Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

and clear and not be fighting amongst ourselves in our own little places. (Applause.) We have got to learn that labor's cause is the same all over the world. (Applause.) When we get that into our hearts and souls, we won't fight very much longer. We won't have very many battles. When we understand that labor's cause is a universal cause, it will not be possible to get the Frenchmen to come out and fight the Germans, and the Germans to come out and fight the Irishmen. We know that our business is to establish the dignity of labor; on that we must first agree, and then try to make us fight on any other issues if you can! (Applause.)

I don't know whether you know that story that Carlyle tells of Dumbdrudges, or as he calls it, the Town of Dumbdrudge. He says that in a certain town there were certain people brought up at the expense of the community; they were brought up, fed, taught trades; then they were dressed up in red coats or some. thing of that kind, and guns put in their hands; and then in another corner of the world there was another group of people who were brought up and taught trades, crafts, and educated and sustained at the cost of the community, and those two sets of people, for some reason or another, were brought together face to face and somebody said "Fire!" Then there were sixty fewer human beings in the world. They fired simply because they were told, and shot each other down. Then in his grumbling Scottish way he said: "Did these men have anything against each other?" "No." "Then why did they do this thing?" "Simpleton! their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot."

How much better is the story that Lafcadio Hearn tells about the singer. It is the story about a singing woman with a beautiful voice that Lafcadio Hearn heard, a voice that comes out of an ugly mouth and from a face that is pockmarked. Out of that ugly face and from the mouth of that human being comes a song that is so glorious, so beautiful, that he, a foreigner, understands there is something in it which touches all of humanity. It is as if the cry of all the people of all the ages were stirred in him and he wanted to do something on his part towards the uplifting of humanity. It seems to me that that is the lesson that organization teaches to every member of organized labor. We

may be ugly and do strange things, not the right kind of things sometimes, things that cannot be explained to the rest of the world, but that cry, that song that we are teaching is the unity of the human race. We are doing it in the best way that we can. We are trying to sing our song of construction, brotherhood and humanity, and we must not let it be interrupted by these thoughts of war, or be led to war with each other for petty reasons. Our cause must be a common cause for the uplifting of humanity, and that re-writing of history.

Now if I should finish with that thought, I fear you might think I was only a sentimental woman after all, one that does not know about things practical. So I am going to be just a little bit practical in the end, because you know we are not supposed to have sentiment these days; the practical people are the only people who count or do anything, so we are told. But now I want you to think what is the cost of our wars, what is the cost of the standing armies, and what we lose by lack of production, and the cost to us by the increased taxation, the frightful waste of human life, and the great loss of time from profitable occupations in this useless and wasteful occupation of slaughtering each other. Think of the waste that goes on in that! I may not be perfectly correct in my quoting of figures, but wasn't it a million dollars a day that the Japanese war cost? The Russian side surely cost as much as the Japanese. That makes two million dollars a day as the cost of that war in figures. Multiply that by 365 days, a year, and that war lasted more than a year, and we have $730,000,000 spent for destruction.

We are beginning to think in this country that there can be some kind of industrial education for children, that there should be some kind of industrial preparation for life. If we are going to do away with war, we must put Peace on the best foundation, and that is the training up of the children for the work they are going to perform.

Now, at a rough estimate, it costs $150 a year after the public school education to get one of these children through a training school which prepares him or her to do the work that his hands are trained to do. According to that estimate, then, we could have educated industrially 4,800,000 children for the cost of that one year of war. Now those are figures that we ought to think of, and as a woman I want to insist that when we disband

our armies and navies, we should use those splendid warships for taking the children around the world. (Great applause.) Horribly impracticable, I know, to ask a thing like that, but yet I believe I am going to live to see the day when it will be done. (Applause.)

One thing I hope we will advocate at these Peace Conferences. It is always a good plan to see far into the future and to ask for all you ever hope to realize; ask for the whole thing, then you may get a little speck. (Applause.) But ask for all you want; it may take you years to lead up to it, but right in the beginning, know your ideal. Therefore I advocate the abolition of all wars. (Applause.) But I do hope that somebody will advocate that practical measure which I have read the French teachers advocate. I read that the French teachers in their Council have advocated the taking down of all ornaments from the school rooms which have anything to do with militarism. Now you see they realize that if in the young heart of the child you develop the worship of the soldier as a hero, you cannot get the idea of militarism out of his head when he grows up. You must inspire the child when he is young, and in order to do this you must surround him with the right kind of environment. Don't have on the walls pictures of heroes in the shape of soldiers, or pictures of bloody battles as inspiring things for the young mind to look upon. (Applause.)

