The record-union., 1899-10-15

for the time being it shuts out all the
rest of the world with its truths and
its falsehoods. it's problems and its So
lutions. To this extent we become
monomaniacs such as Nordau delights
to discover, but if given a little time
most of us come back to a quiet rec
ognition of the fact that one symptom
does not make a disease and that one
pimple does not make a plague.
One is led into this train of thought
by the tremendous interest and SYM
pathy that were expressed on first
reading THE Man With the Hoe by
Edwin Markham. This poem regarding
down trodden labor swept everything
before it in the way Of argument from
California to the East The description
of the man with the hoe horrified US
and in our first horror we did not stop
to think whether the description was
correct or no.
Bowed by the weight of centuries he
leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground.
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the
world.
Who made him dead to rapture and de-
A thing that grieves not and never hopes,
StOlid and stunned, a brother to the OK
Who loosened and let down this brutal
jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back
this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within
this brain?
Then, as certainly as sunshine fol-
lows shower, so certainly did hundreds
and thousands, after the first excite
ment was past, fall to questioning
themselves as to whether in all their
lives they had met such a, man as he
described; or whether upon ourselves
labor and lots of it had anything like
the effect Markham said it had. II we
had to admit that we had seen such
a creature, We remembered that he had
| been called feeble minded by his fell
! lows, and that far from his being the
product of modern day labor he was
more likely the product of some modern
| day sin showing out in the son the ig-
norance or neglect of the parents.
healthy revulsion has now set in
regarding Markham's sad poem and
on all sides have there been efforts in
both prose and poetry to refute his
! statements. The man with the hoe
among us is the man with the power.
| His hoe may indeed bend his back. but
at the end of the hoeing he can
straighten up as well as any man, for
| he is the equal of any man. He may
| indeed have a hard task keeping down
| the weeds on the ground that he tillS,
but he it is who has brains enough also
to attack with the clear vision of a
| free born, free thinking American the
weeds that occasionally grow up in our
political fields. His open air life rnakes
! him strong to act and stern to per-
form. His ability to read brings to the
door of his modest home all the news
| of the world and many of the great
thoughts of the great men that have
| transformed a world Of savagery into
one of constant ascent and change, and
constant change because of constant
ascent.
Out upon US if we revile ct labor.
To live in the best sense, is to labor,
and in the narroWest sense we labor to
live Dull sloth will sooner droop our
jaw and slant our forehead than will
the hardest kind Of toll Toll is sanity
|
comes rest and we'll earned rest is
always sweet. The toiler in the open
air is dead to despair indeed; he is too
| healthy for that. Despair is for the
wrong doers and the slaves of such an
unnatural thing as Incidence. The fin
est rapture, the rapture Of conquest,
the knowledge of something accom-
plished, something done is the rapture
to which the toiler is never dead. He
grieves not, for why should he? His
hopes. his healthy hopes. are those OF
the leaves that fall-to do all that is
called for by the place in which he finds
himself and then quietly, healthily,
| unquestjOningly sink to the rest that
remains for those who do what they
can and ought, without ever dreaming
wildly of doing every varying thing
that all the varying men are called
! to do.
|