Industrial freedom. [volume] (Edison, Wash.) 1898-1???, 1898-09-03

tinction between responsibility and
righteousness and when we shall come
to see, as did Frances Willard, the
great apostle of temperance, before her
death, that poverty is the cause of
drunkenness rather than drunken
ness the cause of poverty. and
that if we pursue our investigations in
a logical, careful manner, we will find
that the pauper is the corollary of the
millionaire and that of necessity from
which there is no possible escape. If
we are to have the millionaires on the
one hand, we must have poor on the
other.
ART IN DITCH
William Morris says that art is 1.-THE
expression of mans joy in labor" What
a definition of art. Do you think there
is very much joy in digging a sewer
ditch at 50 cents day? Can you see
much of art in mans life who is COM
PEELED to live on less than 5000 for a
year?
Under the private contract system of
labor in one of the cities of Ohio last
year, the contractor put laborers in
competition with each other for the
work of digging sewer by the foot
with the result, as / have been told by
the civil engineer of that city, that
those labOrers received less than 30
cents day. In another city of Ohio
! laborers on the street Improvement
and repair receive less than 5000 for
their years work, the labor market be-
| ing so overstocSed that they could only
be employed less than half time in or
der that all might have little work
Yet, in that very same city, there are
men who used the streets and piled up
in profits hundreds of thousands of dol
lars, wholly unconscious of their guilt
in using streets kept up at the cost of
the lives of other men.
Gentlemen of the convention. the
great service that is to be performed
through the medium of public owner
ship is the awakening of the social con-
science, the arousing of pure and no.
BILE conception of patriotism; is the
bringing up of class of men and wo-
men too good and too noble to consent
to live at the expense of the lives of
their fellows. 1t is because l see the
rainbow of promise in public ownership
that shall secure for us, as Il people,
this larger realization of liberty that l
plead for it. 1t is because | know that
only in the good of all is the real good
of the individual to be found that
plead for collective work. 1t is because
/ stand, like many Of you, day after day
with hopeless and hungry men, plead
ing that they might be allowed to work,
that raise my voice in their behalf.
1t is not because l would stir up dissen-
sion or cause trouble; it is because
would avoid trouble, and point the way
to the smooth sea of prosperity, that
speak for these men.
thanking you Tor the opportunity OF
laying their cause, which is the cause
of the republic, before you, and asking
that every one of you will raise his
voice in behalf of social system that
will allow every man who is willing to
work to have the rights to live, l most
gladly pledge the best efforts of the re-
naming years of my life.
SIS true freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake?
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That We owe mankind debt.
No. True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And with hearts and hands to be
Earnest to make others free"