CO-OPERATION.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4009, 3 November 1881, Page 3

CO-OPERATION.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star )

Sib,—-The strongest of all things is moral power, for it must, • and will, ultimately, triumph over every force. The influence of concentrated public opinion is resistless. Before it the tyrant's hand falls powerless ; the despot's arm is nerveless ; the oppressor's rod is broken. Before virtuous public opinion wrongdoers slink away as hides the nocturnal Veptile from the morning sun. The breath of censure from the good and brave falls upon the unrighteous as fell the breath of the destroyer on the hosts of Assyria. Men will brave everything—the sea, the desert, the earthquake, the volcano, even the cannon's mouth, before they will resist the intense influence of public sentiment. Let but the moral sense of friends of freedom become active and concentrated on this question of co-operation, and no despot dare obstruct or outrage it. Let employers give but their independence, power, and influence to len d a hand to strug gling working people, and they will multiply immeasurably their possessions and happiness. The star of humanity, instead of R^ing i° ttight» and blood, and gloom, enshrouding the hopes of man, will rise in a bright effulgence of expectations of the future. Employers must awake, and realise their duties; they now have an opportunity to strike a chord whose vibrations will never cease, until the country takes her proper stand as the proud champion of human rights. The employer and employee are really and truly co-operators, and in these letters I purpose showing how they may co-operate with much greater mutual benefit and satisfaction than heretofore. The misunderstanding and misuse of the word employer must be corrected. Of the tw( contracting parties called employer and employee, the latter is at least as much the employer of the former as the former is of the latter ;■ but this only applies to the active or the working employer, for the mere money lenders or idle capitalists are not employers, though they may be hirers—they are usurers. Can the landlord be rightly considered an employer, and the farm laborer not an employer, who actually employs the farmer, miller, baker, butcher, tanner, carrier, bookhinder, printer, author, schoolmaster, and all others, and the Earth employes the farm laborer ? From the earth, in fact, - cornea all our wealth, obtained therefrom by the laborer, and the landlord s claim to hare a right to give or refuse permission to the laborer to mak« the earth yield its

increase, is a wicked assumption of power. The clniiu that the earth is theirs, only to be laborer] for them and with their expressed permission—that they are the employers by : virtuo of ownership and power to forbid digging the carth —is, in effect, a denial of the goodness and justice of the Creator, who lias given the land as an heritage to the whole human family, and constituted it, \ho only employer. Men may arrange w\ h each other as mutual assistants; they may by unrighteous laws and force compel others to be their servants or slaves; they may enslave others by claiming nnd obtaining and exercising the power to call both the earth and laborer their private property, but all man's employment is given by " the heritage of all men " —The Earth. Between the laborer and the land, the landlord lias intruded hVsolf, :i" <l lias constituted himself a t&x and a burden upon the labirer. but in this country it will result a« in Ireland —that if tlie landlords do not soon cease their usury, the laborers will drive them off Ihe laud, and cease to submit to their unriuliteous extortions.—T am, &c, Laboher.