The Labor enquirer., 1884-03-01
Let us see. Did il sver strike you.

u
John Swinton, Of John swinton's Paper,
how many people there are in this en-
lizhtened land Of ours who readf Take
down that book above your desk that
has in II . list Of Ill the nswspapen Of
the United States. and count up the cir
culation - given BY themselves. Now,
allow for the lying over the circulation.
which cuts down the count one-half
Then subtract the rural fellows, who,
with paste-pot and scissors. edit the
country printing. and never. by any
chance or casualty, have An idea in
point, and you will be amased 70 find
out how few people, in our population Of
|fifty millions, read newspapers And Of
this lot you may safely throw of one
half, who, under no circumstances, ever
read an editorial.
What do they readi Why, the news.
The average American journal ID paper
full Of news tinctured with fornication.
Are there any intellectual influences
in this? The editor caters to the taste
of his customers, and his customers do
not want information beyond the news.
In the same way make your calcula-
ton as to books, and the result will be
yet more disheartening. Books are
luxuries. They cost money to get and
care to keep. Now, my state of Ohio is
considered quite intelligent, and yet you
may travel from Lake Erie to the Ohio,
taking the houses as they come, and you
will not find book beyond the Bible in
one of them, especially on the farms.
Turn into public library, as / did at
Cincinnati the other day, and ask what
books are read, and you will learn that
the works of D. E. N. southworth are
mostly in demand. III.
Is there any information in Emma d.
E. N. Southworth ? Is there any in our
pulpits, on the stump, or in our uncom-
mon common schools? None that
ever could find.
How, then, do the reformers move the
masses? They do not move them at all.
The best illustration of this is in the
life and death of that great man, Wendell
Phillips, an account of whose demise
reaches me while writing this. l need
not tell you that he was man of genius,
possessed of rare mind, cultured by
vast stores of information, and developed
by thought until perfect in use. He was
such an orator as this country never
heard before, or will, perhaps, never
hear again. As an orator, he owed
nothing to personal magnetism, such as
generally wins. 1t was all pure intellect.
Cold as an icicle, his clear, terse, incisive
sentences carried volumes in few
words. t.-
He devoted his life to the cause oi
anti-slavery, and this, not because he
pitied the slave, but that he hated the
master. He hated with a deadly hate
all formslof oppression in the person oi
the oppressor. And yet how little influ.
ence he welded. No one had any in.
fuence against slavery. There was q
cheap sort of philanthropy in New Eng.
land, which consisted of freeing another
mans slave, and made up of little band
of abolitionists generally desplsed and
intensely hated. The free soil party
made up of disbanded wings and dis.
gusted democrats, was careful to conceal
all abolition tendency. Itsought, it said
to retain slavery from invading the terri
tories. Abolitionlsts were mobbed al
Boston and shot in Illinois. But short
time before the war broke out John
Brown was hanged in Virginia, with the
hearty appreciation of the whole country
Wendell Philips pleaded, Harriet
Beecher Stowe wrote, Whittier sang, and
all in vain. .
Suddenly the south, in moment oi
madness, took up arms to 20 out Of the
Union, and the north as madly few to
arms to keep it in. Was this for 'ol
against slavery? Not at all. It was
against, or for the Union. President
Lincoln expressed it when he said toe
truly, 'If to preserve the Union slavery
must be abolished, it will be abolished
lContinued on Page q