Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1890-02-22
The Labor Movement in America,
BY LuCIEN SANIAL.

IAN Address Delivered at the Inauguration
Meeting of the N, Y. American Sectionl
FRIENDS; - 1t is a long, rough, dark
and uphill road that the great army of
Labor has been travelling these thou
sands of years. How it ever came to
pass that majority of mankind-a
majority indeed, nearly the whole of
it, mark well--submitted to toll in slav-
cry for few despots, we shall not con-
slider tonight. For the purpose of this
lecture it is enough to state that such a
thing has been, and is; and that, from
the moment it was, no road remained
open to liberty but through the dark and
successive passages of slavery. serfdom
and wagedom. Through those passages
generations without number have crept,
and are creeping still, dying by the
way. From time to time light appears
in the distance. Surely it is the light of
day, the light of freedom and the sad
procession aCcelerates its creeping.
Were it not for that light and the hope
it inspires, mankind would turn back
into beastkind.
Such a light appeared on this CONT
nent one hundred years ago, Europe
saw it across the Ocean, and by des,
perate effort the serfs of the Old World,
issued from the slaves of antiquity,
sprang from serfdom into wagedom. The
advance was great, though the creeping
and the starving and the lying were
hardly less than before.
To this continent, where the light had
appeared, millions of the self-emanci
pated serfs escaped-crept through a
assure of the wagery passage, right into
the wilderness. The wilderness No man
there to claim share of another mans
labor. No civilization there, either of
the bogus sort that we know, or of the
true sort that we dream of. No art, no
luxury, no cooperation of man with
man in any form, but a constant fight
of man against the untamed forces of
Nature. Anarchy of the best Pentecost
brand With gun fer the wild beasts,
who could alone dispute his right, the
pioneer went on and farther and far
Their, contented and happy. But when
he reached the Pacific, there was no
longer any wilderness behind him; and
at the time my lecture begins, wagery
covered the land.
In the world behind him, both in
Europe and here, great events had oc-
Cured, which must be seen in their true
light if the twenty years that | am to
review briefly tonight can be made in
| telIigible at all.
No sooner had the wage system peen
established than the way out of it became
| the question. True, at first, the wage.
working masses could see little beyond
the fact that machinery, by depriving
! them of their property in tools-theIr
only property under serfdom-tended to
make them even more dependent upon
| the ruling class than they had been
throughout the middle ages. Hence
their general opposition to machines in
the early part OF this century, And it
may be observed that their first organ
izalions were largely induced or pervad-
ed by spirit of resistance TO machinery.
On the other hand, machinery was I'M
questionably directed 10y the ruling class
against the wage-workers, whose organ
lzatlons it therefore opposed b. law and
by force. But there were intelligent
men, who plainly saw In the simuitane-
Gus progress of both machinery and
organization the long expected means of
final emancipation; and these began to
preach that labor should organize with