again for another week. And he may do all this without ever attracting any attention to himself as a Sabbath-breaker. But the law of his physical and mental constitution is all the same. Bodily health, prolonged capability to work and to enjoy life, and long life itself, are three things dependent upon having the equivalent of a seventh-day rest. The bishop and the atheist are equally amenable to this law. The time of rest may or may not be employed in religious exercises; but the demand for abstinence on the seventh day from the courses of activity of the other six days is imperative. The observance of this law is indispensable for the enjoyment of the life that now is, whether or not there be any life hereafter.

No law has been more plainly found imbedded in the fibres and nerves of animals, and in the brains of the highest animals, than this Sabbath law. There seems to be none other that has been longer known to the human race. There are intimations of it in the oldest literature extant. There is no ascertaining when it was first known, because in the the oldest writings in possession of the race it is assumed as already well known, being at that time presented to human thought in its religious connections, apparently without the slightest suspicion of its having what we are accustomed to consider a scientific foundation, as in these latter days we have discovered it to possess. In the oldest of the sacred books it is utilized for religious purposes. The God of the Hebrews, through the first ministers of His religion, in nationalizing a people on the basis of a theocracy,