Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-10-31

he is a man and gives him work, q hundred
men interfere and he is driven away. This is
bratal tyranny and not an effort to get Justice
from capital, but an effort to weaken the poor
and the unskilful. In the prisons eighty two
per cent of the criminals come from the ranks
of the unskilled laborer-the man without
trade or profession-and the ranks of crimi-
mails. There is nothing so costly to society
as an idle man. OF all the means to lift the
soul from the mire up to where it can look
God in the face, nothing can equal skilled la
bor Work is forbidden to the convict. Leg
islatures are appealed to, and it is said to be
hurtful to put the the labor of convicts in
competition with honest men. The speaker
here went into the subject of the "Heathen
Chinee," eloquently taking up the cause of
the transplanted Celestial. On the Pacific
coast, said she, there are thousands of acres
rich and waste for the want of men to cult
vate them. Orchards are wasting for the
want of men to gather the fruit; minerals
are lying untouched in the heart of the earth
for want of men. So go to San Francisco,
and l see multitude of workingmen receive
a shipload of Cinnamon with clubs till the
streets ran literally with blood. And this is
the welcome that Christianity accords to hea-
thenism. This scene in San Francisco is the
legitimate result of the trades unions and Ia
Dor reform conventions of the East. And all
this is endorsed by the statesman and the
eloquent advocate of human rights in Massa-
chusetts.
In North Adams the employers on the Chi
nese have gained SO much that they refuse to
reveal their gains. The Chinese have gained
and the American workman has gained in pro-
portion. This tells its own story. We have
schools in all departments to develop skill,
except in the ranks of the mechanic. Here
fba Lace al tba haff 10 fhn nf
the union. The assertion has been made that
there is an aristocracy and that the workmen
support it; that there are the poor and the
rich, and that the poor support the rich.
These statements are false. Are the hands
as much value to the head as the head to the
hands? A soldier loses both hands and his
head serves for both but how if the head be
shot off? If you don't like to be hands make
yourself heads. The hardest working men
in the the country are the richest men.
They die in their prime. You use your
weapon-muscle; they use their weapon,
nerve, and they use it mercilessly. If a man
is rich in America he is SO by the divine right
of brains. There is no class of the poor and
no class of the rich. There are few rich
men and plenty of poor men. 1t is not true
that a man can't work over eight hours day
without damage. No human being ever
made himself power unless he was willing
to give more work that he was paid for-who
stopped to connt hours. 1t is an equality
that one man will be rich and another poor to
the end. l grant it. But it is no more wrong
than that one man should be six feet and an
other four feet in height No legislation, no
reform, can ever succeed in producing equal
ity of condition in this world. There may be
success in bursting society asunder, but the
poor will be left poorer by the wreck. Let
there be cooperation, whereby the strong
shall help the weak and the weak the weaker
till all men are brethren.