The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1905-04-01
b|CEL0W breaches ON
HEROES AND THINKERS
Gets & Novel Text from Victor
Hugo's Masterpiece-Les
Miserables.
The Military Hero Passes on,
But Thinkers Shine as
Stars In Heaven.

C1nctnnati, O., March 30. 1so6.-sen-
tences from lecture on Victor Hugo's
masterpiece, delivered at the Vine street
Congregational church, by the pastor,
Herbert S. Bigelow.
The military hero is like a meteor
With the flash of his sword his glory
is gone. For its fighters the world has
fulsome praise and short memories. But
the thinkers and lovers of mankind
shine as the stars heaven
Victor Hugo believed that in every
human soul Is a primitive spark,
divine element, incorruptible in this
world, immortal in the next He held
that there was in every man an angel
whom ignorance could blacken and
hate transform into a fiend of hell"
For the unfortunates, society has
hard judgments and prison bars.
Church and state unite, with hangman's
moose and dungeon cell to condemn
and punish and kill these miserable
ones. For the disinherited children of
hunger and neglect we build jails and
scaffolds, pausing once a week to wor-
ship with Him who said: Judge not
Resist not evil. Love your enemies
The slums have been made by social
injustice. Vice and crime are but the
vomit OF the slums. It is Infamous for
the state to punish as criminal the VIC
Tins Of its own stupidity. What men
need is not law. but liberty: justice and
not punishment. Were they truly free,
they would prove their inherent good
ness Ignorance and hate are the evil
spirits; light and love are the saviours
OF mankind. This was the philosophy
of Victor Hugo, as it was Of Jesus,
and Les Miserables is the Sermon on
the Mount Of fiction.
Jean Vatican spent nineteen years
In the galleys for stealing a loaf Of
bread. We have no use for that word
Ealleys' now. Thank God, that is one
word we have struck from our law
books. We may measure the progress
of our race by the words which it out
grows. In the dictionary of the future
the obsolete mark will be found after
the words monopoly poverty, million.
aire, gallows, just as now we have
relegated the words galley and slave
to the dead languageS ef~a more bar
barous time. 4 .,,- =.
But let us not grow complaisant.
The equality Of men before the law is
still an ignorant or hypocritical boast.
The other day congress voted itself
$3.50, 10000 mileage money for a recess
which did not occur About the same
time it was reported that a man in
Delaware, after a trial which cost the
county $22500. was tied to a whipping
post and flogged by the warden for
stealing three mackeral valued at
twenty-seven cents. Who will say that
big thieves stand on an equality with
little ones, or that human rights are as
sacred as property rights in the courts
Of our land?
Jean Vatican was angered that So
ciety should deprive him Of a chance to
work. He saw bread the window.
He thought Of the starving children at
home. With a flash of resentment he
said: If they'll not let me work, I'll
steal
AN imprudent act, you say? Yes,
imprudent, but not wicked. II there was
any crime, it was the crime of society
in doing what was done to this day
in permitting some to monopolize the
common gifts of God and cOndemn1ng
others to beg or starve or steal.
Les Miserables tells us of the hate
fulness Of force, Of the power Of love.
When will the world forget that DEATH
less story of the common sorrows and
common hopes? Jean Vatican and the
Good Bishop-they are the children of
noble genius! These lives, exalted by
the greatness Of their love and their
pity and their sorrows, are like the
mountain peaks that rise above the
clouds of night, flashing from their
crimson heights, the light of better
day. They tell Of the vast sunrise of
a liberty that is yet to dispel the gloom
Of ignorance and shine upon world
where laws are just and men are
kind.''