The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-09-04
LABOR DAY is CELEBRATED HERE
DECOROUSLY AND WITH ENTHUSIAST
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8,


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tend for moment that the toll of the
hand Is in itself more noble or more
honorable than the toll Of the mind
Take, for example, one from the many
classes OF brain workers Take the teach
er, whose labor opens up all the possi-
bilities of the realms of knowledge to the
developing human mlnd-whose labor If
rightly performed, trains the faculties
OF the mind and of the soul to right think
ing and to right feeling.
Is there any nobler toll than this? Is
the man who builds In wood, or metal, or
stone, more honorable. more noble than
he whose results are wrought in human
minds and human souls? Why. then. is
this day set apart by legal enactment
throughout practically the entire United
states as a tribute of honor to manual
labor? The answer is this Because In
all ages heretofore-and including In large
part our own age, because In all former
civilization and until a very recent date
In our own civilization the class of man
ual toilers had been held In dishonor,
mad been socially degraded. The consecra-
tion at this day, therefore, to manual la
Dor represents a public reputation of the
former attitude; 1t represents public and
solemn act of social PREPARATION. 1t is in
a sense a day of atonement for past Of
fenses against the human rights and the
human dignity of the toling masses
Purpose of the Day.
THE purpose of this day is to offer a
public testimony that in this nation dedi-
Gated at its birth to the FREEDOM and
equality of all classes alike, the man
VINO tolls with his hands is held as worthy
and as honorable as any of his fellow
beings In word, by the creation of
this holiday the states of the American
Union take those toilers in industry who
iUnf
heretofore been scorned and despised, and
pays this public tribute of respect and of
honor, not only to the usefulness of
their labor, but to the dignity of their
manhood. The idea embodied in the day
Is, that all labor alike is honorable, and
that no man forfeits his innate human
dignity nor his inherent human rights be-
cause he tolls with the SWEET of his face
Now this is statement of what has come
to be platitude. We are born as 1t were,
TO THIS idea, but we must not forget
through how many long, long centuries
society has slowly, painfully and tragi-
cally struggled to this point in human
progress.
From the dawn of history until the
early centuries of our own Christian era,
In practically all the civilizations of the
world, the great mass of the manual
workers We're held In a state of slavery
And slavery of course rests upon the the
DRY that the slave has neither the dignity
nor the rights of free human being
and that he exists, as does the beasts of
burden primarily for the benefit of an
other and superior class of beings.
All Rights Were Denied.
"All of his rights, and his children's
rights to avail themselves of opportuni-
ties for their development or advance
ment, or for the broadening and deepen
ing of their own lives We're denied them.
And they must live out whatever form of
life was best adapted to the needs and the
comforts of the upper classes.
In the course of social evolution serf-
dom passed away. as slavery had passed
away, and the former serf appeared in
the new role of free labor selling his
labor for wage But again. In spite of
the higher and freer political status to
which the working classes had advanced
the older principle that lay behind slav-
cry and seldom still peslsted. and the
theory Of the state, at least in practice
was still that the working class existed
primarily for the benefit and the comforts
of the other social classes.
Indeed it is not too much to say that
in a large degree this same theory left
its distinct impress in English law up
to the beginning of the century in which
you and / were born. We have now had
some five centuries and a half of English
legislation dealing with free labOrerS, and
for four centuries and half of this time
that legislation was uniformly and per-
sistently directed to the preventing of the
laboring classes from securing either
higher wages or shorter working day.
To prohibit the laborer by statue from
all attempts either to increase his earn
inss or to lessen his hours of labor was
tantamonnt to legislative declaration
that no right to ambition or to hope to
class whose highest destiny was to min
lister to the comfort and the development
of the more fortunate classes of society.
This statute was practically a denial
of the innate human dignity of the toilei
and of his inherent right to development
And the theory that underlay such a law
differed only in degree and not In kind
from the theory that underlay both
slavery and surfdom.
English Statutes.
ITO illustrate more copcretely what
have just said let us go back to the bagin-
ming of the great English statutes deal
ing with free labor and see what was their
origin and what their spirit. In the mid
die of the fourteenth century a great
plague swept over England, carrying
away a large number OF it's population.
Owing to the scarcity of labor that fol-
lowed the landlords found themselves bid
ding against one another, to attract labor
to their estates. and the wages of labor
consequently went jumping upward.
"An era of unprecedented prosperity
seemed to be opening for the wage-earners
Of the country, when suddenly their hopes