The Labor enquirer., 1884-04-19
Comrade Haskell Has a Word
to Say TO All People Who
Toll.
Why Are Those Who Perform the
Worlds Work Without Its
Enjoyments9
A Logical and Comprehensive Treat.
= ment Of this Important
Query.

from san FRANCISCO truth. .-.-.
have word to say to all people who
toll, whether with hand or head, whether
with Drawn OF brain.
If there is among you who read this
any man who has felt the pang of hLn-
ger, the torture of thirst, who has lacked
at nighttime a roof-tree for shelter, who
has gone in rags in daylight, then it is to
him speak.
If there be among you any one who
has found no rest from exhausting toll
any one who in the smoky city has
longed with an aching heart for the
green hillsides and summer flowers or
who amid the drudgery of the farm has
pined for the exhileration of the city, its
libraries, the aters palaces of art and
music, it is to him that speak.
If you are o ne who clad in the poorest
clothes, and eating of the plainest food ;
have toiled during your whole life for a
mere existence if you have seen your
wife wear herself out with labor as well
if you have seen your children doomed
to the factory bench, then my message is
to you. If you are man who has seen
your son, your brother, your friend, sink
from work to drunkard, thief or muir
derer; or your sister or sweetheart to
the unfortunate who waits in the gloomy
shadows of tn streets for a chance to
sell herself for bread, then my message
is for you.
If none of these; whether your hands
are white or horny whether you have
been fortunate or unlucky in the worlds
great struggle whoever you may be, man
or woman, youth or maiden, prince,
prostitute, thief or beggar, l still have a
word to say.
If you read it carefully it shall tell
YOU the, cause of all poverty, all vice, all
misery, all crime, the dicta of the parson
and politician to the contrary notwith-
standing.
Ifyou study and act upon what teach
las the mouthpiece only of heroes and
martyrs who lie in bloody graves for
preaching the word in the days gone by),
within your lifetime you shall greet with
victorious salutations the dawn of that
dav on Earth when Crime shall lie dead
beneath the sword of Justice and Misery
fade and perish in the tender dawn OF
universal Joy. And this, friends, to be
thenceforth forever and forever.
Are my words new and strange? DO
the promises l make you seem those OF
a dreamer, visionary? Is it difficult to
believe that life can be made aught else
than perpetual torture? So be it. But
if my assurances seem great they ought
the more to demand Of you the greater
attention. They ought to secure from
YOU the more careful investigation. They
ought to enforce upon you the necessity
of a careful examination of their truth
or falsity.
When Columbus steered out into the
Western Ocean the jeers of an ignorant
and unbelieving multitude followed his
frail barque in mockery. When Steven
son invented the locomotive, Fulton the
steamboat, Edison the telephone, the
world again derided and disbelieved.
When Darwin first announced the real
history of mans origin, the apes again
chattered their quips, jibes and taurts',
write these words of mine to those
who have assembled far enough in the
scale of humanity to substitute the reason
of the human for the idiocy of the ape.
If YOU are a man who desires to hear my
message, to weigh it, examine it, believe
in and adopt it, if it shall be found true,
then read on.
If you are the monkey, afraid OF shad,
ows, trembling at unknown things, not
daring to search whether your idols are
gods or mere clay images, then read no
more-to you have naught to say l
can do no more than tell the truth. l
am not a worker of miracles to give
dumb beasts the brain necessary to un-
derstand plain speech. Eat fish, my
friend-the sea Is full of them.
Ten billions Of people have rested be-
meath apple trees loaded with golden
fruit, and have seen the apples fall to the
sward when they were ripe, yet ages
passed by before one man asked himself
"Why does the apple fall?' Asking
this and finding no answer from earth Oh
sky, no ghost re eplying to the question
Newton bent his own brows in thought
used his own mind in search, and the
law of gravitatio on was discovered.
This is the key to the mysterious tenn,
pie of Knowledge-this the magic word
that has opened every hidden storehouse
of science-the asking by man of the
question "Why ?"
Naught exists without cause. Luck
and Fate are, for men who think, now
dead and buried. Their ghosts but re-
main on earth to preach resignation"
to the ass under the blows of the whip,
to the sheep un der the butchers knife,
Let their prototypes in humanity use
the words. Hear you who have little
gray matter in your skulls the first lesson