Once in a while a particular flowery Fourth of July oration, political
harangue, or Thanksgiving sermon, catching him well filled with creature
comforts, and a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his
feet, and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was so
blessed as that of the free-born American laborer. He hurrahs, and is
ready to knock any man down who will not readily and heartily agree that
this is a great country, and our industrious classes the happiest people
on earth.... The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery
tones of the orator, and the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which
inspired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow steps at
length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the morrow, in a sober
and practical mood. His very exaltation, now past, has rendered him more
keenly susceptible to the deficiencies and impediments which hem him
in: his house seems narrow, his food coarse, his furniture scanty, his
prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if possible;
and as he hurries off to the day's task which he has too long neglected,
and for which he has little heart, he too falls into that train of
thought which is beginning to encircle the globe, and of which the
burden may be freely rendered thus: "Why should those by whose toil all
comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a
share of them? Why should a man able and eager to work, ever stand idle
for want of employment in a world where so much needful work impatiently
awaits the doing? Why should a man be required to surrender something of
his independence, in accepting the employment which will enable him to
earn by honest effort the bread of his family? Why should the man who
faithfully labors for another, and receives therefor less than the
product of his labor, be currently held the obliged party, rather than
he who buys the work and makes a good bargain of it? In short, why
should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in their carriages,
splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and wearily by on foot?"
Such, as I interpret it, is the problem which occupies and puzzles the
knotted brain of Toil in our day.
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