The Rising Power of Labor
A bold editorial argument for the necessity of social equality and the inevitable end of plutocracy.
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No thinking man will regard the labor movements in this country or Europe with alarm or distrust. They are the necessary outcome of the disruption of the feudal system. Social reform cannot stop halfway between serfdom and complete freedom. Serfdom is indefensible. It follows that the laborer is entitled to as much of the wealth of the world as he has power to secure. The spread of education among all classes is at the root of the matter. Working people are learning that they are the props of society and that current wages force them to perform labor while securing the principal advantages to others. Our fathers successfully maintained a revolution to secure political equality; their sons are now called upon to support a movement to secure social equality. Before long, workingmen will display a power in which plutocracies must vanish and fade away. It will be well to recognize the claims labor is justified in preferring and avoid any unseemly or idle attempts to resist them.
“The laborer is entitled to as much of the wealth of the world as he has power to secure.”
This 1889 editorial captures the raw nerves of the late-19th-century labor movement, echoing the same economic anxieties about wealth inequality and social mobility that continue to define Yakima's civic discourse today.
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