The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1904-02-20
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ruary Meeting Of Duluth Ministerial
Association.
Mr.. President and Gentlemen:
It Is with sense of pleasure and
responsibility that have come today as
the honored representative Of my fell
low Work1ngmen, at your kind invita-
ton, to speak plainly and fearlessly Of
the above proposition. I compliment
this body of men for their thoughtful
ness and respect in thinking it worth
while to listen to a speaker from a car
penter's bench as he tries to speak Of
themes which lie next to his waking
thoughts. My leading thought along
these lines, I can assure you, have not
come to me from any particular book
study, but from the hard school Of ex-
perience, whose teachers force us to
think and feel. TO gather knowledge
from book form concerning any one
thing, and getting the same practical
experience, marks the great difference
between theory and practice. It came
TO me one winter several years ago,
when with many hundreds of others,
tramped the streets seeking honest en-
ployment and finding none with a. FAM
lily dependent upon me, and hearing
SO much about the law of supply and
Demand" that I set to work in my
humble way to gather what informal
ton 1 could concerning the reason of
the working men being hard up and
unemployed, when at the same time,
the crops had been good and the elevat-
ors were full, and yet men asking for
bread.
I knew that lumber was standing in
the saw-mill yards in stacks as 1 had
never seen it before, and yet hundreds
and thousands Of men were living in
tenements and poor dwelling places;
that there was money in the banks,
but 1t had been drawn from circula-
ton; that several millions of working
men with their families were not get
ting the common necessar1es of life,
while Capitalistic class were dwelling
in luxuries and faring sumptously ev-
cry day. I had heard some political
economists utter the term again and
again, "Ovor-production'', and / asked
myself again, an over-production Of
what? The longer I looked into the
matter, the less I thought of over-pro-
duction, and the more interested I be-
came in the vicious and selfish ar
rangements of a few men who had in
vented the idea and principles by
which wheat was crowding the elevat-
ors and yet men asking for bread
clothing material filling the Wholesale
and retail establishments full to over
flowing, and yet men. women and
children were being scantily fed mo-
ney in the banks but tied up. while
thousands Of men were without rs cents
In their pockets, and going in trust
Tor their winters groceries, not as a
result Of selfish and careless living
through the summer months, but mer-
Ell because their wages were not
enough to tide them over when such
times came. came to the conclusion
then, as come to the conclusion now
when 1 see honest, unemployed men,
going cold and hungry; ill-fed and I'M
der-paid, that something is wrong
somewhere, and such conditions were
wrong, and It is the duty Of organized
labor, mostly the sufferer and not the
cause, to get such conditions bettered
and thereby bring about a changed
condition of things when more Just
and equal distribution Of this worlds
goods should be brought about The
facts were, gentlemen, could not then.
and I more deeply cannot now. recon-
cile Over-production with the sad fact
of human suffering as result, for it
seemed paradoxical.
AS result of such an experience I
began to think, deep and long. and am
still, l trust tntelligently, thinking and
acting as to how Improvement can be
brought about to the working classes.
then threw in my lot with the
thoughtful earnest workingmen, who
were striving to help labor help itself,
and arouse this slumbering giant to it's
honest, rational rights and to read
just the social machinery, the indus
trial machinery, and place labor where
1t can speak and reason for it's own in
terests.
The moneyed class, which Of course
every rlghtminded Workingman admits
has its rational rights, but am afraid
that 1t had forgotten the rights of Ia
Dor In the struggle, this class had been
doing its thinking and planning long
before the working class had even
dreamed OF looking to its own inter-
ests.
our fathers accomplishing, so far
as we know, looked upon the old Law
OF Supply and Demand as a mysterious
principle which accompanied the De-
dialogue. Today however. the working
class are coming to think that that law
OF Supply and Demand whose noyster-
lous dealings make one man very rich
and yet at the same time starves an
other man is not divine nor a very
human device. A system which makes
poor harvest more profitable to a. few
than good one; harvest so handled
by few manipulators which plays a.
trick with the rights of God and man
thus making it double robbery. to
such, the giant Of labor demands it's
Punishment.
Thousands Of 1aboring people would
purchase things If they could, but they
cannot possibly do it. Labor oreaniza-
lions: whose honor and spirit I most,
revere and for whom + speak while
thousands Of my brethren are hard at
It: in the various workshops of this
city, is beginning to think and act for
itself. It is so looking after it's own
rights and reasonable privileges. and
seeking so to arrange things and con-