Three Typical Workingmen

THERE are many types or varieties of character among the workingmen of this country. As acquaintance with many individuals must precede any useful attempt at classification, I present these sketches of workingmen I have known without trying to determine in what degree they are typical or representative persons. Of course one can report only what he lias seen. Workingmen are not equally communicative with everybody, and there are few observers who, to use a phrase common among the workingmen, can “put things together;” few who distinguish what is significant, or penetrate to the relations between the most familiar facts, or even remember and think about what they have seen. My acquaintance with American workingmen in different parts of the country has impressed me with the essential truth of the saying that the whole, world is everywhere, and that although many tilings seem strange or unusual when first seen, continued observation reveals the ► xistence of similar facts and instances almost everywhere. Of course the life ?f workingmen and their families varies

in many of its features in different regions. There are observable diversities of type, in conditions and in elxiracterj as we pass from the mountain mining regions to the farms of the Western prairies or of New England. Manufacturing communities have their peculiarities. Changes in employment modify the character of the population. The establishment of a great factory employing a thousand men or women would produce important social and moral modifications in any community. Wide-spread changes in opinion also affect the prevalent type of character, and in time even the structure of society. The increased hostility to the churches which has been developed in some classes of our population within the last twenty years has already produced in many places a greater feebleness of community. There is not always now, on the part of the people living near each other, so general or vital cooperation for the promotion of the interests of the neighborhood as formerly existed; and the more definite and active opposition to Christianity in our time has already produced changes in the administration of charity, and, what ts more important, in the moral guardianship of the younger and more dependent members of many communities. There is often less interest on the part of society in the establishment of young men in business or profitable industry. Such shifting of currents and tendencies in the life and thought of the age often goes on for some time without being recognized, hut no student of the subject believes that great changes can take place in the circumstances, occupations, opinions, habits, and educational conditions of any population without some resulting modification in personal character and the structure of society.

Strong drink is still the greatest evil in the life of multitudes of American workingmen, though the number of those who do not use ardent spirits at all has greatly increased during the last twenty-five years, and is still increasing. Yet there are workingmen everywhere who are fighting this appetite, and trying to throw off the bondage of the habit of indulgence. One such I have known for many years. He was born in New England, and was a member of tlie first company of soldiers who left Boston for the seat of war at the beginning of the rebellion. He was shot through the hand at Antietam, and receives a pension of five dollars per month from the government. Four or five of his children are in the public schools, and there are two or three smaller ones at home. He has been for several years a shoemaker, working in the large shops or “ factories ” of a country town. There seems to be nothing loose or defective in his original equipment; he has in al^ most every respect a fine nature; hut he had a hard struggle for several years with the habit of social drinking. It beset him most severely in times of depression, when he was out of work, or after sickness in his family. His pastor once told me of having chanced to see him coming out of a saloon one day while the shops were closed. The clergyman met him with an impetuous expression of grief and disappointment that he should not have cared more for the trials and perplexities of his minister’s lot, and should he willing to add thus to his burdens, mentioning several workingmen about whom he had long been anxious, and whom he had tried to encourage and fortify against the appetite for liquor. “ If you workingmen go on in this way,” he concluded, “how can T have strength or hope to try to do anything? It is enough to break a man’s heart to see that nobody cares about what he is trying so hard to accomplish.” The man’s face grew white; he burst, into tears, and said, “I did not know you cared so much about it as that,. I will never go into such a place again.” And the minister thinks he has kept his word.

The life of such a man has its trials and hardships. During many years past he has scarcely ever received more than enough for the subsistence of his family in time of health. He is now able, whileworking by the piece, to earn a dollar and a half per day. This, with the pension added, amounts at the utmost to about five hundred and thirty dollars per year. Out of this he must pay rent for his house, and provide all that his family can have to live upon. The closest economy consistent with health does not avail to save any considerable part of such an income. But sickness comes to all homes, and most frequently to those of the poor. When it visits a household like this, even if the workman is not kept from the shop by the illness of child or wife, there is unavoidably some increase of expenditure. There can he hut very little increase without incurring debts, and in such circumstances how can debts ever be paid?

Then there are sometimes losses from other causes than sickness in the family. Two or three years ago this man worked for manufacturers who did not (perhaps could not,) pay their hands promptly. My friend’s children had been ill, and he was straining every nerve to make extra wages, frequently working fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. He had gone on thus for some months, when his employers suddenly closed their shop and left the town. Other creditors seized the stock on hand, and the workmen were left unpaid. The amount due my neighbor was about one hundred and fifty dollars. I went to see him. He was depressed, of course, and indignant, but bore the stroke bravely. It was a serious matter for him. His wife was troubled and anxious lest her husband might, under such discouragement, yield to the temptation he had long withstood, and so lose the mastery of himself he had so hardly won. He was half sick for a day or two, but wise neighbors invited him and his family out for two or three visits. He soon emerged from his depression, and as soon as possible obtained work in another shop. Since then he has not been able to free himself from debt, but he told me recently that with a vear of steady work and elose economy he can pay all that he owes.

I asked him lately if he was attending the political meetings now being held nightly in the town where he lives. “ No,” said he; “ I do not go at all this year. I joined the greenback people last year, listened to their speeches, and voted their ticket. But their talk has disgusted me. I told my wife they were depending on getting something out of nothing. We are all to be prosperous with very little labor. Now, I don’t see. how that can be. It may be that poor people are oppressed, and I think myself some things are wrong, and they are hard to bear; but as I look at it, it takes a deal of hard work to keep this world going on. and it seems to me these labor reformers would only make things worse. One thing I have noticed: I have been out of work sometimes for a few weeks, and even when we had plenty 10 live on the idleness did me no good.” This man is growing in self-control and Strength of character. He has a good wife, and his children are doing well in the public schools.

