The Palatka news and advertiser. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1902-1905, 1902-09-11
THE PORTION OF LABOR.

The COHLAON VI AEADN'
As in a former cannibastic age the biggest
giants with the heaviest clubs became chiefs OF their
tribes. and to vaunt their power and glut their
pride decorated their with the empted skulls
and ceanly-gnawed bones of their victims, Just SO
our own monopolisSc giants with the crushing club
of combinations beat down and reduce to bare bones
the labor of to-day, Cutting their greed upon its
flesh, its blood, its and its BRAIN
True their caves glded now and we call them
not cannibals, but millonaires.
But the primal instinct of man, civilized but I'M
regenerated remains the same; the cruelty is but
refined; the greed is but further reaching
So the problem is not new one in our time.
The self-defense of labor against the cruel power
created in the accumulation of its own product, is
as old as organized greed.
ONLY the American mind has been slow to learn
the worldwide truth that social misery comes more
from inequality of privileges regarding property
than from inequality of political rights.
At last we are being forced to recognize the fact
that with long-boasted security OF political
equality, the same misery that wearles life under
the despotisms of Europe is being fastened upon u.s.
The long blindness originated in the teachings
and training of past generations Our fathers, nav
ing braved the perlls of unknown seas ana lived
through the privations of bowling wilderness, that
they might believe in and utter aloud, without fear
of restraint, certain religious maxms, came IN time
to believe that there political gospel, some
what akin to their theological creed IN which ma
tional salvation could be assured by simply utter
ing from time to time certain gtterlng generaltles
or political distractions.
So we came to be race of polltca! phrase-eaters.
Epgrams that have been passed down to us CAM
ed and Tabled, we bolt down without inspection or
test.
To maxims and proverbs-such for instance, as
government of the people, by the people and for
the people," Cali men are created equal-ad in
finitum-we look for our sole political and soc lal
sustenance.
To this fools paradise we have been greatly help
ed by the happy circumstances attending the early
conquest of continent. The deep Hch soil OF
our wide domain, which offered free homes to the
industrious, saved for time from the fierce COM
petition that crowds the hungry masses down and
gives to organized greed It's advantage.
Failing to comprehend from what we gained our
prosperity, attributed all the good enjoyed to
our ''free institutions, proudly called them,
and blindly proceeded to cut from under our good
fortune the very foundation of our advantage.
We donated whole territories of our precious do
main to corporations until the surplus land Is prac-
tically exhausted, and now, with the same condl-
tions that have so long afflicted Europe we begin to
wonder that our free institutions" seem to have
lost their charm.
They talk of prosperity but that is
made by a trust" and it's production may be cur
tailed at will. The ballot fails to bring just re-
Enumeration for toll. While hundreds hoard, mill
ions work and want Starvation presses its skinny
face against the pane where plenty wastefully feass
1t asks for crumbs and gets laugh of scorn
Giants of greed snatch from poverty without pity,
without remorse, its very rags, as soldiers of
PLATE snatched in derison the rament of the cruel
fed Christ.
And we say the reason these thing are, is that
ganlzed wealth buys from our lawmakers their man
hood
Let us not be too sure that this is the real reason
First let us be sure that wealth has not bought
our own manhood without paying the price. Let us
know, if people, do not worship wealth IN
stead of a God of Justice. Let see if we do not
bow-down before wealth in a servity that in itself
is slavery and invites the yoke that gals and en-
thrals Let labor say the cross on which it now is
nailed, it has not helped to raise
Labor is sovereign, not a theory alone, but in
very truth and all the ills it bears borne through
tolerance Could labor feel its wrongs and know its
rights and act in wisdom and in force, it could
weave a rope of ballots that would bind its giant
tyrant hand and foot