Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 265, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1910 — Pitying the Laboring Man [ARTICLE]

Pitying the Laboring Man

M MAN of Victoria, Australia, I# wL speaks as follows concerning laborers and the labor! -jjfrjuHL, ® dest * on: "Surely we ha vet "ome message for our tolling brothers who are looking so earnestly, so pathetically for tba breaking of the day. The workers ■think we are out of touch with them. They say we are so snug in our assurance of a golden city beyond the skies that we have no thought or passion for that city which is to come down out oC heaven from God to the peoplew Whether that be true or not, it is time for us to bestir ourselves, to demon-! strate that we are not our of touch, with the masses; that in all their struggles for juster conditions, for social righteousness, for higher ideals, the Christian church is with the workers.” We wonder sometimes when this sort of thing is going to stop. The patronizing air which so many assume when they begin to talk about the day laborers is enough to fill those very laborers with disgust In the first place, a lot of sentimental pity is t>eing wasted over the laboring mad. He asks none of this, and It does him no good when it is expressed.* The laboring man is the happiest man alive. Of course, there are a few exceptions here, Just as there are a good many exceptions among those who have received a self-appointed place among the gentlemen of leisure. Nature has no blessing for that which doesn’t do anything. Everything is. life, activity, animation. When a thing In nature no longer works we call it dead and begin to search for a spade to bury it. Nor does God have blessings for the idler. That isn’t the way he dispenses what is in his hands. He has mapped but six days of every seven for work, and it is the universal human experience that, when his comrades are kept, the keeper is the happier, even though he doesn’t labor the six days for the sole purpose of being obedient to the Lord. Privilege of the Toller. The necessity for work is inwrought into the constitution of things and persons. The very fact that a man is a toller puts him ln line with one of the greatest (Commandments of God. In some places the conditions under which he toils ought to be improved, radically improved. And here those who have been trying to express pity need to put their attention. If safety devices can be installed where there has been danger heretofore, if sunshine can be admitted to drive out the darkness and dry up the mold, if proper ventilation can make it healthier for the toiling men and women, if improvement can be made in the moral surroundings, if children are kept out of body stunting and mind destroying factories, and a whole catalogue of other things remedied, there will be no appreciable chasm between working men and women and other mortals. But this lons drawn out strain over working men, because they are working men, is ont of harmony with the whole make-up of ffien and the purpose- of the Lord. The ehurch which lends Itself to this kind of music is losing its opportunity and destroying the possibility ever of finding one. No Possible Gulf. Again, there is not that Impassable gulf between the Christian church and the common toilers which some speakers and magazine correspondents would have us believe. Some topics for disquisitions are found in the rich churches of New York, but ( any such are mlsrepresentatives of American Christianity as a whole. The teller six days ln the week is the backbone of the church on Sunday and during the week, v There is no better man ln church than he Who is engaged in honest industry during the week. Such a man is providing for his family. Conscientiously, or unconscientiously, he is obeying the Sabbath commandment, the great part of which is to work six days on order to appreciate a rest on the seventh day. To claim that the toiling masses, putting the noun with its modifier in quotation marks, are out of touch with the church, is a slander against these men who work.- There are some, to be sure, who have a grievance, with os without a foundation; but we cannot draw a universal conclusion from such Insufficient data. The working man belongs to the church, and the church belongs to the working man, and the two belong to each other, and both beloni to God. —Religious Telescope.