The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1901-10-12
BISHOP POTTER ON LABOR.


Association for Advancement OF the Interests OF
1 Labor was notable effort and should be circu-
lated for the study OF all who interested in the
labor problem. He keenly analysed the many changes
that have come over the modern world and eSpe
Cially over American life Belamy, Gronund and
other reformers OF that school have greatly succeeded
in creating dstaste for work They have especially
held up the home and housekeeping as degrading
drudgery and have imagined all of schemes of
communistic to take the place of that charm
ing and hospitable housewifery which the Bishop
called with much pleasure
AS this distaste for housekeeping has not yet
gained any OF the lazy plans framed by the reform
ers people live on canned goods and food prepared
outside their houses Public opinion has much to do
with it. Formerly when young couple married if
they did rot begin at once to build home and to
keep house within it their castle public opinion
regarded them with surprise and assumed toward
them attitude of criticism Now it is quite differ
ent, especially in cities. People marry at the
parsonage rectory, live at boarding house. die in
the hospital and buried from the undertaking par
lors They plant and tend flower vine, and hal
low no home to their children.
All this is done to avoid those domestic cares and
duties which, assumed with zeal and discharged with
patience, go into the warp and wool of manly and
womanly character to be its strength and beauty
Children reared in this avoidance OF home-making
and housekeeping, who play in the halls of hotel
or boarding house and have home shrine nor
hiding-place for their childish treasures are them
selves totally untitled make home and worse yet
materially untitled for the most important and
necessary duties of life. The effect threatens the
state itself nasmuch as the state is founded upon the
homes of the people. If the people keep no homes
the state comes to be founded boarding house.
and on dyspepsia and the diseases of ideness
Bishop Potter put forward very powerfully the
necessity for right understanding and sympathy be-
tween employer and employe. These once existed in
this country, and began to disappear when the class
idea imported from other countries The great
manufacturing business of New England was founded
and fourished by the employment of native labor.
The New England mill girl was the queen of her
time She went out from New England home was
known to and respected by her employer and earned
her share of what needed to found another home
like that of her parents The change came when she
was displaced by immigrant labor. The tie of COM
mon nativity sundered and friendly sympathy
went with it. The industrial demands of the country
outran our power of assimilation, and instead of the
class distinctions and exclusive ideas disappearing in
the contact they subordinated to them the relations
the ideas and the ideals that they found here and
for quarter of a century labor has been
taught an antagonism to its employer which the en-
poyer has been compelled to accept as fact at first
and finally to act upon to that would have
appalled, our grandfathers.
After all, is it not true that part of this offensive
feature is derived from the homeless lives of the
pie? When employer and employe both live in fixed
homes their life experiences have sympathetic con-
tact in that relation. 1t was a profound economic
saying that put forward the little child as the leader
Ike whom ali should be. Fatherhood and mother
hood know no condition of life They are the com
mon experience and the teacher of all in wisdom,
Taken on in home, fixed, permanent and definite
they are the common tie between all kinds and CON
ditions Of men, and when that tie is felt the thrill 90
human sympathy passes through it. like the power
giving current through the electric wire
We believe that the Church Association for Al
vancement OF the Interests of Labor has in mind
enc, great, common and persistent tie between men
and following out that philosophy it may hone 70
reform conditions and to regenerate individuals maxi
ing the whole social state change the older and
better model without socialism and to bring men TO
sense OF their common interests without com
munisrn