The Virginia enterprise., 1908-08-21


miners. Here you have a :: voting
strength which includes the well-in-
formed I'D the ignorant; the high and
the low in the ranks of manual labor;
the native-born American whose fore
fathers fought at Bunker Hill, and the
newly-arrived immigrant with his first
papers taken out, and who does not
yet know the language Now then, are
you going to solidify all these con-
flicting elements into a harmonious
and compact body of voting strength?
You are, are you? How are you going
to do it? The prejudices of the Euro
pean emigrants date back further than
the times of Romulus and Remus.
Racial and religious differences,
strengthened and cemented Ivy wars of
conquest and subjugation, have been
drunk in with their mothers milk.
Slav, Celt, Frank, Teuton, the Latin
and Saxon, how sheer the wall which
divides, how deadly bitter the old
grudges which still exist DO you think
to bring such conflicting opposite nat
ures into happy family" of unified
voters without taking into account all
the ancient jealousies and racial and
spiritual prejudices? AS we'll attempt
to swim with fins Of lead, or hew
down oaks with rushes."
All men are created more or less"
FREQ and equal. That depends on
heredity, environment, opportunity,
and other things. But to get results
in voting, you must have the votes.
A very trite conclusion, isn't it? Did
you ever try any other scheme? So
to secure the labor vote you must
show the laboring element that it is
best for their interests that they
should vote in certain way Well,
they cannot be depended on to vote
for their own interests. "'Tis true, it's
pity, and pity 'tis, it's true" And you
cannot altogether blame them, for they
have been flattered and fooled until
they are properly distrustful of the
promises of the various political
Moseses who propose to lead them out
Of the wilderness.
My experience regarding the labor
vote began early in the game. met
the labor element at every meeting
attended in my city. They attended
political meetings where the "busi-
ness men regularly "side-stepped"
such affairs. They naturally looked on
a speaker who addressed such meet
ings, if a salaried politician, as a man
who was there for the purpose of
holding his job;' and they took very
little, if any, stock in his protesta-
tions. If the man whom he was talk
ing for was one who had made good
in their estimation, so far as fairness
to labor was concerned, they agreed
with the speaker in his commenda-
tions of such a man. But they did not
believe that a well-dressed profess
sional man could really have any in
innate knowledge of their lives or
their ambitions, nor entertain any
genuine sympathy with them in their
struggles; SO that any views of the
speaker in that line generally fell on
barren ground
And that suggests, as corollary
the proposition that the "uplift" of
the labor element must come from the
ranks of the laboring man himself
Men like Ruskin and Edward Morris
in England men like Phelps-Sto
and Ernest Crosby in America-have
endeavored honestly to better condi-
tons for the laboring man, and have
failed because Of a chasm-like differ
ence in environment which precluded
the possibility of an intelligent and
sympathetic joining of forces.
The labor vote in the cities is in
dustriously angled for, and is not sell
dom made the means of an advance
ment to Office, as far as the labor vote
happens to apply, of some demagogue
whose sympathy for labor is wholly
fictitious. The labor element is also
preyed upon by treacherous members
Of its own class, who use their official
positions in the union for their own
selfish personal aims. And yet at last
this element and whatever political
cohesion it can ultimately command,
must depend on it's own people for ad-
vancement. Labor's chief hope must
lie in national enactments of laws. and
yet labor cuts the least figure in the
election of the men who go to Wash
ington. Concerted opposition of labor
to men who have been against it,
has almost always resulted disastrous
ly. The men who seek congressional
honors are not yet afraid of the labor
vote, except in possible instances in
some large city where the district is
largely labor district. But ordi.
narily, as has been shown in several