Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/70

Rh remembered ever to have seen Lamar engaged in any kind of manual labor; but, doubtless, he was doing vastly more for the workingmen by the activity of his brain and the eloquence of his tongue than he could possibly do by the labor of his hands. Moreover, as he himself reminded them occasionally, he had at one time been a day-laborer in a mill. So he had a right to address them as "Comrades in Toil."

He said: "I have just stood by the coffin of our departed fellow-worker; and I have been permitted by his widow to express to you a thought that came to me while looking on his dead face. As he lies there to-day, so any one of you may lie to-morrow, crushed and killed by the power of capitalism and the tyranny of the courts. But, you know, in the eyes of the capitalist, toil is nothing if it is you who toil, suffering is nothing if it is you who suffer, death is nothing if it is you who die. Why should the workingman have only toil and suffering and death, while his employers may treat themselves to all the soft comforts and luxuries that money can buy, and burden their women with silks and laces and jewels beyond price? It's wrong, my friends. How many diamonds did John Bradley's wife ever have? How many silks? How many jewelled ornaments? Was she not as much entitled to them, let me ask you, as the pampered wives of millionaires? Would not her beauty set them off as well? Has not she, by her woman's work, earned them a thousand times more than have the idle daughters of the rich? Did not John Bradley do his share of the world's work as well and faithfully as any plutocrat that ever breathed? and was he not therefore entitled to a just reward for his labor—a fair share of the profits of the world's business? And what did he receive? I'll tell you what. He received the right to work nine hours a day at paltry wages, in order that his capitalist employer might roll in wealth. He received, before he had reached his prime, a crushed