The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1900-01-29

and children should be eleven hours in
length, not including the time for
meals. But think of the weary life Of
the child with his eleven hours a day
staring him in the face as a life bur-
den. However there may be some al
deviation, for the same committee de-
cded that three years after the promul-
cation of the eleven hour law the time
should be reduced to ten and half hours
and six years there after ten hours u
day.
with such heavy hours of labor is II
any wonder that there is discomfort and
i'll will between employers and employ
ed, that strikes should occur, that an
archists should be able to obtain a
ready hearing. The lot of the laboring
man, woman and child in Europe is not
an enviable one.
OF the agricultural laborer on the beet
fields of Germany details were given
in these columns not long ago The
hours are long, the pittance earned only
sufficient to buy black bread, the cot
tages crowded and insanitary, and
starvation ever staring the poor crea-
lures in the face during the winter
months.
The condition of the Galician and
Russian laborers is even still worse,
for they are only too glad to take the
place of the German laborer when he
~, rov-e IN lis ,rOrly ~, daepoir md man
ages to get shipped over the West
with it's possibilities, it's more album
dant food and it's higher wages. There
may be a lower depth still, but the
Galicians, the Russians and perhaps the
Eastern Poles are about the bottom of
the scale among the European labor
ing classes.
1t is a melancholy thing that with
all the beautiful theories for the eleva-
ton of the masses, with all the spread
of education, with all the bright minds
that have devoted themselves to the
subject, with all the work of churches,
of societies, of philanthropists and
statemen, the question remains I'M
solved. Thousands are born into the
world doomed to pass their lives in ig-
norance, in the hardest of labor, in
privation from the earliest dawn of
youth, to the latest hour of old age,
which latter comes prematurely upon
them.
! 1t is any wonder that such condi-
tions bring forth crops of agitators,
who see the i'll, the injustice and heart
rending pity of it all. And one proposes
one theory, and another tries some
thing else, but the sum of the trials
makes very little impression upon the
general mass. Here and there a small
| section becomes better, but it is like
picking pebbles on the sea shore. 1t is
almost hopeless.
At present it seems impossible that
such conditions should arise In the
Western Continent, but the signs al
there. One has only to study the labor
conditions in the factories and mills OF
the East to see that the work of driv.
ing the weaker to the wall is going or
rapidly, and that some day there will
be a very large class who will be will
ing to labor for the veriest pittance, if
perchance they may get something to
stay their stomach withal.
AS long as the West offers a field
there will be opportunity for progress,
but the day will come when that will
cease and competition of the labor vii
drive down wages and impoverish the
competitors. 1t seems, at the present
moment, as if this would be hardly
credible, but the facts of history
show us that this must be the ulti-
mate end unless some heaven-giftet
genius should arise and show by wha
means it is possible to equalize things
Not to have all the good things of the
earth go into the hands of the few
while the toll and the labor-the hard
est being the worst requited-should
fall to the lot of the many. Should
such a person appear, however, he
would have a bad time of it. Man is
proverbially ungrateful.