The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1914-05-29

make this a happier world. 1t gives
us strength to take up the battle
where we laid it down for the moment,
and fight with renewed courage. The
league is supplying us with that recre-
alton and amusement through its oc-
casional social sessions, so necessary
to grid our loins to fight the good
fight for the common veal.
have heard many Label League
women complain that it is an almost
superhuman task to get the very ones
they are trying to help to give assist
ance to the work They tell of clerks,
some who would be most benefited by
a label demand, giving them slight en-
couragement, even positive refusal, in
the mater of cooperation. And III
some cases our women complain bit
terily at this show of deadly apathy
1t is discouraging, l admit, but ! sub
NIT this question: How long did it
take some of us to wake up to a con-
ception of our own opportunity, our
own duty, in this matter of organiZa-
ton? Some of us, many years. Let's
not get entirely discouraged if some
of the girls-and boys, too-in our de-
partment stores are very slow in
working out a program that will ma
g.. ..s,,11 ,tI al
Charity is the least practised and the
most needed of all the human virtues
| try to remember that the great ma
iority of our clerks are recruited from
the humber walks of life where stern
necessity drove them at an early age
into industry. Many of them never
had the environment necessary to in
duce intelligent thinking. 1t was not
because the capacity for thinking
wasn't there, it was because they
never came in contact with the forces
that would start them off thinking in
the right direction. Every girls life,
if that girl must work in some driving
line of industry for a living, is a
human tragedy. Society commits an
awful crime when it allows boys and
girls to slave over a counter long
hours, amid the tiresome, wearying
conditions which surround them in
our large department stores, for pit
lance below that necessary to lead
honest, wholesome lives. l am not so
bitter at the girls in industry who do
not seem to care to help themselves,
as l am at society which places
them there and induces this don't
care attitude by the very brutality
with which it treats them.
1t does seem strange that it is so
hard to get some of our clerks to or
ganize but it is stranger still the atti
tude of society as whole toward this
class of our wage-earning population
Long ago union labor found that the
| driving power of our labor organiza-
tons was intelligent selfishness. That
we could not be up while the other
fellow was down. That despite all our
individual efforts to lift ourselves we
could not get anywhere unless we
lifted the other fellow with us. From
I that fundamental knowledge was born
the spirit Of helpfulness and co-opera-
ton which have made the organized
labor movement what it is today, the
greatest single agency for good known
in the worlds history.
Society too is waking up to a new
conception of it's duty to the masses
and there is being a reimbursement all
along the line of social activity.
Whether we will or no we are our
brothers keeper. The relation of So
ciety to the individual and the relation
of the individual to society is taking
on new meaning which is permeat-
ing all our activity, legislative and
social. 1t wasn't only a love for osten-
tation nor merely a fad which led
Mrs. O. II. p. Belmont to empty her
purse in defense of the striking gar
ment workers of New York City, leave
her bed at ? o'clock in the morning to
/ personally give bail for arrested girl
pickets. 1t wasn't ostentation which
prompted Mrs. Raymond Robbins of
Chicago one of the most wonderful
women this age has produced, to place
her millions, her time and her physi-
cal strength, at the service of the