The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1872-07-25
Laboring Men and Men OF Leisure.


meeting of employers in this city the
other day, stated very distinctly that
there were in the late strikes some very
marked traces of communism, and that
the question had been frequently heard
among the strikers, "Why should we,
too, not live in brown stone houses ?"
Twenty years ago, the sole object of a
strike was TO obtain slight increase in
wages; to-day most of the leaders, at
least, look on themselves rs doing some-
thing to hasten social reorganization,
in which there shall be no class exempt
from manual labor.
Professional men, clerks, and all others
whose work is mainly of the mental
kind, or is at all events clean work
which may be done without disfgure-
ment of any kind. have become in their
eyes nearly as obnoxious as the regular
loungers. In short, the ideal society of
the labor reformers, everywhere, though
more vaguely held in some places than
others, is one in which all shall be in q
greater or less degree manual laborers,
so that the social distinction now created
by mans not laboring with his hands
shall disappear.
The effect of such revolution as this
on civilization-thati is, of the disappear
ance from society of everybody who did
not settle down every morning to some
| distasteful physical task and work at it
as long as his nervous energy enabled
him, and of everybody who owed any
thing in the way of greater social free
dom, or the greater freedom in the choice
of pursuits which wealth gives, to his
fathers accumulations or his own rapid
success-would form curious subject
of speculation.
| 1t is well to remember, when we talk
about civilization" and glory in the
difference it has made between us and
our skinclad forefathers, that ninety-nine
hundredths of it are the result Of the
work of what we may call the leisured
class" that is, the class of whom our So
cial arrangements permit to live in what
to the manual laborer seems idleness.
In fact, the first step in civilization is
not made until some portion of the COM
munity is released from the necessity of
toiling with its hands and allowed to
occupy itself with thinking, speculating,
or in other words, following the train of
abstract reasoning and playing with the
imagination and the rapidity of the
rise of every people into civilization has
been in the ratio of the number of those
whom it was able to release in this way
from the common drudgery of life. A
great majority of these have always, will
always, to all outward appearance, think
and imagine in vain, as if it were an es-
sential feature in the moral order of the
| hot oebo 1o
ing waste of effort in every department
of human activity.
But the number of those who have
| tried to make such contributions with
out succeeding, and the number of those
who have made trihing contributions
not great enough to rescue their names
from oblivion but good enough to help
the others, the Keplers, Newtons, Davys,
and Harveys, to their discoveries, has
doubtless been almost beyond count.
But they could not have shown them
selves at all, in society of manual la
borers such as some working men dream
of.
God has somehow not organized soci-
ETY. according to our notions of justice.
He has made some men strong and
healthy, Others weak and sickly; some
men wise and able, other men foolish
and stupid; some women handsome
other women plain; He has imposed Oh
one half of the human species the pains
of reproduction, to the other half He
has given only its pleasures, and on this
inequality, human society is organized
Every man has his post, but there is al
enormous difference in the comfort anG
dignity of the different posts.
The safety and progress of humanity
as whole, depends on each mans serv
ing faithfully and without murmuring
The rude fishermen of the Northern sea
as great English writer has finely
said, collects the oil which fills the schol
ar's lamp in the luxurious capital three
thousand miles away. Should the day
ever come when the fisherman will in
sist on the scholars collecting his owl
oil, the day when there will be neithe
scholars, fishermen nor oil will not b,
far distant--Christian Union.