Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1888-01-14
THE HEROIC AGE.
THE GROWING STAGE OF
HUMANlTYS CAUSE.
An Earnest Appeal to Young Men.
ResOlye to DO and Dare-The
Coming StOrm-An Issue
Presented - A True
Democracy.

Here and now is the heroic age
The social atmosphere is surcharged
with the electricity of the coming
storm. In the issue now presented
all for which the pioneers of freedom
have fought and its martys suffered,
converges and eliminates. Last and
crowning stage of the battle for hui
man rights, what nobler, grander
purpose could animate the lover of
his kind? What loftier impulse
could stir the heart, inspire the
brain, nerve the hand, or touch, as
with live coal from the altar of
liberty, the lips, than the resolve to
do and dare in such cause?
Young man entering on the
worlds stage of action, full of high
hopes and generous aspirations, and
bent upon a career of usefulness
which will enable you in dying to
leave the world better and brighter
for your having lived in it, can you
withhold your aid from this move
ment? You have, no doubt, often
felt your heart thrilled with emotion
on reading of the trialsand triumphs
Of the patriots of bygone times.
You in imagination have marched
shGeless and ragged and half-starved
through the SHOWS of Valley Forge
with the patriot army Of the Revolu-
ton; you have faced the British
bayonets ut Bunker Hill, and shared
in the triumph at Yorktown. You
have listened spell-bound to the elo-
quence Of Patrick Henry, and stood
in spirit am ong the signers of the
Declaration of Independence. You
have died on the scaffold with John
Brown, and confronted with Lloyd
Garrison the clamors and menaces Of
angry mobs, that the slave might be
free. You have sprung to arms at
the call of Abraham Lincoln, rolled
back the tide of rebel victory at Get
tysburg, marched with Sherman to
the sea, and weltered amid the car
mage of the Wilderness. "Ah, had
| lived in such times" you have said
to yourself, 81, too, would have been
ready to strive, to suffer, to die, for
freedom. Then, indeed, the intens-
ity of purpose, the joy Of conflict
and accomplishment, the grand scope
of the aims to be achieved would
have made life worth living, death
worth dying"
Look around you. Seek not in
spiraton from the past, save as far
as its traditions and examples nay
serve to nurture the frmness of NOR
al fibre, the quenchless ardor and
enthusiasm for freedom by which
alone the progress of humanity is
attained. If in the wrongs and
shames of the living, struggling
world to-day you find nothing to
rouse you to action, if the appeals of
the poor and the disinherited for
justice strike no responsive chord in
your heart, if any coarseness or
crudeness, ignorance or perversity
on their part repels you, if the sup
posed requirements of your position,
the desire to stand well with "soci-
ETY." or the dread of conventional
opinion holds you aloof, then rest
assured that in no age and under no
circumstances would you have
risked means, or life or limb in the
cause of the weak against the oppres-
sor. He who does not instinctively
take the part of the railroad striker
in Chicago, the miner in Pennsylva-
MIA, the starving New York seam
stress and the rack-rented Connaught
peasant, without stopping to inquire
whether every means by which re-
dress has been sought has been inva-
riably prudent or justifable, would
have been a time-server and recre-
ant at any critical stage of the eternal
battle of right against might. Phi
lips Thompson, IN "7He Politics of