Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1877 — The nobility of Labor. [ARTICLE]

The nobility of Labor.

Blood never makes a nobleman. The blood of the King is as poor as that of the peasant, and often poorer. The blood of the autocrat, whose whisper shakes a kingdom and whose nod awes a continent, is not more crimson or of greater virtue than the serf’s which the autocrat despises. Birth never endows nobility. The magnificence of the cradle or the tinted frescoing and gorgeous drapery of the palace never created rank. He alone is a nobleman who has made the world better and happier for having lived, who has fringed the clouds with silvery beauty, planted the rose and watered it into bloom upon the dqsert waste, beautified the forest wilds or gathered the splendors ot the valley Into charming symetry. There are millions of noblemen’s graves over which a tear was never shed, and which time has leveled to the even surface of the prairie, but from which streams back through centuries the glow of a nobility which charms a world Into humble worship of its sublimity and genuine worth. Many a man has died unhonored and unsung who left in every footprint from hb child? hood to the tomb a rich and brilliant legacy to the world, and no legacy worth commemorating was ever left the world, which was not baptized in the sweat of honest toil. From mental and physical exertion the earth has been mad 6 to blossom, the seas have been covered with life, civilization has shot its sunshine into the gloom of rudeness and Christianity has rained its softness on the world. On every field*that bears a tempting harvest on it* breast, on every brick in every building that was ever reared, on every book of yalne that was ever written,-on every thought that bums to light the world, in every workshop, and mine, and furnace, *nd factory—wherever labor sweats, are Written the credentials of nobility.— Western Rural.