Co-operation of all Labor Essential.

The industries which are every year more banding together, scarcely yet comprehend the magnitude of their mission. Employed and employer, array themselves in needless opposition, weakening the force of both, and diverting their common strength from the common enemy.

In the contests where the employers "lock out," or where combined labor asserts itself in "strikes," the true issue of the battle is not understood. Both "strikes" and "lock-outs," by lessening production, are enemies to civilization. Employers and employed should symphathize together more sincerely. With less distrust, they would comprehend that their real enemy is the unjust standard of money, which, through unfair interest, constantly swallows up the fruits of labor.

The employer is only the middleman between labor and capital, and the competition between all middlemen in the same industry, generally guarantees as fair an equivalent for labor as circumstances justify. All middlemen alike, those who buy, sell, or advance, are forced by competition to moderate profits for services, but all alike are victims to the demands of capital—in rents, in bank interest, in page break usury, which in the end is charged to producers. The difficulty is not with the excessive charge for services of middlemen, but in the absurd scarcity of money, which thereby keeps industry and production in the power of higher interest than it can earn.