Our Bread-Winners
“Honest labor bears a lovely face?’*
Dekker,
“By the work one knows the workman V
Fontaine.
“The Lord hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hiir, of the tribe of fudah; and he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of luorkmanshipy Exodus jj” :jo, jr.
There is a distinction, all too definite, between manual workers and brain workers. The hand cannot do without the brain, nor the brain without the hand. The man who wins his bread by writing may work harder than the man who wins his bread by digging. The brain worker is apt to wear out his nerves, while the brawn worker will build up his muscles. Whether by hand or brain, or both, we should all be working people. “Six days shalt thou labor” is as binding as the command to rest on the Sabbath. The man who idles away the six days as really breaks the law as the man who works in his shop on the Sabbath.
And all honest workers have their lights and
25 shadows. The first ray of light is the fact that work is a blessing. Even in a sinless Eden man was required to labor, and now that sin has entered with its train of sorrows, labor is all the more a necessity. The ground was cursed for man’s sake. It is for his good that he must fight the battle against weeds and thorns. To be doomed to perpetual idleness would be a dire misfortune. In heaven they serve. In hell, so far as we know, there is no employment. The weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth mentioned in the Bible may be the result of the fact that they have time simply to think upon the mistakes and sins of the past. Certain it is that honest labor does much toward turning earth into heaven. Pity the poor prisoners in the jail or the penitentiary who have not the blessing of work. Count Caylus, a noted French antiquary, though very wealthy, continued to labor industriously. When asked the reason, he replied: “I work, lest I may hang myself.”
An eminent preacher was told by his physician that he must quit work if he would live. “How long can I live without work?” he asked. “Six or seven years, doubtless,” was the reply. “How long can I live with work?” he continued. “Not more than two or three years.” “Well, then give me three years of work instead of six years of idleness.” And he was right. It is better to labor even one year than to spend a lifetime in doing nothing. If a man really delights in his employment daily toil carries with it its own reward. There is more in it than the money you make. Mr. Benjamin says, that while he was minister at Paris, he employed a frescoer to do some work in his home, and noticed that the man had really done much more than the contract called for. Mr. Benjamin expressed some surprise that he should work without pay. The reply of the frescoer ought to be written in gold, and hung up in the shop of every mechanic and artist. “I work not for money only,” he said, “but because I love my vocation.”
It is said of Alexander the Great that when his army was on the march, he came upon a porter burdened with a pack of gold which he had taken from the back of a poor donkey that had sunk under its load. “Cheer up,” said the General, “and walk faster, for when you reach the tent, the gold you carry shall be yours.” So the burden of work which we do because we love it, and because we love others for whom we toil, becomes an enrichment which the idler never receives.
And yet, if this be true, how can we explain the fact that some people have such a repugnance to work. An old professor in college defined man as “an animal lazy as circumstances will permit,” and it must be confessed that in many cases the definition is true. Laziness is composed of gravitation and inertia, the gravitation of sloth that pulls a man down, and the inertia of the love of ease which holds him. Call it play or amusement and he can exert himself to the utmost. Some of you young men who would think it a hardship to rise early in the morning, and make a fire for your mother, can ride fifty miles on a bicycle without feeling any evil effect, and some young women who think that their health would be ruined by pedaling a sewing machine, can turn the cranks of the bicycle half a day at a time and feel refreshed.
I heard of a farmer who wished some stones moved from one place to another, and he offered a prize to the boy who would throw the most stones within a certain space. The boys enjoyed it until it was suggested that it was really not play, but work, and then they left in disgust. The thought that we are doing something useful ought to exhilarate us, and inspire us more than the consciousness that we are simply killing time. All time-killers ought to be arrested for murder. A change of work to the man who loves it is as refreshing as the change from work to play. And we need not be too careful to draw nice distinctions between the kinds of work which people do. If it be honest and useful, it carries its own badge of honor. When the delegates from the Pope brought to Bonaventura, the general of the Franciscan order, his cardinal’s hat they found him in the kitchen washing dishes. He came to the door and asked them to hang the hat on a bush until he got through with his dishes. He taught them that a man should have as much delight in humble work when in the line of duty as in wearing a Cardinal’s hat.
An Englishman asked President Lincoln what was his coat of arms. He replied, “A pair of shirt-sleeves.” He was not ashamed of the fact that he had split rails for his bread, and with coat off had assisted father and mother in erecting their humble cottage in the forest. A pair of shirt sleeves worn by a working man is a better coat of arms than a goldheaded cane, high collar and dainty cravat worn by that ambling thing called a dude, which it is difificult to distinguish from the missing link.
