Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 170, 13 April 1891 — Labor Strikes. [ARTICLE]

Labor Strikes.

Just nbw the world'6 air is laden with the clamor of the wage earner for better conditions. more pay aud shorter hour«. In every eorner of Europe, from Scotland in the north, where a gigantic strike of Railway employees is about to collapse; to Turkey, where the Dock laborers have formed a Union and given &hipmasters the usual notice of their intentions; theh across the American eontinent, we fmd vast armiēs of workers united and organized in demanding better conditions.

The question whieh this mighty upheaval of lahor suggests, is— what causes the glut in the labor market ? \Vhy is there in a world of plenty, men starving ? The answer is self-evident: Tjae monoix>ly of land, by what ever means, by a comparative few to the exclusion of the many. In this small kiogdom of Hawaii we have men enjoying princēly ineomea without even the employment of capital as a preliminary; they have- been the favored reci pients of Crown Land leases whieh in some cases by sub-dividing and re-litting are producing for the favored lessees, tens of thonsands a yeai\ whieh of right belongs to the na'ional treasury.

Man instinctiveiv looka ior food, 07 ibr a fuundation for his (lwelito earth of whieh socivly li;is robbed iiiin. and driven by dcHtitu'i<)n he a<.Cfpts zt\y as a bouu.

In this country ari idle claFs of total abseutees and souw-abseutees a.re annually draining niillions from industry \vithout making any return, and it is thus that we will have inordinate wealih increasing at one end of the social aeale, and semi-slavery and its attendanA degradation at the other. The right of workers to strike for betterment, is now generaily eonceded bv capitalistic law-raakers of Ēurope, only because the strikers are more numernus and better organized than formerly-—it is onlyi a few years since a labor union was illegal in &ee England.\ Bu± ££Z£xsl mtelligent thinker who has stndied cause &fid effect in connection with the social problet», must be eonvinced th:it there is a vast amount of futility surrounding the "strike" theory. Gaining more coins aiid reducii3g their purcbasing power w undoing with the left hand tlie work of the right.

Prou<J scicnce wou!d my.stifv the d:stinctioii between the"niitnral an'd" acquired wante, between land v;hich \vas -created for aJI. our. eomme** birthrightv and uiachinery made by ingenions men for their separate use. Latid is a sin>i qua non, but mankind haa existed without eomplex ]iiachinery, and eouhl again by modifying their habits. Lanei monopoly unless checked will absorb the wealth of any country in time and reduce its landless inhabitantB to a condition of serfdom. lt was this danger whieh our British forefathers perceived in the growing weaHh of the Church, wheij they passed the statute of mortmain. Practical moral: Legislate in the direction of nationalisißg the land by raakitig it bear the bulk of taxatiou and ulaee a cimiulative tax on large estates.