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THE RECORD.

PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING
(EXCEPT SUNDAY)
BY THE
RECORD PUBLISHING COMPANY
AT THE RECORD BUILDING,
SOUTHWEST COR. OF THIRD AND CHESTNUT STREETS.

THE RECORD is served by carriers to their subscribers in the city of Philadelphia and in surrounding Cities, Villages and Towns, for SIX CENTS Per Week, payable to the carrier.
PRICES FOR MAILING, INCLUDING PREPAID POSTAGE. --One month, Thirty Cents; one year, Three Dollars--invariably in advance.
W. M. SINGERLY, President.
R. G. OELLERS, Secretary and Treasurer.

Philadelphia, Tuesday, August 7, 1877.

THE LABOR QUESTION.
To the Editor of The Record:
Text–"Ill fares the land, to greater ills a prey. Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

For the first clause of my text I will refer you to the Treasury bureau, Credit Mobilier, Pacific railroad bonds, greenback corporations, excise tax collections, chartered monopolies, gigantic privileges, railroad corporations, telegraph rings and jobbers of political rings. Wealth of immense proportions has accumulated round these various centres–in many cases millions. All these riches are legal mortgages upon labor and the products of labor. Any ordinary mathematician or arithmetician can decipher out that problem by the rule of common sense, which puts down the axiom that the wealth of a nation is in its productive industry.

“Nothing to extenuate, nor aught set down in malice." Now, is there any decadence of men? Contrast the present race of statesmen with those of a hundred years ago–Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Lee, Hancock, Carroll–with Grant, Chandler, Colfax, Cameron, Belknap, Robeson, etc. How stands the parallel? Decadence from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. Rotten within and rotten without.

But I am told it was simply a railroad strike. Not alone that, by a great difference–aye, by the difference of all labor interests out outside of railroad labor. It was a spontaneous spasm of the whole body politic of labor combination, and was simply ignited by the railroad strikes.

The common mass of laborers have learned that all taxes must come out of the labor products. Does a bank with a million of dollars in its vault grow a bushel of wheat in itself? Does a railroad grow a bushel of potatoes in itself? In short, should all the banks and broker shops and money exchanges and railroads and churches and "printing bureaus" and theatres be locked up, and labor allowed to go on as usual, would the world stop? On the other hand, let labor stop, throw down the hammer and saw, and cease to plow, but leave the aforesaid institutions bank away, and preach goodwill to it from the pulpit, how fare you then? I will not analyze–the problem is self-evident. It is unnecessary to talk of watered railroad stocks and "bloated bondholders" and of other and all the sapping institutions to give cause and reason for the uprising of labor in defence of labor's just recompense. But you say it was riotous. 'Tis true, and more's the pity that it is. When the robber throttles you, you do not attempt to run to the 'squire to lodge a complaint; you strike back if you are a man of manly instincts.

The monopoly robbers have all their hands at the workman's throat and their feet upon his muscle. Will he tamely submit? Perhaps! He is quiet now at all events, but it is the repose after a spasm. If the disease is supposed to go on the spasms will become more aggravated. The hour to stop has come, and if no man rise fit and equal to the occasion this republic will expire in a convulsion.

"The mass of mankind are not born with saddles on their backs, and a favored few, booted and spurred, to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." So sayeth a great statesman. True, the saddles are on, the riders mounted, booted and spurred, but the nags are unruly. Powder and ball are to be the medicine. Fraud presidents, fraud governors, fraud mayors–those especially who prohibit meetings of workingmen–are to play the part of doctors, and we have yet to learn how this diagnosis will be worked out by these "honorable men."

Mr. Editor, we are slumbering on and over a moral and social volcano, and all the palaver of the press and the glitter of bayonets and pomp of war will not harness the great mass of the American labor class into subjection to pull through this burden of taxation, high rents and low living.

The millionaires must unload! The public debt must be consolidated into a 3 per cent, as was the English public debt. We must have more economical Governments–Federal, State and Municipal. Rings must be dissolved. Subsidies must cease. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. Railroads, with banks, must stop forestalling bread and meat beyond that of a fair carrying rate.

Let these things be done and the people will cease their convulsions and agonies for bread and meat, and the country will resume its tranquillity and prosperity. If not–not.

A WORKINGMAN.