The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-09-07
ON LABOR'S SIDE.
Sidney j. Kent Delivers a
Mastery Address.
Discusses the Position of Union
Men.
TO HIGHER STANDARD.
Says That Is the Goal of the
Organizations.
Every Trades UniOnist Is a
Man of Peace.
TO HIGHER STANDARD.

The following address on 1.-THE Man
with the Hoe and the Mission of the
Trade Union" was delivered by Sidney
]. Kent, of Lincoln, Neb., general organ
tzer of the Carpenters union, at Mark
hams grove this afternoon:
Taking his text from Mi1lais' great
picture Edward Markham wrote his
now famous poem, The Man with the
Hoe
In his poem Markham describes this
man gnarled and twisted like the scrub
oak. dumb as an OK, the oppression of
centuries stamped upon him. My
friends, did you ever see the prototype
of this warped human being? Did any
of you ever stand at the gates OF Castle
Garden and see men and women bent
and twisted and with faces as dumb as
the ox2 have seen them. But says
somebody the man with the hoe may
exist in Europe but he doesn't exist
here. Let me answer, did you ever trav-
el through the densely crowded factory
districts of our manufacturing cities
Did you ever see the pale wan look of
the factory operatives. the utter hope
lessness pictured in their faces? Did
you ever visit a southern cotton mill,
where you viii ind children of seven
years of age working, growing up with
out education, amid environments that
mean immortality Of the worst type?
Have you noticed the women, thin, ang-
ular, looking as old at 20 the ordi-
nary woman of 502 A people without
ambition, whose surroundings have so
brutalized them that they are more
malformed, more twisted. physically,
morally and intellectually than the
peasant pictured by AIillais and made
the subject of Markham's famous poem.
Mans humanity to man has caused
countless thousands to MOURN" wrote
Bobby Burns. Mans greed for power
and wealth has placed property and cap
ital above its creator. Labor placed the
dollar above the man.
Ills behind the Crusade of Parryism
and Baerism against the Trade Union.
Formerly il was the divine right of
kings and lords that made Millais' Man
with the Hoe. Now it is the divine right
of Parry and Baerism that is response
BILE for the modern Man with the Hoe"
1t is this element which has corrupted
our legislatures in the interest of special
privileges and whose God is the AL
mighty Dollar. that are responsible for
the sweater den and the factory slave.
If there is walking delegate who has
taken a bride it is because there is
bride giver. If the worker united mis-
uses his power if he adopts brute force
to remedy his wrongs it is largely be-
cause of the treatment he has received
and because his labor that, under pro-
per system should have elevated, tended
TO degrade him.
1 stood the other day in one of our
cities watching a gang of men putting
down paving. They were working IKE
galley slaves as if their very lives de-
pended upon it. The pace was killing,
and yet the voice of q brutal boss
(whose picture would be an adornment
to a Rogue's gallery rang out every
once in a while. as with curses he goad-
ed on the men.
OF course these men were not organ
lied or they would have struck against
such treatment. Who could wonder in
case of a strike under such conditions
no Etfnpinq from the cruel
treatement received from the agents of
such corporation should resort to mob
violence? Who can wonder that this
Man with the Hoe" brutalized by the
conditions of his labor becomes radical
and unyielding himself and where he
uses intelligence and reason 1t is be-
cause of the teachings of true unionism,
the veterans of which are usually found
upon the side of patient persevering
effort.
L heard some one say that there are
fewer walking delegates in our peniten-
tiaries than there are pastors of
church or its teachers for have a pro-
found respect for them. 1t is no more
just to measure the pastors, as class,
by the one who goes wrong than it is
class by the one who goes wrong.
THE WALKING DELEGATE.
The walking delegate as a class are
crude men, none are to be found who
have had the advantages of university
education, but robbed of an education as
many of them have been, they are as
good as average men, and I know from
personal experience that there are many
splendid fellows among them. In fact
It is part of their daily experience to
pocket sneers, jeers and insults. fire.
quenty from those whom they would
benefit.
IF there is a human being who is lied
about and misrepresented more than
any other individual it is the so-called