The Labor enquirer., 1886-07-24

famishing child which tugs at the
sunken breast of its starving mother
she who has been robbed of an ',inalien-
able" right, and now prays that death
may take herself and child. Look upon
these two everyday pictures, and say
where is the equal right to be happyl
Sainted Henry I cry to theel Were it
not better that few brave and holy men
should have died upon the gibbet in the
olden time than that we should have
lived to endure this misery, and witness
this mockery? H.
Far be it from me to say one word that
would be distorted into disrespect to the
memory of or ingratitude to the fathers
of the Revolution; the grand heroes
who said to the kings of the world the
days of your ill-gotten power, the days
of your expressions and bru talities are
come to an end who said to the poor
and down-trodden, the men of Bunker
Hill and Lexington, Eve bring you q
message, message written by the hand
Of God, its words are magic trinity
YOU ARE FREEp mol when 1 shall forget
or fail to honor Adams, Lee, Jefferson,
Carroll, Hopkins, Sherman, Franklin,
Hancock, and all the patriots of 1776.
may memory cease for me. have stood
in old Independence Hall, at Philadel-
phia, have caressed the old bell whose
iron tongue spoke out the startling sem
tence against tyranny and told the world
America was free, and my heart has
swelled within me and my eyes have
filled with tears, when I thought how the
breach which had torn the old
bell from crown to lip was like
the chasm that has arisen between
the hopes of the long ago and
the realities of the present. And l said
to the bell: "You are dethroned your
voice no longer makes the music that
charms another more modern singer
occupies your place in the belfrY, and
you have been torn from your proud
estate to become an object of curiosity
to the idle and fippant, who remember
nothing of the grand song you sang when
in the olden time fifty-slx workingmen
burst assunder the e,shackles of the new
world"
have traversed the old battle field
around about Trenton, and l have
thought of the deeds of bravery and sac
rifce which it seemed to me had sancti-
fed the ground; but hallowed as it
should be it has not escaped the evil
spirit of the age, the claw of the specula-
tor has been laid upon it ; the iron of the
shark has scourged it. What is there
then that remains to us. in its simple
purity, of the sentiments ,snd deeds We
profess TO celebrate and ihnpaS to-day
Nothing. -
Go to the 100000 vagabonds VINO to-
day tramp, tramp, tramp the land over
in search of the opportunity to procure
the means of subsistence and find it not,
and ask them where are their '1nalien-
able rights" ask them why they are
driven from place to place, why they are
hunted as mad dogs by the police of
bloated aristocracy in the land Of the
free and the home of the brave" in
country which once boasted that it was
refuge for the plundered and oppressed
of all nations. Go to the little hungry
and ragged urchins who plod like cattle
IN the Hells Mills of New England and
the mines of Pennsylvania that they
may prolong an existence destined to
end in starvation, and ask them where
is their inalienable right to pursue hap
piness : ask them why they are not
within the great free schools of our mod :
ern Christian civilization. Ask them if
they do not know that Christ blessed
little children and said "that of such is
the kingdom of heaven" and If they do
not think they are rather haggard and
dirty looking subjects of which to make
angels?
Go to the street car driver, working
sixteen hours day for bare subsist-
ence, whose lot is ten-fold more inhu-
man than that of the animal he drives,
and whose body is put as target for the
poverty-stricken deperate tramp, that
his masters may declare large dividends
and live in palaces. 90 to him / say,
and ask what of the inalienable right
declared to be his and written in tie
blood Of freedom ms martyrs more than
100 years ago Go to the widows and
orphans of ths men shot down at East
st. Louis, at McCormick's and at the
mines of Illinois by the hlrelings of ty-
rants and robbers and ask them where
is the life which Jefferson said was the
inalienable right with which all men
were endowed BY their Creatora Look
through the bars into mo- hopolg's
prisons in the southwest in Ts 1as and
K snsss-and tell me vi bat of liberty,
what of th right of tree speech what of
the right 10 protest against injustice and
tyranny !
Think of the thousands who have
been driven from their native soil bv
the merciless encroachments of railroad
and land syndicates and wonder what
has become of the right to the means of
life supposed to be guaranteed by the
declaration of the right to life. Go ask
all these victims, and a million others +;
think on these terrible records and