England will blind Irish eyes to the necessity of union to the welfare of both peoples. It is natural for Irishmen to say: "England can afford to give us the actual share in government which she has given to Scotland, whose representatives to all intents and purposes make their own laws, and abide the result. She is strong enough to conquer us if we try to break away from the empire. And her own professions of faith in popular government should lead her to believe that we shall remain in a connection which she regards necessary for our prosperity as well as for her own security."

Americans are asking themselves how soon the mass of English Liberals are likely to appreciate the righteousness of the Irish demand for Home Rule, and Mr. Gladstone's wisdom in seconding it, and favor granting the thing asked for in such form as the most mature judgment of English statesmanship shall approve. They know that when this happens the struggle is over, for they are sure that Liberalism has the future of English politics in its grasp. And they cannot but feel sure that they are not deluded by their hopes in thinking that prejudice will not much longer conquer principles hitherto firmly held and faithfully followed.

For the prejudice lives by hiding immense and obtrusive facts. Here is a country protesting most strenuously and persistently that its consent is not with a government which assumes as its own right to be the necessity of beneficent government expressing the will of the governed. The contradiction between the facts for which the government assumes to stand and the existing realities would be ludicrous were it not so painful. Mr. Freeman shows the incongruity in a sentence, when he says that "the attempt at an incorporation between Great Britain and Ireland has failed." The form of government existing presumes it to be successful, and becomes a dismal absurdity as soon as it is seen to be otherwise. But it has wretchedly failed. The institutions have ceased to express the political life of a great part of the nation. More than this: they have become so detached from its vital forces that they will not work. New ones it must have. And of what sort? Mr. Gladstone has answered the question, and it may be presumed that he has expressed the Liberal sentiment which is inchoate of English law.

THE CENTRALIZATION OF LABOR.

THE organization known as the Knights of Labor differs from the earlier labor organizations, like the trades' unions, by the fact that it seeks to utilize labor in the mass. The basis of power is practically shifted from skill to numbers. A "scab" is no longer an apprentice or an unskilled workman in the wrong place, but any workman, however skilled, who attempts to work outside the organization. The unifying principle is labor, not a trade; the workingman, not the craftsman, is the unit in the new combination. And the power in reserve is the power of numbers. A strike, to be effective, must be able to control not by

violence, but by actual possession, the labor market. A boycott must be able to command in its own right, rather than by the intimidation of the public, a sufficient number of consumers to ruin a business which has been put under the ban. While arbitration becomes the necessary and instant recourse, superseding the strike and the boycott only as capital finds itself confronted with a force which can act through responsible agents, and with the dignity and repose incident to numerical strength.

The conception of a vast organization representative of labor in the mass is certainly a grand conception, but it does not seem to have been apprehended as an idea so much as developed through a practical necessity. The French largeness of idea nowhere appears among American workingmen. There is no sentiment about the labor movement as it is here carried on. Labor is not transfigured and apostrophized. The situation sometimes becomes dramatic, as in the present contest between a great capitalist and the representative of a great labor organization, but the dramatic element is not cultivated. Work is still work, hard and grim in its features and commonplace in its reality. It has simply become more conscious, more calculating in respect to its resources, and more watchful of its opportunities.

The extension of organization, its use, that is, so far beyond the limits of the old trades' unions, is a natural counterpart to the growth and extension of capital. A capitalist is no longer a man in possession of thousands, but one in possession of millions. The most astonishing phenomenon of the past twenty years has been the accumulation of so many and so vast fortunes. Wealth exists in the hands of great numbers beyond any possibility of personal use. It surpasses even the capacity for luxury. It therefore seeks some kind of employment. A great deal of the capital of to-day is simply restless fortune in activity, rather than sober wealth under well-directed energy. Hence the number of unnecessa y and illegitimate enterprises. Capital is equally busy in constructing and in "wrecking" railroads. But whether the business be legitimate or illegitimate, it is developed on a vast scale. A railway, for example, is no more a single line, but a "system." So Mr. Hoxie continually refers to the road under his management. And as capital has thus reached in its greater enterprises to the proportions of a "system," labor naturally attempts a like process of extension and centralization. No one will dispute the right of this endeavor, and few will dispute the advantage to labor or capital of a wide-spread and responsible organization, if it can be maintained in its integrity, and can be made to coexist with the rights of free citizenship. Organized labor is the only power which can treat successfully with capital without recourse to the constant interference of the State. And we can well afford to bear with the mistakes and blunders of labor organizations until some satisfactory method of arbitration or adjustment can be established, if thereby the whole matter can be kept out of politics, not out of legislation, but out of "practical" politics.

It is, however, a question whether labor is so far a natural unit as to allow any wide and permanent system of centralization. The Knights of Labor give a generous definition to labor. No distinction is made between work of the brain and of the hand. None are excluded from membership except capitalists and those who are supposed to be their advisers or agents. It is thought that the Order includes persons in scientific, literary, and professional life. Diversity of this kind may not be prejudical to unity. The conflict will come, if at all, between skilled and unskilled manual labor. There is a natural aristocracy among workingmen. The skilled workman, with high wages, constant employment, and a recognized social position, is not naturally sympathetic toward the unintelligent and restless laborer whose cause he may be called upon to champion. An apparent illustration of the tendency is to be seen in the attitude of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers toward the strikers on the Missouri Pacific Railway. So, too, account must be made of natural diversities of interest between the trades. Capital cannot be a unit because of diversity of interest, as witness the struggles in regard to tariff legislation. Why should labor hope to be able to reconcile differing and, at times, opposing occupations. Coöperation also, as involving the sharing of profits between the laborer and capitalist, may prove a disintegrating force. The workingman who has something at stake in a given business will naturally have a different idea as to its management from one who has nothing at stake beside his wages. And then we are to remember that capital, as well as competency, is the goal of American labor. Strictly speaking, we have no laboring class. The laborer of to-day is the capitalist of to-morrow, and the success of the one represents the ambition of the many. And, so far as our observation extends, the man who has risen from the ranks, and who takes most pride in the fact, is less sympathetic toward labor, and less conciliatory in his methods, than the man of inherited capital.

