People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1895 — NEED OF THE HOUR. [ARTICLE]

NEED OF THE HOUR.

FIRST PAUSE AFTER NINETEEN CENTURIES. Fortentlou* Omtu of on Impending Crlcts —Oh! for • Lincoln to Load Ca Oat of the Land of Bondage Into the Land of Golden Light and llopefol Promise. By E. H. Bolden. —In Webster’s immortal reply to Hayne, the opening paragraph reads as follows: “Mr. President —When the mariner has been tossed for many days and in thick weather and on an unkown sea, lie naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance at the sun, to take his latitude and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate his prudence and before we float further refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we are now.”

From this extract let us see if there is any comparison to the present condition of our own times, and whether there are any lines of prudence marked out that would be well ror us to follow. Like the mariner, the great army of round-shouldered bread winners, having been tossed for, yea, these many years, are slowly but surely awakening from the deep slumber of ignorance that has prevented them from knowing their rights, or realizing the depth of slavery from which their generations have gone down to early and unhallowed, yet acceptable, graves. After nineteen centuries, during thiß the first forced pause in the storm of dog-eat-dog policy that has swept the world’s surface throughout the cycles of iniquity, they are catching a glimpse of the golden light of hope that is breaking through the veil above them, and are pausing to find their latitude, and to learn, if possible, how far they have been driven from the course marked out by their God, in which alt men could reap the first fruits of honest toil. Beware! The lion is awakening in its lair. His voice is penetrating the farthest recesses of the jungle. Unbrowaed and effeminate aristocracy stands aghast with fear. The combined power of the world’s brawn and muscle is being united to grapple with caste and cunning in one grand effort to restore the longlost diadem, the equality and brother* hood of man.

A million rivulets of thought and action are being turned into one mighty stream, whose swelled tide is carrying away the ilood-wood of prejudice and superstition that has been built up through the dark ages of federal knight-errantry and barricaded throughout succeeding centuries by the prestige of musty statutes and standing armies, that have been as leeches upon the labor of helpless humanity, enslaved thereby. The very atmosphere is surcharged with the electricity of portentiouß omens for the future. All men are awake to the impending crisis Savants are searching the vocabularies of ancient and modern literature to find soothing phrases to calm the thirst for economic investigations. From the esthetic literature of the most exclusive :magazines to the one-cent dailies, we find exclusive articles on the great movement, while the caricatures of the illustrated press represent the contest in its lurid forms. Strong men walk as if treading the crown of a volcano, while mothers, clasping their infants to their bosoms, look out into the dim future, wondering if the impending contest will remove the present maniacs of unequal opportunities in the race of life before her darlings are grown, or will they in their tender years have to go out on this frozen sea. of corporate greed to be permanently dwarfed upon the tread wheels of unrequited toil? In this hour of expectance, of anxiety, of hope and fear, oh! for a Lincoln to lead us out of the land of bondage i do the land of light and promise. Y.'LA ut such a leader to pilot the wry, m ,y weary and wornout toilers will ; o . n as their feet sink into the col.. _.i <p ; the Jordan that separates us lro.*i ;.i. _« land of our inheritance. As Moses raised up the brazen serpent in the wilderness that, all who had been bitten by poisonous reptiles might behold apd live, so millions are praying that the leader may be raised up whom ail may follow that are perishing under the bite of the poison of corporate oppression. Not with bullets, but with ballots, we trust the citadel of plutocracy’s host must be destroyed. The calling of the ditcher, of the hostler and the hod carrier are called ignoble, but each forms a rung in the ladder up which all industry and progress must climb, and the ballots of these will count as much as those whose gilded chariots spatter the toiler in rags. The battle-scarred veterans of toil, awake to your opportunity and vote only for those to make your laws whose calloused hands are a living witness that they live not from the fruits of others’ toil.