The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1924-02-14
HE CUT Ills way Up TO
FAME WITH AN AXE
Lincoln Knew The Dignity Of
Labor-By Ida VI. Tarbell
In Golfers Weekly

they ntu Jnelf use. IHey celSDtdIeu
/, achievement, and the bearings on the
shield told the story Of the weapon
by which the wearer had won. There
are cases in which one regrets the
passing of the coat of arms. One would
like to make one for Abraham Lin
coin. There would be no bubble,
take it, about what should go on it
an axe, symbol of labor; broken shack
les, symbol of freedom.
There you have Abraham Lincoln
in two words-a man who cut his way
to victory-victory being for him
freedom of thought and action for
himself and others. His acquaintance
with the ak began when he was sew
en-, and till within his twenety-third
year he was almost constantly hand
ling that most useful instrument" he
tells US in quaint autobiography,
written in the third person for cam
paign purposes. There were, Of course,
brief changes to other equally useful
instruments-th oar Of the fatboat,
the handle of the plow. He never had
any doubt about the dignity and I'M
portance of the ak. 1t meant settle
ment, a new country, rising civili-
cation, the realization of hopes. That
was what he had used it for. With it
he had helped bring comfort and pros
perity to Indiana.
He may have been less conscious of
what he had done to give him his
tough muscles, his stout back, his en-
durance-a capacity for work which
was the admiration of those who
watched and appraised him in his
presidency. "He was great worker"
Emerson said approvingly on his
death; had "prodiguous faculty of per-
Torrance, worked easily. A good
worker is so rare" Partly this was
the ak.
1t served him politically too-the
last thing he could have dreamed. 1t
was the rails his ak cut, brought in
unexpectedly, that stirred the quarrel
inc Illinois onvention-naming it's
candidate for the presidency in 1860
to sudden enthusiasm; gave them a
slogan. a symbol-the rail splitter
candidate. Never did ak serve one a
better turn than when it came to cut
those rails.
More important still was what he
learned from the az and its fellows
of the relation Of labor-hand labor
to the making of free, prosperous,
useful man. He came to feel that 1t
was a normal way under our scheme
for men to advance. It was conylc-
ton which served him, and the coun-
try, nobly when he found himself IN
the thick of fight to stamp labor as
inferior. He had his own case to cite.
twenty-five years ago, The told many
an audience, 81 was a hired laborer,
mauling rails, at work on ftatboat,
lust what might happen to any poor
mans son. But what hap
pens to a prudent, penniless beginner
who labors for wages? Why, ne does
what | did, saves until he has sur
plus, buys tools OF land for himself,
labors on his own account awhile, and
then hires another beginner to help
hin-that's what free labor means" "
Lincoln had to fight in his day what
we still have to fight, though slavery
in name has been wiped out from the
land-the idea that there must be a
fixed labor class-once laborer. He
would not have it so. "There is not OF
necessity he declared stoutly, "any
such thing as the free hired laborer
being fixed to that condition of life
He was never tired of pointing out
how many men of independent bust
ness or profession were like himself
"a few years back in their lives" hired
laborers.
The large majority of men, he as
serted, belonged neither to the labor
. ing or the capitalistic class-that is
they neither worked for others MOI
had others working for them. This
was true in Lincoln's time even in the
slave states, except perhaps in South
Carolina; that is, even in the South in
those days the majority of the whole
people, white and black, were neither
slaves nor masters, and, o fcourse, the
same was true in the free states .Mer
with their families worked for them
selves on their farms, in their houses
in their shops, taking the whole pro,
duct to themselves, asking no favors
of capital on the one hand or of hire,
lings or slaves on the other.
Particularly did Lincoln resent the
cynical theories that advocates of sla-
very were intent on establishing al
that moment-echoes of which we still
hear. There was the "mud-sill'' the,
DRY, which assumed that the man who
worked with his hands could not be
educated; that a combination of labor
and education was impossible.
Lincoln hit off this assumption ad,
1nirahlV "Accordinp TO that theory ,