The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1900-05-10
THURSDAY, MAY 10, 1900.
Dignity of Labor.

GERS aud III, $40 enlisted men. 4nlS
considerable army, start1ing1y small,
compared with the military forces of
European nations, is costing the coun-
try S33O,O00 every day, $1,375. every
hour, or $50. 90 every minute. The Re
public is proud of it's so1diery and of
its seamen; though it were to cost
double, treble, quadruple, the nation
would Cheerfu11y make the expendi-
tnre, and ten times the amount, rather
than lose the spirit it has displayed,
the mighty influence it has brought to
the country, or the martial glory it has
won.
But there is a greater and more
powerful army, an army of peace,
quartered on every farm, in every fac
tory, in every city, the great industrial
army, nay armies, the career and ac-
complishments of which are even more
worthy of praise and g1orifcation than
E3attalions of guns and swords and sa-
bres. That vast army with it's several
divisions has conquered, and created as
well as conquered. The shovel, the
hoe, the trowe1 and the bod, the jack
plane and the hammer, the anvil and
blacksmith's bellows, the corn cutter
and the cotton gin, the coal diggers
and the iron miners apparatus, and
the ten thousand machines used in ten
I'D nj
more significant than mausers and
1uaxin7s and thirteen inch shells. The
American so1diery belong first and
last to the army of workmen. Eng
lands swarthy toi1ers and skilled
mechanics and her giants of iron and
steel have done more for England
than her regiments or her batt1eships.
France lost more, for we must reckon
On the results of centuries, when she
exiled the industrious Huguenots, than
VIXEN her armies fell file on file at
Blcnheim and Waterloo. Armies and
navies are important factors in the
progress, prosperity and character of
a great people, but the industries of a
country transcend them a hundred
fold. If an empire would protect its
products, with equal perativeness it
must protect its 1aborers.
It is an old principle, at least as old
as Christianity, that ''the 1aborer is
worthy of his hire This is not mere
1y theory in human conviction, it is
an arrangement that somehow has
been shot into nature. Nature invites
the toll of the husbandman by pron1is-
ing if he shall SOW he shall also reap.
1t is the continuous toi1er, the man
who works according to wisdom, who
wins the largest reward. Every man
may appropriate and utilize those re-
wards that result from the work of his
hands or the thought of his brain, and
he is robbcr who would say him nay.
The 1aboring man is worth to the
world ali that he can command for his
service. If the worlds toi1ers can Sc
cure more for their services by combi-
nations, then, they have a natural
right to combine and combine over
again, and, in the form of a combina-
Eiom to resist all attempts to deprive
them of, or to diminish, the reward
that waits on their toll; but there can
be no righteousness in an individual
attempt, or a combined endeavor tc
force any individual or combination Of
individuals away from the field of
their natural compensations.
Toll, until today, has been too poor
Iy compensated. Since men have
1abCred and others have reaped the
fruits of their 1abors, la Dor has mani
tested its inherent dignity often by
unions, strikes, wa1k-outs, which when
properly and wisely conducted have
resulted in mutual interest, broad sym
pathy, brotherhood, and just increase
of reward. In this grand march OF
progression the world app1auds the
great army of honest and industrious
bread winners. It congratu1ates the
seven hundred ca1kers of New York
<ewho recently won in fight for three
dollars for eight hours work, and those
six hundred Chicago tai1ors who Sc
cured for themselves increased pay;
also the great numbers of employees at
Duluth who have won an increase of
five per cent in wages, and the copper
miners at Houghton who won a ten
mar ~oF1+ :t1CreaS GO
The labor movement will, of course,
be criticized. Occasionally it will
n1azea performance that perhaps will
deserve public censure. No great
snovemeut or reform without mis-steps
and mistakes. More than once the
nation has been in error; the church,
foos has never been infa1lib1e. But
advantages spring from adverse criti-
cism, it tends to dissipate illusion.
And the labor movement will display