Newspaper Page Text
ALong, Strong,Bro ad B ack-T HE WO RKE R’S
' 11 ■ - H ' "' ~ ' 11l ,
For Centuries the Worker Has Stood. Bent
Over —His Back the Public Highway.
In Every Conveyance the Prosperous of Their
Day Have Used This Broad, Strong Road.
This Is a Picture of the Few That Enjoy and
the Many That Labor. Let Us Discuss It.
R IS picture shows you at
a slance THE STORY 0F
? bSP THE HUMAN RACE -
| From the beginning of
■ thought among men
which meant the end of rule by brute
force—this has been the picture of his
tory—the giant of power bending over,
and cunning intelligence using the back
of labor for a highway.
The world’s conquerors have travelled
to glory over the back of labor.
Self-indulgence, extravagance, power
in every age have travelled the same
road.
We look at the great pyramid built to
honor and hold the corpse of a Pharaoh.
We see the great pile in the waste of
sand—every stone was dragged to its
place on the back of labor. Hundreds of
thousands of men melted away as that
one pyramid was built. They have gone
like the rain that grew the standing crop.
A. < A
A hundred thousand automobiles roll
softly over the wonderful highways of
Europe. For every foot and every inch
of those highways a man gave his life.
Caesar built some of them, using his
men as roadmakers and as man killers.
Napoleon built more of them. Wher
ever you travel in Europe you travel
over the dust of the bones of men that
he scattered along his paths.
And still the system exists.
In this country we travel in our swift
trains, on steel rails, TRAVELLING ON
THE BACK OF LABOR.
Labor levelled the tracks, broke the
stone, drove the spikes, dug the ore,
made the rails.
Every inch of the road from the At
lantic to the Pacific you travel on labor’s
back.
Houses, palaces, skyscrapers, bridges,
libraries, prisons and schools labor
makes and remakes them all.
A .* ■*
Very savage and uncomfortable this
world would be if it were not for the
patient power of men that work—from
the tired, wornout slave fastened to the
sweatshop sewing machine, who clothes
us, to the broad-shouldered giant with
the air gun, who rivets our steel build
ings.
To realize what the world owes to
labor—to think and discuss this picture
intelligently—that ts the duty of men as
individuals and as lawmakers.
It is hard for the man who works with
his brain—and gets ten men’s pay—to
realize that labor comes first; that it IS
all that we have.
And it is hard for the man who gives
the labor, who digs when another says
“dig here,” and moves on to dig else
where when ordered, to realize the value
of the mind that directs.
A thousand men digging in a mine are
a strange picture of helpless force ruled
by one mind—MOßE CUNNING—that
directs them by wire from a distance.
You say that their lot is pitiful, shut
out from sunlight for long hours, and
meanly paid.
So it is pitiful. To understand them,
sympathize with them, work for them
and better their lot is duty.
It is necessary also to realize the value
of the man who TELLS THEM WHERE
TO DIG.
The men with big arms that swing the
pick and handle the shovel are the foun
dation of society. Vainly the engineer
and architect would plan without the
builders.
Vainly also the workers would work
without the directing mind.
That should be remembered, and by
workers themselves especially.
For the prosperous to ignore what
civilization owes to labor is stupid and
dangerous.
For the workers to reason and protest
falsely leads to nothing and prevents
progress.
Hard work MUST BE DONE. And
the iron law of hunger and fear of death
will find men to do it.
Those that are cunning and unscrupu
lous or intelligent and able will avoid the
painful work, and the many, less cun
ning or less intelligent, will do it.
Men protest and fight and have their
revolutions, from the days of the
Gracchi to the days of Danton. When re
bellion and revolution end we still find
that SOMEBODY is doing the hard work
and somebody else—a new lot of people,
perhaps—enjoying the easy life.
For thousands and thousands of years
the lucky few have enjoyed the ease ana
plenty and looked down with contempt
upon the workers. And through all
those years the workers have bent their
backs and suffered, and looked up with
bitterness, hatred and envy at the few.
The old childish picture of Heaven and
Hell was really a picture of an Oriental
country. Heaven was the court, with the
king on his throne, the courtiers bowing
down before him and singing his praises.
And Hell was the field of labor, wh we
peasants toiled in the scorching sun to
keep the court going
* * e
At the top of she heap, prosperity rid
ing over Labor's back had its eager, well
paid advocates—clergymen paid to tell
the poor to be patient, to revere th;-ir
masters, fake their hard kicks meekly,
and hope for something after death.
