James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[325] destroy it altogether. It is tangible, and yet intangible. It is a body and it is a soul. Horace Greeley might have said, The Tribune—it is I, with more truth than the French King could boast, when he made a similar remark touching himself and the State. And Mr. McElrath, glancing round at the types, the subscription books, the iron chest, the mighty heaps of paper, and listening to the thunder of the press in the vaults below, might have been pardoned if he had said, The Tribune—these are the Tribune.

The property was divided into a hundred shares of a thousand dollars each, and a few of them were offered for sale to the leading men in each department, the foremen of the composing and pressrooms, the chief clerks and bookkeepers, the most prominent editors. In all, about twelve shares were thus disposed of, each of the original partners selling six. In some cases, the purchasers paid only a part of the price in cash, and were allowed to pay the remainder out of the income of their share. Each share entitled its possessor to one vote in the decisions of the company. In the course of time, further sales of shares took place, until the original proprietors were owners of not more than two-thirds of the concern. Practically, the power, the controlling voice, belonged still to Messrs. Greeley and McElrath; but the dignity and advantage of ownership were conferred on all those who exercised authority in the several departments. And this was the great good of the new system.

That there is something in being a hired servant which is naturally and deeply abhorrent to men is shown by the intense desire that every hireling manifests to escape from that condition. Many are the ties by which man has been bound in industry to his fellow man; but, of them all, that seems to be one of the most unfraternal, unsafe, unfair, and demoralizing. The slave, degraded and defrauded as he is, is safe; the hireling holds his life at the caprice of another man; for, says Shylock, he takes my life who takes from me my means of living. ‘How is business?’ said one employer to another, a few days ago. ‘Dull,’ was the reply. ‘I hold on merely to keep the hands in work.’ Think of that. Merely to keep the hands in work. Merely! As if there could be a better reason for “holding on;” as if all other reasons combined were not infinitely inferior in weight to this one of keeping men in work;