The immediate risk to the central labor organizations is in the want of competent local leaders. Under the rapid extension of membership, and the consequent lowering of the standard of skill and intelligence, everything depends upon the character of the men intrusted with authority. And in these circumstances leadership means above all things the power of restraint, caution, patience, in a word, conservatism. Power must be accumulated in large reserves before it can be wisely used, and when thus accumulated there will be little occasion for its use. This was the significance of the remark attributed to Master Workman Powderly, that there would be no more strikes. The growth of the Order under a rigid selfrestraint would do away with the necessity of strikes. But the temptation to the premature and trivial use of newly acquired power is too great to be resisted by small men in local authority. And unless the central authorities are strong enough to control these men the Order is at once committed to blunders and defeats. Nothing is so hard, and yet nothing is so truly a sign of power, as the acknowledgment of a mistake,

the rectification of a blunder. We instinctively respect or fear the man who will not sacrifice success to pride or temper. In his first public appearances Mr. Powderly gave the promise of competent leadership. And we are not now disposed to deny to him the qualities of a great leader, in view of his surrender, against his judgment, to the leaders of the strike on the Missouri Pacific, for he may have seen that nothing else in the present case could save the Order in its integrity. But the surrender has certainly weakened his personal authority as well as that of the central organization, and a repetition would prove disastrous. It remains to be seen whether local leaders can be held under the severe restraints necessary to the maintenance of a vast centralizing organization.

A most serious danger from without threatens the great labor organizations if they persist in the use of exclusive and intolerant methods of maintaining their power. The American people will never tolerate any interference with the rights of private citizenship. Public sentiment will come in, and afterwards law if necessary, to protect the individual laborer against the tyranny of organizations, as surely as these will act in his behalf against the tyranny of corporations. The coercion of the individual will not be suffered after the evil becomes serious enough to attract general attention. A strike for a fair cause is justifiable and legitimate. A given body of men cannot be compelled to work except under their own conditions. Neither can the same body of men be compelled to buy against their choice. A boycott when confined to the withdrawal of patronage by any aggrieved party is perfectly legitimate. But when an organization goes beyond these limits and assumes the authority to prevent any individual from working or buying as he pleases, it invades the domain of personal rights. In the contest which is now going on over the country public opinion is holding a very delicate balance. The predominant sympathy is on the side of labor, but at the suggestion of unfairness or violence it passes instantly to the other side. And what public opinion says to-day in respect to individual rights the law will say to-morrow, if no statute exists which meets a given wrong.

But if labor in its present attempt to consolidate its power will avoid all unjust and intolerant methods, if it will seek to raise the standard of workmanship, as it is seeking to protect itself from the power of the dram shop, and if it will strive directly, rather than through the aid of politicians, for wise and helpful legislation, it will have the respect of all right-minded men in its endeavor, and will in the end secure results as favorable to capital as to its own interests.

JOHN B. GOUGH: THE MASTER OF DRAMATIC ELOQUENCE.

WITH the great mass of English-speaking people in Great Britain and America, John B. Gough was undoubtedly the most popular and effective platform-speaker of his time. Everett and Phillips were earnestly admired by the cultivated audiences of America, but "the people who were never warmed by the polished brilliancy of Everett's beautiful speaking, and who were always waiting in vain to be thrilled under the reality and easy elegance that made up the magnetic charm of Phillips yielded themselves willing captives to the vivid and vehement speech of the fiery Apostle of Moral Reform. Everett and Phillips counted their followers by thousands in their own land; Gough had his tens of thousands in both hemispheres, and they included miners and senators, shop-girls, merchant princes, working men and women, and peers of the realm. But comparisons are needless. There are degrees of power in all departments of human effort. There is a glory of art and a glory of nature. Each of these famous speakers achieved the highest excellence in his peculiar sphere.

What was the secret of Gough's remarkable power with the people? By the way of mere statement it is comparatively easy to refer it to an inborn, off-hand, impassioned eloquence, that was chiefly manifested through an extraordinary dramatic faculty, and directed by an intense moral earnestness to noble and philanthropic ends. But that is a description that does not describe. It is next to impossible adequately to convey the influence and the total impression of his power of speech to stir men's blood; it eludes analysis. There was but one way to appreciate his power, - to hear him.

The personal equation in the problem of Gough's oratorical career was of exceptional force. In any fair estimate of him it cannot be overlooked. A public speaker's art and influence, apart from the truths and facts of his theme, are but the reflection of his personality. The immense popularity that Gough enjoyed for more than twoscore years is sufficient evidence that he possessed original mental qualities of solid worth. In the philanthropic movements of his time he was distinctly a force, an influence, an able promulgator of real and vital truth; but it was the influence of a powerful advocate and not of a legislator. To adapt Johnson's remark concerning Burke, no man could meet him by accident under a gateway to avoid a shower without being convinced that he was a man of uncommon mind. But his mental temperament was neither philosophical nor logical; and yet he had the philosophy and the logic that are the constituents of robust, substantial good sense. He was a man of insight. His clear-headed judgments proceeded from the intuitional faculty and not the discursive. He was satisfied to represent what he clearly saw and to express what he really felt. Mere argument he cordially disliked, and was impatient of the fetters of system and forVOL. V. NO. 29.

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