The prosperous had their police, their
judges, their jailers and their execution
ers, all planned to keep that big back in
the picture from straightening up and
disturbing prosperity in its joy-ride.
Labor had its spokesmen, often pur
chasable, easily converted to the other
sid<> by prosperity.
So the world went on for ages, and
still it goes on.
* * ♦
Is it to be thus ALWAYS? Is there no
remedy?
To those questions the answer is that
a rapid change, which eventually will be
comnlete. can be seen already
THERE DOES EXIST A’ REMEDY
FOR THAT CONDITION WHICH
KEEPS THE MAJORITY BENT OVER
THAT A FEW MAY ENJOY VISK ’
While men have been hating, envying
and despising each other, class misun
derstanding class., the brain of man and
the destiny of man have been slowlv
solving the problem that seemed unso’v
able. “
The hard work MUST BE DONE but
man s brain is learning to do the work
with muscles of steel, power of steam nf
gas and electricity, that know neither
pain nor sorrow.
More and more we do our work with
power that does not suffer 1
An electric fan will give a hundred times
much breeze as an Asiatic slave toiling at a
punkah. And the fan of steel and of electricity
will run continually day and night and cost less
than the cheapest slave.
'A hen dandies, idle men, self-indulgent,
used to travel through narrow citv streets,
other men carried them in sedan chairs, held
by straps on their shoulders.
1 he dandy to-day travels much more rapid
ly in a machine moved by gas explosion—one
kind of slavery has been ended.
The sewing machine and the loom have
freed millions of miserably paid needlewomen,
and made cloth cost one-tenth of what it used
to cost.
Public waterworks have saved from slavery
millions of women that used to drag their
water supply four and five stories and higher
into the air.
W e still make slaves of men, but we have
editorial and City Else Section of ficarsfs Sunday American, Atlanta. September 21, ton.
■■fw®lßS
KI
HF UH 6 f Uli I /
r , if® w
/ b .101 JZwl /
B \ liiii .'i IgL /1 j
i ti < wil\ j\\
yF ■pF ■B ■ j;
z
freed millions of them with the steam shovel,
the dynamite blast, the airgun—AND VVE SEE
( LEARLY THE POSSIBILITIES OF FREE
ING ALL MEN FROM SLAVERY WITH THE
AID OF THE BRAIN, AN!) THE MACHIN
ERY THAT IT CAN CREATE.
The solution of man’s problem is EDUCA
TION, KNOWLEDGE.
Education and knowledge make men better,
and make the world better.
The educated man who KNOWS does not
want slaves—he wants friends and brothers.
It is the ignorant black savage who buries
his wives and his slaves in his own grave.
It is the ignorant white savage who enjoys
and approves a system that buries men and
women in the grave of poverty and anxiety.
Already men have conquered nature’s forces.
The great waterfall of Niagara does the
work that a million men could not do.
The power hidden away in the heat of the
earth, the force of the tides and the rays of the
sun could do ten million times over all the
hard work that this planet needs. And already
men have the key to harnessing these forces.
Remember how- far we have travelled. All
men once were cannibals—except those who
were too cowardly to fight.
We have left cannibalism behind.
VV e have travelled beyond slavery, and the
serfs are set free.
W e have still the slavery of the wage system,
but it is modified by organizations that make
the worker the dictator. And those that know
can see already the ending of a system in
w hich work is based upon want and dire neces
sity, instead of being based, as it should be,
upon the joy of working and the love of useful
effort.
Men at last see the truth.
Education and reading are almost universal,
and THINKING HAS BEGUN.
But a few years more and the man at the too
will understand the big brother on whose back
he has so long been riding. And the man at the
bottom will realize that he has misunderstood
and undervalued the more cunning or more
intelligent “one in ten thousand.”
The hard work will be done still, but by the
machine.
Superior intelligence will strive to seek how
much it can GIVE, instead of struggling to see
how much it can GET.
Our Rockefellers and Carnegies of the future
will work from the beginning for others, in
stead ol exploiting others from the beginning
to give back the winnings at the end.
A better day is coming—not the end of the
working day, for that w’ould be misery, but
the end of slave labor, the beginning of civiliza
tion. when work will mean happiness, when
poverty and injustice will cease, W’hen men will
be brothers, when the few' will no longer ride
on the backs ol the many or hire preachers to
declare blasphemously, “God has willed that it
should be so.”