The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-01-01
THE NEW YEAR.

Because human DelnSS nave mark ed the passage Of time into certain empirical divisions they console themselves with thinking that time itself may stand still a while and forgetful of the fact that every day marks the advent of a new year they renew their wishes and their hopes and their resolutions every New Years Day, so-called.
 The New Year these days has lost much of the significance which it had in other ages when it marked the passage of the winter and the return of the Sun which came to drive away the chilling snows and bring once again some earnest of the spring to human hearts.
 Nowadays the celebration of the New Year is more symbolical than ever, if that symbolism is more or less concealed than formerly. We have not the sunworshipping festi- vals of our ancestors which sought to appease the god of day and warmth and heat and light that he would revitalize the fields and the seeds, and deliver later on Mother Earth of a bountiful harvest which would feed the hungry ones who therein dwelt
 Nowadays we regard the passage of each old year and the advent ot the new more as the passage of old and unhappy conditions and the ar- rival of the newer and more hopeful prospects, and we embody that idea of tins division of time in an expres- sion plentiful enough about this time: when happy and a prosper ous New Year is wished all and sundry.
 Indeed there are many things that mark each year in the passing that we would be willing to see never re- turn, and to live in the hopes that the New Year may not be stained with those unhappy records. And there are few lives socially or indi- vidually which cannot find matter for hope that this will be so in the coming time
 And that is really the wherefore of the New Year festivation and why it always was. It was the tide when human beings revived their hopes and made it the day of sacri- flee to the goddess whose genial and life-giving sentiment still sprung eternal in the human breast.
 If we were to wipe away hope from the human breast. il would be a poor old world indeed. That it is which has illumined many a dark life and beckoned to many bright CT vista That hope dies often enough in tbc borning may not be denied; that hope deferred maketh the heart sick is doubtless true. But for all these things who is it that would not rather take this life of
  existence unbrightened by a single prospective dream of better things?
 There is no reason for despair. Although life may for many present what appears the most hopeless com plexion, it is almost certain the hope for better things will stimulate to ont;or
 The New Year certainly for the workers whose life of toll has seen many enriched and made happier by the annexation of the product ot that toll, is the hamburger of tide of affairs which with effort will be brought about whereby the workers will themselves be enabled to enjoy the full product of their labor. It Is quite true that such things will not be brought about without some ef- fort, and that the millennium will not be handed to us on silver platter, It is quite true also that there is no royal road to such an achieve. ment without such effort. But at the same time that effort is likely to be, the more successful and to be surer of ultimate attainment if hopes of success will add encouragement to the labor for the ends sought.
 Therefore it is that the future, all uncertain as it may be, has nothing but hope for the workers as a class. The future is to them. And that future will be to them in proportion to the effort, the effort that in- wolves strain. persistency and some sacrifice.