Capital and Labor.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1790, 3 February 1886, Page 2

Capital and Labor.

Sib Julios Vogel has written a long letter to the Auckland Trades and Labor Council on the relations which exist between capital and labor. His argument is, “ that if capital be dominant, it is utter nonsense to assert that more or less it will not look after what suits it best. It may stop short of positive cruelty. It may exhibit a good deal of individual kindness and good heartedness, but all the same the general tendency will be to seek for capital excessive advantages in the shape of cheap labor, ai-d monopolising wealth in few hands. But if labor is dominant, it may be said it will be just as unreasonable, and be as hard on capitalists as, in the other case, capitalists will be on labor. There is no reason to expect more moderation from one than the other. But self interest forces moderation on the laboring classes. Capital can better afford to wait than labor, and therein lies the whole secret.”

What Sir Julius Vogel contends, simply amounts to a series of self-evident propositions which any person of common sense fully admits. The latter portion of his letter, however, is worth quoting. He remarks The balance of political power is more or less rapidly everywhere passing into the hands of the laboring classes and the small capitalists simultaneously. These classes are becoming more thoughtful and better educated. Radicalism is being divided into two schools, the Conservative and the unbridled. In my opinion Conservative Radicalism will carry the day, and employers of labor will find that a sufficiently powerful section of the employed will prevent undue advantage being taken of the larger political power that labor will enjoy. In short, capital restrained from being too exacting will find its best ally in the moderate views of the thoughtful portion of the laboring classes.” There is much truth in the opinions thus expressed. The working classes, while insisting upon being treated fairly and equitably by capitalists and employers of labor, should at the same time restrict their demandswithin such reasonable limits, as would afford capitalists a fairly profitable return for the employment of their money.