Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-08-17
w o R C E S T R:
MONDAY. AUGUST IA, 1863,


ternity," the very essence Of repubicansm.
From this emauates our civilization, with
labor for its corner-Stone-sacred, divine
labor that labor which is worship that
labor, from which man wrings manhood;
through which he gains development; by
which he rises out of selfishness into self-re-
nunciation, subduing the world unto himself
and bringing in the divine life-the very
kingdom of God.
Every thoughtful man must wonder, that
the masses of this country, the working men
in our factories, and machine shops, have
ever been misled from this high faith; have
ever failed to see that whatever attacked the
dignity of labor attacked their very manhood.
Whatever made work dshonorable, under.
mined, at the same time, all of worth and
perinanence in our institutions, rendered lib
erty impossible, and cast the seed of death
into the fair garden Of our prosperity and cur
nobleness. 1t is astonishing that any man,
whose brow has been wet with honest sweat,
whose hand has grown strong by earnest toll,
strong for friendly grasps, for generous
salvations-that any man who earns his bread
according to the divine command, and so
grows into the divine likeness, becoming CO.
worker with the Father of all work, feeling
that christian thrill of manlness through every
fibre of his being, that stirred the heart of
Christ when he said, - came not to be min
istered unto, but to minister,-that any
such man should strike hands with
slavery, and fail to see that for every
slave in the land,-for every unpaid and de-
graded worker, in rice or cotton-held,-he
himself is so much less a man; that every
slave, despised and dishonored, out-cast and
abused, pull the whole mass of free work
ing-men, with their wives and children.
down to a lower plane, tore from them some
percentage of their manhood, and handed sa-
cred labor, bound hand and foot, over to the
Devil, when every free state, if it would re.
tain its freedom, must hold labor as from God.
Where slavery reigns the worker is degraded,
and labor disgraceful The struggle of every
man is to escape out of the necessity of that
which has been fixed, as badge, on a de-
graded class; to cast it from him, as we
would cast away a state-prison dress; to
strive for luxurious indolence,-to be minis
tered unto and not to minister: the sweat on
the brow becomes to him the mark of a slav-
ish SPIRIT and the hard brown hand, a type of
the damned mudSils," in whom it is a ridicu-
lous presumption to aspire to be gentlemen or
even men. Therefore, in such community.
intelligence is used not to elevate labor but to
escape from it, and so the two, who should al
ways go hand in hand, are reft wider and
wider asunder; and labor, parted from its
co mpanion, becomes ruder and ruder, falls
into low and lower planes, uses ever simple
and more simnla ir,,l"-->---,.-- - ""-i~-- !
more careless ways, till the country that has
degraded it, shining against its holy and divine
spirit, becomes impoverished and slides swift
ly down to ruin, morally and physically, its
liberties dying out, as its soil is exhaust
ed and desolated. But in a community,
where labor is honorable, intelligence is
brou ght to uplift it, while labor quickens in
telligence; and as thought brings wood and
iron and water to do its work as man, living
as God willed he should live, finds Nature her.
self a ready helper, lifting off his oppressive
yoke, then thought is set free for higher,
broader flights, and all the great schemes of
government, all the wide truths of morality,
all the lofty dreams of the soul open them
selves before men, and divine life becomes
possible; permanent prosperity is at
tanned, and on the foundation of free labor, the
temple of liberty stands, everlasting as God.
Let slavery hold the balances, and then cast
into one scale the black darkness of southern
barbarism, with all the foul evil and wrong
that belong to its abominable system of slave
labor; and into the other all the intelligence,
the culture, the refinement, the thrift, the
prosperity of New England and the great
west. And the broad valleys of the one the
fields and mountains of the other, with the
sweet purity of their homes, and the sturdy
manhood Of their people, would kick the beam.
But put the balances into Liberty's strong
hands, brown and hard from toll in wood, and
iron, and earth, and the scale, weighted with
intelligence, shall swing the black barbarisms
of slavery out Of sight forever.
Twenty years ago a New England boy went
to Carolina, with boys delight in rule and
authority, loving to say to this one,
eco, or come and to another, ''Do this -
and find obedience wait upon his word;
loving the ease and consideration of that
lazy, plantation life; loving to be min
istered unto by those patient beings, who
went and came at his pleasure. He glided
smoothly for awhile over that glittering sur
face, wrapped in dream OF Incidence, till one
day the surface cracked, and he looked, with
scared eyes, into the abysses beneath into the
unutterable horrors of that hellish system,
and his northern heart awoke, and in the very
hot bed of that vast abuse, seeing its effects
on blacks and whites, seeing the children de-
veloping into tyrants, the young men scofing
at purity of heart and life, he learned to hate
the system with heart and soul and strength !;
and he stands to-day, with uplifted hands,
thanking God that that permanent endow-
ment of all the vices" has at last received its
death blow, and the muscular hand of north
ern free labor, striking it in the forehead,
brings the giant to the earth, and breaks the
shackles off whole degraded race, finding in
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