The representative., 1899-11-23
The Representative
632 Boston Block. Minneapolis, rlnn.


stomach will not feel free. Your liver
and kidneys would work like slaves,
and not be carried away by the unre-
strained competition of the senses.
Your lungs and spleen must work in
harmony with physical laws under di-
rection of the nerve centers. Only in
that way are you free to think. Just so
with the whole body of our people.
Populists can see that the thoughtless
disregard of the natural laws of the
world, unguided by nerve centers (the
government, or the whole people) will
imprison a tortured dyspeptic body
feited and starved. So Populists say
away with the freedom that causes
friction and loss by disregarding the
scientific laws of the splendid industrial
machine surely coming; away with the
freedom that hides dark tricks, adulter-
ates food to swell competitive profits,
forces children of six or eight years to
work ten hours day in an unhealthy
factory; away with the freedom that
would Oust our laborers by a host Of
cheap Chinese slaves. If you Demo-
Gratis and single takers still wish such
freedom, our party will let you continue
long as you SO vote, freely competing
with each other as little store keepers
and greater or lesser manufacturers, or
tillers of the SOIL
But as for ourselves, when our admin
istration comes into power, as it will
sooner than you think, the majority of
the people will wisely choose to con-
struct government ships, cars and roads,
work government mines at government
wages, be employed in government tele-
graph or telephone and electric light
offices, and, in increasing other ways,
employ themselves to their best advant-
age, so that your children and ours may
still have fuller and freer competition
than was ever imagined in the highest
over which no government could dictate
any more than it now does over those
foolish thoughts of yours about free
dom. But, fortunately, here is a very
great master of the English language,
my teacher Mr.. Millin. will you kindly
tell these men what freedom is?
Mr.. Millin-It is to leisure time after
a fair days work those chaps must look
for freedom and the development Of in
dividuality. They talk as if the work
they do for living must be the one
great, all-absorbing interest of their
lives. AS they cannot reconcile them
selves to the idea of men without free
dom, they naturally shrink from the
idea that men are becoming more and
more parts and parcels of great ma
chimes. The whole life in their con-
ceptiOn is working for living, a strug-
gle for mere bread and butter AS this
is their belief and must always be so,
they have a vague, feeble sort of no.
tion that somehow mans work should
be so arranged as to be consistent with
his personal freedom, and so they dread
the idea Of socialism. 1t is the merest
mOonshine. 1t is the worlds drugery.
and that alone, that is being so highly
organized, massed and economical.
That men are being drilled into ma
chimes is dreadful enough, but only let
the hours be short and the leisure abun-
dant and there is nothing horrible about
1t. Union is strength System is econ
omy. BY system and unity and or
ganiZatiOn you tighten and mitigate
drudgery, while you fetch out of it the
uttermost that it can possibly give.
The only hope for bringing out the best
in every mans power. is not in the mere
myth of freedom and enterprise in his
daily toll for living, but in obtaining
for him ample leisure and the means of
advantageously employing it when his
daily task of work is done. 1t is just
this leisure time the providential gov
ernment of the world seems to be pre-
pairing for the whole population by all
the forces and currents Of the times.
Everywhere electricity is binding the
earth together in one throbbing pulsat-
Ing entity. In all civilized nations you
VIII hhu ACAAOIIdCy SdIuCTlQR SITonKCn,
and high over al the din and tumult of
these transition times, you have the
very demagogues in your streets pro-
claiming the Fatherhood of God and the
Brotherhood of Man. This coming
reign of law, this age of peaceful har-
monious working is slowly dawning
upon us and we ought to find in the
light over the hilltops. not the threat
ening glow of incendiary fires portend-
ing social ruin and destruction but the
advent of brighter and better day.
l. The above dialogue is based on a
leading article of the day by Hon.
Wharton Barker, THE Laborer and His
Hire" which appeared in The American
Sept. 2. 1899.
2. Reactionary. What blocks prog
progress.
3. Class-conscious. To know which
-