New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-07-11
PITT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.

With this cheerful invitation, that modern
Radcliffe, Mr.. Charles Reade, introduces us
into very magazine of horrors, the more than
mysteries of the British Trades-Unions. In
our sympathy with his hero, we are ex-
.pected yicariously to be shot at with ar
rows, and slung at with knives, and burnt
up in stables, and blown up in fOrges-only
stopped on our way to the sky by sticking in
cleft iron bars-and splintered into bits by
nitro glycerine, stray arm or leg Of us
Found Drowned" to say nothing OF minor
drains upon our feelings by food and field.
The great American Nation is also getting
out novel, a serial experiment, of which we
have been favored with some of the advance
chapters. 1t is called "John," but the title
borrowed from the British workman will do
as well. John, we CLEAN from these early
pages is to have a very hard time of it while
the plot is played out. He is to Put Himself
in the Place of a great many things. He Is
to receive the skull and crOss-bOne warnings,
is to have his pig-tail cut off, and his shanty
fired, is to find powder in his forge, and poison
in his puppy -stews. This is Massachusetts. In
New-York he is to be hanged to lamp-posts, or
beaten to death in the Bowery, or found float
ing-the bits of rundown among the docks.
In Pennsylvania he is to be blown up in coal
mines, and charged to "fire-damp," or scalded
to death in Iron Furnaces, or run down on
railroad tracks, hours after he has gasped his
last sigh. For, are not the Trades-Unions
omnipotent7 and has not Labor learned at
last how to hold Capital in check2 And
between these mill-stOnes, the upper and the
neither. it is easy to see the pulverized frag-
ments of John.
But, borrowing trick from Mr.. Reade, you
see after he has been ground to powder, he
comes out again, this ever-renewing John,
good as new, to undergo fresh trials and vex-
atoms, and another martyrdOm. For, now
that Sambo has been satisfactorily put out Of
the way, having proved that he won't leave
his Place in the sunny South to take the bread
out of white laborers' mouths in the frozen
North-in fact, that he won't put himself into
anybody's Place but his Own, as a GOd-fear-
ing, upward striving, American citizen-what
would the Politicians do but for John! Put
himself into the place of the hitherto irrepres-
sible negro, he must and shall, say they. For a
war-cry, and q shibbOleth, and Tally-hO,
what 80 new, so stirring! ave won't have
chin ~ say the Democrats, watching the Irish
Immigrant ship safe into harbor. ave re
"afraid to touch him." whisper some of their
opponents 8" we would like to, but Nativism
"isn't dead yet, and tits as much as we can do
"tO attend to one color at a timew And the
standing joke of the American people, the
laughing stock, will have to be painted anew.
1t used to have thick lips and a woolly head,
and its shin-bones were of the fashion it
pleased God. Now, its eyes must be slanted
obliquely, its head must be shaver, it must
dress in strange stuffs, and carry fan.
But we III back the American nation, in the
winding up of its novel, against any Charles
Reade on earth. We shall waken up some
morning in the Seventy Chapter, to find
that all is serene, that the hero John has
welded Patience, and that all goes smoothly
in workshop and forge. The Intelligent
" American mechanic will discover that the
world is wide! Andiin Central Park, the Irish
man with his shovel, in Schuylllll County the
Cornishman with his pick, may possibly strike
out the solid truth that the rights of Labor and
Capital go hand in hand, but that the crown
ing rights of Humanity, of Flesh and Blood
and Human Brotherhood, are through all and
above all.