The wageworker. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1904-????, 1906-09-07
Continued From Page 1

opening the way with musket and
shan also condone the use of the cob
tlostcne and the loaded gaspipe in
opening the way fer the light of trades
unionism. For my part I am opposed
to both If l were asked to diagram
any essential point of difference be-
tween the trades union and the church
would say that one teaches the doc
trine of everyday reward, while the
other inclines to the future reward.
In other words, the church may be
charged with teaching that God does
business on credit basis; that it
teaches that God promises a great re-
ward sometime in the dim and distant
future il we do the right thing during
the present. l do not believe that God
does business that way. He does bust
ness on a cash basis. Let me illustrate
my point by little story. My father
is minister of the gospel. During
his long service In the ministry in
} Illinois ne became the friend of a man
named Tom Smell. Smell was rich
man, and he had paid large percent
age of the first cost of every church in
our county He was liberal to fault;
the poor never appealed to him in
vain. Yet he was what some church
members would call a Goddess man
, because he drank heavily, swore like
| nj 10 nd cd of ho
best gamblers in the country. One day
Smell met my father and said:
"Parson, you preachers are making
a great mistake by teaching that Gods
rewards are in the hereafter. 1t isn't
, SO, and I can prove it,
go ahead, Tom,'' said my father.
We'll, own two 160-acre farms in
Mclean county, one in the north end
and one in the south end. They are
exactly alike in soil, in improvements
and in general appearance. l can sell
the north end farm for hundred dol
lars an acre any day in the year.
can't get an offer of $75 an acre for
the south end farm Do you know
, why there is this difference?
Il do not" replied my father
We'll, I'll tell you. Those people in
! the north end of the county have sung
, and prayed that farm up to hundred
dollars an acre, while the people in
the south end of the county have fid-
died and danced the property in their
section down to sixty or seventy dol
lars an acre.
Trades unions teach that trades
unionism brings it's present reward in
the shape of better industrial condi
tions, better, wages, shorter hours of
work, more enlightened citizenship,
happier children, happier homes and
better fellowship. Without trades
unionism the industrial condition of
the workers would be even worse than
the spiritual condition of those who
have never had the joy of hearing the
gospel of the Nazarene.
If the church and the trades union
were to join hands and work in har-
money, each helping the other, the
progress of mankind toward the ideal
life would be thousand times more
rapid than it is. l know of no forces
working for more beneficent ends.
know of no greater forces in the work
of uplifting humanity.
What is doer of the work? James
says that pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, to
| ho fot 10 1uid in
their affiiction, and to keep himself
unspotted from the world" l believe
. from the bottom of my heart that the
trades unions of today are doing more
in proportion to numbers to further
the work of helping the fatherless and
the widows, to visit the sick and af-
fiicted, to help the poor and needy.
than are the churches. And | do not
) from the world means that one is to
wrap his religion about him like a
, cloak and seek the seclusion of some
, retreat afar from the haunts of men,
, there to live hermit. The Christians
, place today is in the marts of trade,
+ in the great centers of manufacture,
in the counting room, there to teach
by the force of his everyday example
the joys and the pleasures of the Chris
tan life. The trades unionist's place
is in the great industrial world, there
! to teach by the force of his every day
example the benefits of cooperation,
OF mutual helpfulness, of that love
which reaches down and lifts up to a
higher level of usefulness and citizen
: snip In these great works may not
Inc trades union and the church join
hands?
The church carries hope and cheer