The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1892-11-04
VICTOR HUGO AND LABOR.
1.-THE Great Question Of tho Day Il That
Of Labor"

1.-THE Great Question OF tho Day Il That
Of Labor"
The following is the utterance Of
the great poet philosopher and nov
elist Victor Hugo:
For four hundred years the human
race has not made step but what has
left its plain vestige behind. We en-
ter now upon great centuries. The
sixteenth century will be known as
the age of painters the seventeenth
will be termed the age of writer's the
eighteenth the age of philosophers
the nineteenth the age of apostles and
prophets To satisfy the nineteenth
century. it IS necessary to be the
painter of the sixteenth. the writer of
the seventeenth. the philosopher of
the eighteenth; and it is also neces-
sary. like Louis Blanc to have the in
nate and holy love of humanity which
constitutes an apostolate and opens
up a prophetic vista into the future.
In the twentieth. war will be dead
the scaffold will be dead, luminosity
will be dead. royalty will be dead, and
dogmas will be dead; but man will
live. For all there will be but one
hope-that hope the whole heaven.
All hail. then to that noble
twentieth century which shall own
our children. and which our children
shall inherit!
The great question of the day is
the question of labor. The political
question is solved. The republic is
made, and nothing can unmake it.
The social question remains; terrible
as it is it is quite simple. it is a
question between those who have. and
those who have not The latter of
these two classes must disappear and
for this there is work enough. Think
a moment! man is beginning to be
master of the earth. If you want to
cut through an isthmus you have
De Lesseps; if you want to create a
sea- you have Roudaire. Look you;
there is people and there is world;
and yet the people have no inner
itance. and the world is a DESERT
Give them to each other, and you
make them happy at once. Astonish
the universe by historic deeds that
are better than wars Does the world
want conquering? No. it is yours
already; it is the property of civil
ization; it is already waiting for you;
no one disputes your title!
Go on then, and take it. If you
require sea- make it; and the sea
will beget navigation, and navigation
will bring cities into being.
Have faith. and let us realize our
equality as citizens our fraternity as
men, our liberty as intellectual pow
er. Let us love not only those who
love us. but those who love us not.
Let us learn to wish to benefit all
men. Then everything will be
changed; truth will reveal itself; the
beautiful will arise; the supreme law
will be fulfilled. and the world shall
enter upon perpetual fete day.
say, therefore have faith!
Look down at your feet and you see
the insect moving in the grass; look
upwards and you will see the star
resplendent in the armament; yet
what are they doing? They are both
at their work; the insect is doing its
work on the ground, and the star is
doing its work in the sky. It is an
infinite distance that separates them.
and yet while it separates it unites.
They follow their law. And why
should not their law be ours? Man,
too. has to submit to universal force,
and inasmuch as he submits in body
as in SOUL he submits doubly. His
hand grasps the earth, and his soul
embraces heaven; like the insect he
is thing of dust but like the star he
partakes of empirean. He labors and
thinks. Labor IS life and thought is
light. ..