Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1902-12-29

tLS SeiOlui l4iohy ny "
one class Of society against another
class With a show of courage which
implied that organized labor had never
been confronted with the command
ments and of all men needed to be he
took for his text, Thou shalt not KILL"
With like show Of magnanlmity he
admitted that laborers had right to
organize for charitable and other pur-
poses, but he said 1t ought to love its
enemies and not use its organizations
for increasing wages or shortening
hours.
Each family must solve the wage
question for itself. DR.. Hills had all the
facts and had studied the labor ques-
ton. Out of 100 millionaires he found
that eighty had become rich by saving
waste materials. One poor foreigner
got well to do this way: He resolved to
educate all his children. Not content
with sending them to one Sunday
school, he sent them to two and to
every church service" All the sons
climbed to positions of influence and
wealth, and every one Of the daughters
became schoolteacher.
This sermon being entitled "a Plea
For the Poor and Weak" and intended
to avert coming crisis, DR.. Hills re-
lated all the human faults that he had
time to relate which the 20 per cent Of
organized laborers have, In common
with the rest of humanity, but for the
80 per cent Of nonunion laborers and
for all the capitalists except the ''un-
scrupulous capitalists" he pleaded pity
ingly. He said that If all the trusts
were annihilated, all class privileges,
monopolies and unjust taxation were
done away with and every strike and
boycott was absolutely successful the
income Of the average American would
be increased by only 800 or possibly
500 per year.
"The way to increase our wage,
then" he said, 'is to increase the
quantity and quality of our work. A
workman's reward is not in his wage
but in the consciousness of having done
good work. Was Milton rewarded for
Paradise Lost in the SAG he received?
Did the soldiers in the late war, who
worked for $13 month, strike for
higher wages just before Gettysburg?
Was DR.. Morton, working for life to
discover chloroform, unhappy because
he died poor, not having had his share
of wealth"
The people of this church will not, as
logically they could, cut down their
pastors wages because of his utter dis
regard Of wages. Whether Dr. Hills
would work In dark slums and in
mines and find all his pleasure in work
for the Beers Is open to some doubt.
Union labor is not attending Plym-
outh church now with any great fire.
quency, so 1t was feared that these ex-
hortations might not reach them, al
though for that matter the sermon as
whole seems to have been intended for
capitalists and antisuffragist women
and imperialists, which the Outlook's
more recent positions on public ques-
tions had collected about Henry Ward
Beechers historic church.
A fearful Mr.. James A. Skilton,
chairman of the church committee on
sociology, sent out samples of this
great sermon "to the clergymen of the
American churches, exhorted them to
use the topic for their Thanksgiving
sermons and also exhorted all whom it
may concern to buy and distribute this
sermon at S. per 500 and help to avert
1.-The present and impending crisis"
Mr.. Skilton says the sermon is begin
ming of a return to the old type of
righteousness, and he urges patriots to
| distribute the same. A letter from
Herbert Spencer also says that he
sympathizes with this effort, but that
he believes that it will prove futile.
"In the United States, as here and
elsewhere" says Spencer, "the move
ment toward dissolution of existing
| forms and reorganization on socialls-
tic basis believe to be irresistible. We
have bad times before us, and you have
still more dreadful times before you
civil war; immense bloodshed and
eventually military despotism of the
severest type"
The country has involuntarily burst
out into applause at the marvellous
work and the self restraint of Mr..
Mitchell and his miners and at their
patience under insult and misrepresen-
tation. To bring the churches lovingly
back to the attitude Of solid hostility to
the name of organized labor and all its
work seems to be the purpose of the
Hillises and Skiltons.
1t seems to us fortunate that what
Carlyle calls the dumb majority" be-
ing now organized labor, has represent
atives to speak for its side Of the mat
ter
The Greenfield Recorder, paper
printed for the conservative Massachu-
sets farmers, gives the following
hints:
The coal strike can be thanked, or
blamed, for arousing the most general and
vigorous discussion of labor unionism the
country has ever enjoyed or endured. 1t
goes on in the church. where ministers
preach upon 1t with somewhat less knowl-
edge than Bishop Lawrence believes es-
sential; on the railroad train-parlor car
and smoker" alike; at the club, at the
four corners postoffice, wherever men
| willing to talk and listen are thrown to-