John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[91] went to ruin, for the injustice and imperfection out of which labor must be elevated are not so great, while the humanity and intelligence are vastly greater. And apart from these considerations there is reason to believe that the necessary change is now slowly going on. The practical movement of labor reform is wider and profounder than is generally imagined. The principle of co-operation is surely, I believe, supplanting that of competition. Here in Paris there are now in operation some fifty associations of workmen, and they are springing up in other places also. Some will not succeed, it is likely, others are already brilliantly successful. In five years the greater part of the labor done in Paris will be so done that the workman will be his own master, and receive the full fruit of his toil. This will settle the question for the whole of Europe.

This concludes a series of letters far the most numerous and interesting Dana ever wrote, except those covering the Civil War in America. From the extracts incorporated into this narrative, which show him to have been at least a consummate reporter, it is evident that he was a spectator of many of the transactions which he described, that he was frequently admitted behind the scenes, and that in all cases he must have had excellent sources of information. The facts described by him may, therefore, be relied upon as correctly stated, and while in the light of the half-century or more which has elapsed since his first visit to Europe, it is evident that he wrote rather with regard to cause than to persons — more from a moral and speculative than from an economic or strictly philosophical point of view. Many of his conclusions have not yet been realized, but it must be conceded that they are founded on principles, if not on fundamental facts, which command our sympathy if not our approval, especially when he assures us, as he does in terms of singular eloquence, that: