In that gathering of workmen the son of Adam Ward saw men of many religions, sects and creeds: Christians and pagans; Catholics and Protestants; men who worshiped the God of Abraham and men who worshiped no God; followers of strange fanatical spiritualism and followers of a stranger materialism. And he saw those many shades of human beliefs blended and harmonized--brought into one comprehensive whole by the power of the common necessities of human life.
He saw that the unity of the warring religions of the world would not be accomplished in seminaries of speculative theological thought, but that in the Mill of life the spiritual brotherhood of all mankind would be realized. In work, he saw the true worship of a common God whose vice-regent on earth is humanity itself.
In that pay-day assembly John saw men of middle age to whom the work into which they daily put the strength of their lives meant nothing less than the lives of their families. In the families dependent upon the Mill he saw the life of the nation dependent upon the nation's industries. As he saw in the line men old and gray and bent with the toil of many years, he realized how the generation of this day is indebted for every blessing of life--for life itself, indeed--to these veterans of the Mill who have given, their years in work that the nation might, through its industries, live and, in the building up of its industries, grow strong.
As he watched the men of his own age, he thought how they, too, must receive the torch from the failing hands of their passing fathers, and in the Mill prove their manhood's right to carry the fire of their country's industrial need.
And there were boys on the edge of manhood, who must be, by the Mill, trained in work for the coming needs of their country; who must indeed find their very manhood itself in work, or through all their years remain wards of the people--a burden upon humanity--the weakness of the nation. For as surely as work is health and strength and honor and happiness and life, so surely is idleness disease and weakness and shame and misery and death.
The home builder, the waster, the gambler, the loyal citizen, the slacker, the honest and dishonest--they were all there at the pay window of the Mill. And to each the pay envelope meant a different thing. To big Max the envelope meant an education for his son. To Bill Connley it meant food and clothing for his brood of children. To young Scot it meant books for his study. To others it meant medicine or doctors for sick ones at home. To others it meant dissipation and dishonor. To all alike those pay envelopes meant Life.