Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1903-01-03
HILLS AND SKILTON
A8diGH SALARIED CHRISTIAN PREACH
Err AND HIS PRESS AGENT.

"A Plea For Low Wages, Long Hours
and Contentment - Fellows With
Degrees and Other Flubdubs No
Match For Labor Union Champio ns.
Especial Correspondence
The Rev. DR.. Hills of Plymouth
church thought he would contribute to
the general harmony by preaching to
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 magnanimity he
admitted that laborers had a right to
organize for charitable and other pur-
poses, but he said it ought to love it's
enemies and not use it's 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 we'll 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.
Id
For the Poor and Weak" and intended
to avert a 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
30 per cent of lonunion 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 500 or possibly
800 per year.
e,
then," he said, lis 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 a 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
pa: ors 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 lot attending Plym-
outh church now with any great fire.
Quency. so it 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-
lions had collected about Henry Ward
Beecher's historic church.
A fearful Mr.. James A. Skilton,
chairman Of the church committee on
sent out samples of this
great sermon Ito the clergymen of the
A M ,i1o nh fn1 70
use the topic for their Thanksgiving
sermons and also exhorted all whom it
may concern to buy and distribute this
sermon at SIS 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.
'Tn the United States, as here and
elsewhere" says Spencer, 1.-THE move
ment toward dissolution of existing
forms and reorganization on socialis-
tic basis believe to be irresistible. We
1ld\ Z Ddu titles UelOIe us, anu you nave
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 misreprcsCn-
tation To bring the churches lovingly
back - Tie attitude of solid hostility to
the name OF organized labor and all it's
work seems to he the purpose Of the
Hilliscs ana 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, a 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