A second ray of light in every working man’s life is the fact that mechanical skill is honored of God. Bezaleel was called of Jehovah to his work in gold, and silver, and brass, cutting of stones, and carving of wood, just as much as Moses was called to the leadership of Israel, or Aaron to the priesthood.
Great inventors are the prophets of nature.
30 Lights and S”haJov£ of American Life
They revesl to us the message of God as it is concealed in natural lavr. Their mechanical ’ ‘- wt call machines, are £” -• -angement of tie ^trvLr.ts
of God for the doing of certain -vrori:
The Bible puts special: ‘; ’ -
The only person in all hif.:: - - 1
power to choose his own parentage selected the wife of a carpenter for his mother, and put himself in an humble social sphere, as the world calls it, that he might thus be brought into intimate relation with the largest nur::ber of those whom he came to sai’e. He “vras hinaself a carpenter and doubtless worked to help support the large family of his struggling parents. He called into his apost!’^- ’ ■- “v.mble fishermen, and the most gifted:. ^wers
was a maker of tent doth. Jesus brought a
^- - ’ -• — ’ — working man’s life by
. -.al. What shall it
profit a man./ He asked, if he gain the whole
“- - - -.. jioiv” Organization
- - — .. whether of the state,
society or church, may fall to pieces and be ’ T-..,. ‘. -.y infinite
■... - -tal. The
Roman Government went out of existence, but ei’eni’ Roman lives to-day. When Jesus spoke for the worth of man, the state was everything, the individual nothing. And just
Onr Bread- Winners 31
here vre need to-day to hang out the red flag of danger. The trend of the times is toward great organizations, and they may be a blessing to the working man or a curse. A blessing if they recognize the rights of the individual while they plead for the good of the community; a curse, if they lose sight of individual rights in tht ‘^”tr:-’: ‘. ..’.ake a great social machine.
Lab;:: - existed in the time of
Chr*5t. T. ..^-..^miths had a separate r.r. ii”’:’ -: ia Jerasalem. In the great s>’na- 1- :•;:.. .5 crafts had as-
: - - -” ^’-.t build-
—. seated
ted by his
1 ;.:.:: ’ — loy-
::.zr.-.. ..., enjoyed the; of organization, they did
not enjoy; ’ “” jiom. We hail
with Ist:”: f political econcr:; - -:. y;! den indeed,
1 - ‘. r.a.: they should
1:, :. V ,-.’:.. God -ordained
as it isy has r;.’.■’: “. ‘.:’..’.”.:. s. rr.an to j<Mn it. The :- spot in
her history ▼. i church
tried to compt The
inqoisiticm wit her Lasting
disgrace. At;;’-’ 5 — rcord
^unst say ori -> it of capitah’st or laboring man, when it tries by threatened starvation to compel men to adopt its views and plans.
We believe in organizations that are loyal to this government. A set of vipers among us, who have been warmed into life by our institutions, are trying to put their poisonous fangs into the vitals of their benefactor. The Apostle Peter gives us their portrait: “they walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise government.” A good description of the anarchist. Peter tells us how they ought to be treated. “These, as natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed,... shall utterly perish in their own corruption.” Not many of them are working people. Their ambition is to get rich through some revolution without work.
The laboring man, if he would fill his home with light, had better support the organizations which regard whisky and the liquor traffic as his worst enemy. We are not among those who think there is more liquor drunk by the laboring people than by the so-called higher classes. But it is evident that the grog shop is a greater enemy to the man of small means than it is to the man who is able to buy his liquid fire by the barrel and keep it in his home. In a recent investigation it was found that 42 per cent, of a certain number of men out of work lost their jobs through drink, and every one of them represented a darkened home.
