a supposed conflict between laborers and capitalists would be most disastrous to those whom you are assumed especially to represent. Nothing can be more important to the rights of labor than that laborers should respect the rights of capital, while the danger of the laborer consists in the greater measure in restrictive legislation than that of any other class. Capital can adjust itself to almost any conditions, and can even secure to itself a larger share of the smaller product which will inevitably ensue when free competition is restricted by statute laws; but the laborer who invokes the power of the law to deprive him of the liberty of contract, and who prevents the free working of competition by such restrictive statutes, must bear the greater share of the loss which will almost certainly ensue, even more than his relative proportion. In the last analysis the earnings of the laborer rest wholly upon his individual character, capacity and integrity, and any statute or legislative act which prevents him from disposing of his time, his skill, his work, or his money with absolute freedom, provided he does no injustice to his fellows, will be the gravest misfortune to which he can be subjected. I know of no position of trust or respon sibility which calls for higher quality of mind than the positions which you hold. No one knows better than the statistician what a snare statistics may become, nor how untrue may be the deductions from them if they are not complete, or if they are not used with judicial integrity and under the strictest sense of responsibility to truth. |