The weekly examiner., 1901-05-25
THE STRIKE.

Monday was a great day for labor in this country. It was the rising of a new sun in the morning of the first real day of justice to all who toll. It may take week to get things straight ened out; it may take a month. But that strengthening out is bound to come, To free the blacks of the South work, full support and care, good liv- ing and in most cases just and hu- mane treatment-this republic raised an army of nearly three millions of men, lost million lives in slaughter and in wounds on the battle fields of a. dozen states, spent over billion of dol lars and took over four long years to ac- complish that result. Whys then, in: this widespread movement to secure a. small degree of freedom from our pres-s ent system of white slavery, should we be terrified or hesitate if it requires a week, month or year, to effect with out the loss of a single life, to inaug- urate such happy and long needed re- lease from the most abject and grind ing slavery of labor to capita1?z
 The sun of the workingmanss pros perity has risen. He knows his rights He, is in a combination of his fellows, which is wide and inyincibie IIts re- sources are 1imitless No commerce, no business, no trade should or ought to be carried on, when the price of fTQ m irn ic f1, slavement of men and women who la bor. Because a manufacturer is born rich, or inherits wealth, or his work men have made wealth for him, he has no right, natural or legal, to work his employees beyond the hours which nat ural justice permits, allows or demands. Nine hours of labor is the extreme lim- it that any manufacturer in any line has any right to demand. In most cases, eight hours should be the req sOnable limit Men of flesh and blood, who are compelled to labor for their lievlihood and support of their fami- lies wrong themselves, wrong the inn age in them of God Himself, when they allow themselves to engage in manual abor of any kind beyond eight or nine hours per day. By so doing they in suit that God whose image they are. Commerce is not all there is to life. Turning out manufac- tured products is not the sole end of humanity or human nature Our manufacturers in most cases, until now, have thought that all men but them selves lived to work They are learn Ing last that the workmen of today work to live" The difference is i'm mense. No man, with a belief, in holy living or a future life has any right to use his life as mere machine and as solely designed for the mill and fac tory. The higher ends of the human race become obsolete and totally lost sight of, when vast bodies of men. with souls immortal are treated as if they were only born for the single purpose in life of service on the treadmiIl. All the aspirations are blighted and anni- Inflated when men become in state of slavery to work and who grow up and waste their human lives in the factory, at the bench, and in the sweat room, devoting all their best years to but two purposes, work and sleep. This is slavery-it is the worst, most ungodly kind of degredation. ..,.
 Yet this is what many of our obstin- ate manufacturers have believed and acted upon in their dealing with their workmen. It is this idea which hu- manity has outgrown which inhumanly they debate now so long and earnestly and reluctantly to give up.