Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1879-11-07
Inrerson on Labor.

Col. Bob Ingersou, In Boston speech
some time since, thus expressed himself
on the labor question:
Every man ought TO be willing to pay
for what he gets. He ought to desire to
give full value received. The man who
wants s. worth of work for 81 is no hon
est man. The man who wants others to
work to such an extent that their lives
are burdens, is utterly heartless. The
toll Of the world should continually de-
crease. OF what use are your inventions
if no burdens are lifted from industry
if no additional comforts find their way
to the home of labor?
Why should labor fill the world with
wealth and live in want?
Every labOr-saving machine should
help the whole world. Every one should
tend to shorten the hours of labor.
Reasonable labcs is a source of JOY. To
work for wife and child, TO toll for those
you love, is happiness, provided you can
make them happy. But to work Ike a
slaYe-to see your wife and children IN
rags-to sit at table where food is coarse
and scarce, to rise at four in the morning
to work all day and throw your bones
on miserable bed at night-to live with
out leisure. without rest, without making
those you love com Portable and happy
this is not living-it is dying, slow lin
gering crucihxion.
The hours oflabor should be shortened.
With the vast and wonderfun improve
ments of the nineteenth century, there
should be not only the necessarles OF lie
for those who toll, but comforts and Xxx
uTies as well.
What is a reasonable price for labor !!
| I answer: Such a price as will enable
man to live; to have the comforts OF lie;
to lay by something for his declining
years; so that he can have his own home.
his own freside-so that he can have the
feelings of man.
I svmpathize with every honest effort
made by the children of labor to improve
their condition. That is a poorly gov
erned country in which those who do
the most have the least. There is some
| thing wrong when men have to beg 1oI
leave to toll. We are not yet civilized
people. When we are, pauperism and
crime will vanish from our land.
There is one thing, however, OF which
I am glad and proud, and that is, that
society in our country is not petritied :
| that the poor are not always poor. The
children of the poor of this generation
NAV and probably will be the rich OF the
next. The sons of the rich of this gen.
| Grafton may be the poor of the next; SO
/ after all, the rich fear and the poor hope.
It is the glory of the United States
\ that the poor man may take his son on
his knee and say, 'My son, all the ayen-
ues of distinction are open to you. You
can rise. There is no station, no position
to which you may not aspire. The pow
ertv of your father Will be no milestone
around your neck. The public schools
are open to you. For you there are edu,
cation, honor, fame and prosperity" "
These thoughts render holy every
drop of sweat that rolls down the face of
honest toll.
1 sympathize with the wanderer, with
| the vagrant out of employment, with the
sad and weary men who are seeking fol-
work. When 1 see one of these men,
| moor and friendless-no matter how bad
! he is. think that somebody loved him
| once-that he was once held in the arms
of a mother-that he slept beneath heI
| loving ewes and wakened in the light of
| her smile. 1 see him in the cradle, lis
| tening to luIlabies, sung soft and low,
and his little face is dimpled as though
by the rosy fingers of Joy. And then L
think of the strange and winding paths
the weary roads that he has travelled
from that mothers arms tovagrancy and
want.
There should be labor and food for all.
We invent. We take advantage of the
| forces of nature. We enslaye the winds
and waves. We put shackles upon the
unseen powers. These slaves should re-
lease from bondage all the children of
men.