I believe firmly that what you know as civilization-I was going to tell you I don't think very much of the civilization we have thus far (applause)—but what we know as civilization today can only improve and advance with the passing of militarism, and you, the workers, you in your numbers, must send your voice across the ocean so that there will be no mistaking your stand on this Peace and war question. Let your voice ring loud and clear, that organized labor stands once and for all for organization, cooperation and the solidarity of humanity. (Great applause.)

MR. BUCHANAN.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It is my pleasure to introduce to you one of the labor men who has won a place of prominence, not on the field of battle, but in the line of civic duty. I am going to introduce to you now the Secretary of State for the State of New York. He is eligible to speak upon this platform because he is a

member of the Tobacco Workers' Union and President of the Rochester Trade and Labor Council-John S. Whalen, Secretary of State of New York. (Applause).

MR. JOHN S. WHALEN:

WELL AS

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, AS WELL FELLOW UNIONISTS: I came to New York more particularly to learn and to hear many of the things that are being spoken of in convention here. I have attended many of the conferences. I hope that I am not amiss when I say it is a pleasure and honor to attend a labor gathering such as this. And I might say in the few short moments allotted me, and will say, that three of the best arguments I have heard during my entire stay in the city were advanced here this evening. (Applause.)

There is little if anything new in this proposition to me. I have been a member of the Trades Union movement for fifteen long years, and I realize that in that movement we have been working honestly and earnestly towards Peace. My belief, and one saying that I have always used in the Trades Union movement is, "Practice what you preach; do by the other fellow as you wish to be done by." It is a simple, easy teaching, and we take the same stand to-day as we have always taken; and I repeat that the remarks from the gentlemen and lady who have preceded me have been the most practical talks I have heard during this entire conference in the city of New York.

There are other speakers here to-night. I did not expect to have this pleasure, and I am merely going to occupy the few moments allotted to me and give way to the speaker who will take up the subject more in detail. I thank you.

MR. BUCHANAN:

The next speaker of the evening is a gentleman not directly connected with the labor movement, but one whose sympathies are with it and whose efforts are expended in assisting it-the Rev. Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey, of Rochester. (Applause.)

The Squirearchy of Peace

DR. ALGERNON S. CRAPSEY

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN AND LADIES: I am at this moment engaged in solving a problem which is of some

interest to me. I am endeavoring to discover who I am. (Laughter.) I have two programs in my hand, and in one of them I am designated as an Esquire and in the other I have two initials after my name. Now I prefer to take the former title to-night, because I find that it is a title which has been given to all the previous speakers. All of us have been ennobled. We belong now to the titled nobility of the earth. (Laughter.) Mr. Samuel Gompers is an Esquire, and Mr. Murphy likewise, and so to-night I prefer to speak in the name of the Squirearchy rather than of the Doctors of Divinity. (Laughter.) Because, I will have you understand, the squire is a very considerable man in the world. He had his origin at the time when knighthood was in flower. He was usually some slip of the nobility, who was sent to learn the trade of fighting, and his business was to look after his knight, to burnish his armor, to sharpen his spear, to hang properly his mace, and to saddle and bridle his horse and hold the horse until the knight mounted; and then in due time he expected himself to become a knight and go out fighting on his own account. And so these squires had their place in the world until the time that knighthood came to an end.

In the meanwhile the Squirearchy had been learning some truths; the squire had been ascertaining the fact that this fighting business was not all it had been cracked up to be. (Laughter.) Sometimes he got a broken head; and then, owing to certain developments that went on, he found that his sword was of little or no account; so when the knighthood period passed away, we find that the squire settled down on the land and bought a farm. and married a wife and got for himself children and began to spend his days in other occupations. Then he came to learn that there are other things in the world worth doing as well as fighting. He began to discover that communion with his wife and children; that the song of the birds and the coloring of the flowers, were worth while. And when he was no longer occupied in putting his brother man to death, he had time to enter into these, and he became, in a measure, a civilized man, and an artist.

And now, we, the Squirearchy, in whose name I speak to-night, come with certain thoughts concerning war. We have in a measure outgrown the knighthood period, and we have in a measure outgrown the whole war period. We do not come

« AnteriorContinuar »