A third ray of light in a working man’s life is the fact that capital is always the friend of labor. Capitalists are not always the friends of laborers, any more than laborers are always the friends of capitalists. But though the capitalist may hate the laborer, his capital is, in spite of himself, more or less the laboring man’s friend. A capitalist invests $100,000 in erecting a building from which he hopes to receive 6 or 8 per cent, on his money, ninety per cent, goes directly into the pockets of working men who mold the brick, carve the stones, saw the wood, dig the foundation, paint and fresco. This capitalist may hate working people, but his capital is all the same their friend. Great railroad corporations are looked upon by some as the enemies of the working people, and yet wherever a railroad has gone through the country it has scattered money, and the working man is benefited. The owners of the railroad may hate him, but they cannot use their capital without employing him in some way. The loud-mouthed demagogues who are asserting that capital is the enemy of labor, and labor the enemy of capital, are the enemies of both labor and capital. Some men grow rich by rascality, and ought to be in the penitentiary, 3
54 Lights and Shadov of American Life
while others grov- poor by rascality- and deserve the same fate. Though capitalists may oppress laborers, a.nd laborers may treat capitalists unjustly, the proposition, I believe, remains uni’ersalh- true that capital is the friend of labor and labor is the friend of capital. If this were understood, man a shadow of misunderstanding would flee away.
A fourth ray of light is the fact that the condition of the laboring man has greatly improved during the past centuries. In the time of Charles 11. the laborer received 12 cents a day for 14 hours” work. In the year 1349 under Edward 111. working men were impressed into
- ‘cd no pay. In: V - a
- was erected fror. .0
Land’s End. and the laborers were required to
own tools, without a ,-.f
■). Some of them liters - cd
to death. Such a thing to-day would bring
“on. In the Mag-na Charta
i- ‘^rons by King John, there was
good prox-ision made for the clerg>% the land but in Tjirler’s His-
-. ;^e part of the people
who tilled the ground, who constituted in all
of the nation, seemed
..,....- — ...v vonsidered in this great
charter of freedom. They had but one single clause in their favor which stipulated that no
Our l’.fnii(i-’//iafv,r’i y-,
villain or ruftf-ir. ikxr^XA by any [trrtf/-.^^ y,^. 4/t- ^tfivf-A of hU chftii, hh {Ar,’*/-^ Mvd i (il hut:h»andry. In of.hr i’<^!:p/:/’.^i considferfed as a part of th<e prop(»trt, bfAfptiqlt to an estate, and w/er<^ f:r;!. t with ttuehorsfts, cowls, and othr m/.; :.-... at th wiiV rA the ovvnurf. Even as Late a« the (/th rjtxi tury, Samuel Johnson l that” r^Uinq
the wages of day labor-:... -. .ng, for it rires not make them live better, but only makf:^. them idler, and idleness i« a very ba/^i thini lor human nature.” In the i/ith century fifteen pounds (‘l|75j a yrrar were the varze’t of rt man with a family.
The United Stat-:.
working man. Wh<:n I
that I could purchaiie three suit’s of clnthf:^ lor little more than one «uit in
this country, I yi’:lded to the t. .at
when I found that tailors who made my -suits were paid some of n”. yi
cents a day, I felt at-..;. ...... ..... -in.
The sweat shops with their abominations remin/1 you at least of the wages of regular workmen in the old country. More than half of the millions in savings banks in the United Staters has been deposited by the working people; not a few of them have the luxury of organ.’j and pianos, dress their children as they send them to school in a style that doe.s not mark them as inferior to the children of the capitalist. Plenty to eat, plenty to wear, with civil and religious liberty in which to enjoy it all. To be sure, the shadows have lifted from the lives of the laboring people in America.
But there are shadows which come into the home of the working man which the blessing of work and the fact that his skill is the gift of God, that capital is the friend of labor, that his condition has greatly improved, does not banish. His health fails, he loses employment, he works in search of work, and now he stands by the cot of a dying child or wife. He needs the sympathy of the Man of Sorrows, the touch of the Carpenter’s hand, the voice that says “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” No music of organ can charm away his grief. No thought of his bettered condition can sweeten his sorrow; only Jesus Christ with his tender sympathy can be of real help to a man in conditions like these.
When in Baltimore I was invited to call at the home of a working man whose physician had given him up to die. As I entered the door, the expression of his countenance with its smile of peace was a glad welcome. The busy wife, though subdued by grief, was restful in heart. There was an air of cleanliness and joy about the room which I shall never forget. Reaching out his hornyhand and pressing mine he said: “The doctor told me the other day that there was no hope, but I said to him, Your no hope is the brightest hope you can bring me. I am going to be with Christ. I commit my family into the hands of a loving God, My little life insurance will help wife, and she will be able to take care of the children. To depart and be with Christ is far better than to stay here and suffer.” I felt as I stood by the bedside of this son of toil, that I would rather have his hope, with all his struggles, than the millions of the Rothschilds with only this world as my portion.