'To achieve what man may, to bear what man must,'--since the struggle for life began, this has been the purpose and the pride of humanity. We Americans were trained from childhood to believe that while, in the final issue, each of us must answer for himself, the country--our country--gave to all scope for effort, and chance of victory.
This was not mere Fourth of July oratory, nor the fervent utterances of presidential campaigns. It was a serious and a sober faith, based upon some knowledge of the Constitution, some inheritance of experience, some element of democracy which flavored our early lives. The mere sense of space carried with it a profound and eager hopefulness. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers had crossed the sea to escape from more cramping conditions, felt this atmosphere of independence keenly and consciously. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers brought up their families in an alien land with decent industry and thrift, were aware, even in childhood, that the Republic had fostered our growth. Therefore am I pardonably bewildered when I hear American workmen called 'slaves' and 'prisoners of starvation,' and American employers called 'base oppressors,' and 'despots on their thrones.' This fantastic nomenclature seems immeasurably removed from the temperate language in which were formulated the temperate convictions of my youth.
The assumption that the American laborer to-day stands where the French laborer stood before the Revolution, where the English laborer stood before the passing of the first Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn Laws, shows a lack of historical perspective. The assumption that all strikes represent an agonized protest against tyranny, an agonized appeal from injustice, is a perversion of truth. The assumption that child-labor in the United States is the blot upon civilization that it was in England seventy years ago, denies the duty of comparison. If the people who write verses about 'Labor Crucified' would make a table of the wages paid to skilled and unskilled workmen, from the Chicago carpenter to the Philadelphia street-cleaner, they might sing in a more cheerful strain. If the people who to-day echo the bitterest lines of Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' would ascertain and bear in mind the proportion of little boys and girls who are going to school in the United States, how many years they average, and how much the country pays for their education, they might spare us some violent invectives. Even Mr. Robert Hunter permits himself the use of the word 'cannibalism' when speaking of child-workers, and this in the face of legislation which every year extends its area, and grows more stringently protective.