I have observed that workingmen who habitually drink even the lighter beverages, such as beer and ale, are usually more irritable at home, and are more frequently involved in domestic disturbance and unhappiness, than those who use no liquor. In the towns and cities the children of those who do not drink are commonly more intelligent, quiet, and well behaved than the children of parents who drink even moderately. This results largely, I suppose, from the fact, that men who do not drink are at home at evening much more, and their family life becomes more social, intellectual, and active.

Another hardship and temptation foi multitudes of workingmen arises from the fact that they have been systematically taught by all their guides that in this country men should “ aspire ” to the possession of nearly everything that appears in any way desirable. The oltl moral teaching, which emphasized intelligibly and without mysticism the strength which comes from the repression of desires, has been to a great extent disused. It is harder and more painful than formerly for workingmen and their families to “do without things.” In very few communities has there been any example of moderation on the part of the more fortunate classes, and these are not without some degree of responsibility for the alienation and discontent recently apparent among workingmen. The unwillingness to begin where they are, and accept the facts of their situation, with the wearing, fruitless endeavor to live on a scale requiring an expenditure greater than their income, is perhaps the chief evil and error in the life of American workingmen as a class. (Of course this does not now apply to those who are entirely without employment.) Would that this evil were confined to the class of workingmen!

The next story is of a man who is now between forty-five and fifty years of age, who was born in New England. He was from boyhood an earnest abolitionist; was a common soldier and afterward a commissioned officer in the Union army; and has been a farmer and liousecarpenter since the close of the war. In speaking of him I feel that I ought to begin with the fullest recognition of the many excellent qualities in his character. He is a man of most amiable and kindly disposition; of great tenderness and benevolence to the poor, the sick, and all who are in distress; a faithful and sympathetic nurse when disease invades the homes of his neighbors; and ready to divide his last crust with those whom others neglect or abuse. He is wdiat people call a well-informed man; his knowledge of what may be learned from the encyclopaedias and from good books being above the average attainments even of “cultivated people.” ’V et he is poorly fitted for life in a world where effects depend upon causes, and most good things have their price in toil. My friend has always been greatly interested in the elevation of mankind, the improvement of society, and the progress of humanity,—to use three phrases which are very dear to him. hut he has not been, and is not now, able so to apply and direct his own powers as to gain a subsistence for himself and his family. He once had a farm, which, if it had been managed wisely and cultivated with energy, would have been a sufficient means and source of support, a most comfortable and desirable home. Ilut he could never begin his work at the right time, or follow it persistently after his tardy beginning.

In the late spring, when his neighbors were already plowing their corn, they would sometimes ask each other, “IIow?s the captain’s corn?” And the usual reply would lie, “ The captain hasn’t planted yet. Fact is, he has n’t got his plans made out for this season’s crop.” This reply hints at one of my friend’s greatest difficulties. His plans are always so large and complex, and all his movements so deliberate, that ii is almost impossible for him to begin even the simplest and most ordinary operations of Ihe farm.

He is an inveterate reader, and lias read many good books during the lorn*' summer days when his labor was sadly needed on his farm. he has always had an especial fondness for the speculative or theoretical side of the physical sciences, and is deeply interested in all labor-saving inventions, and especially m projects which promise great results from apparently trifling causes. He has almost boundless faith in the possibility of such inventions or discoveries. I think he would scarcely be staggered by the announcement that somebody had a plan to warm the polar regions of the globe and cool the tropics, or had found out how to evolve power enough from a pail of water to drive a railway train across the continent. He has a vivid imagination, but it has never been disciplined, or brought into relations with the facts of life. T think the greatest happiness of his life has been the study of the works of Tyndall, Huxley, and Darwin. He is very familiar with these, and has eminent delight in Mr. Darwin’s speculations regarding the origin and development of animal and human life. He has good conversational powers, and is a very interesting companion on a journey or in the social circle.

\et this man, wiih all these endowments and with good health and ample strength of body and limb, has not been successful in life. He early began borrowing money for current expenses, for the means of subsistence, mortgaging his farm to secure the payment of these sums, which grew larger and larger, and were never paid. By and by the whole value of the farm was swallowed up, and he was dispossessed. He has manv children, and the family would often have suffered sharply if it, had not been for the patient, laborious industry of the wife and mother, who is not at all poetical or imaginative, who has no great plans or theories, but who has an oldfashioned, practical faith in hard work. For many years the family has in large measure subsisted upon the scanty proceeds of lier work with her sewing-machine. If she had been seconded by equal industry and application on the part of her husband, they might now have been a prosperous family in a home of their own. Instead of this the man is hopelessly, fatally, in debt. Ilis credit was gone long ago.

My friend lias recently been profoundly interested in the science of government, and especially in subjects connected with the financial systems of different nations. He now attributes the loss of his farm to fatal mismanagement on the part of our government, and an evil discrimination, in our national legislation against the workingmen and in favor of capitalists. Ilis theories of these subjects need not be recorded here at length. They are essentially the same as those held by most of the men who think the way can be opened into a new Garden of Eden for mankind by entrusting the guidance and control of society to leaders who have not been spoiled by culture or knowledge. Ills expectations have, however, an Oriental richness of coloring, a breadth and sweep surpassing all that I have heard or read in the most sanguine predictions of the prophets of the national party. the opinions or theories of this class relative to financial subjects, and other matters connected with the government, and the organization of society, however wild and baseless we may esteem them, are held naturally by their votaries. Our fellow-citizens who still display the characteristics of prehistoric thought are, in an important sense, logical and consistent. They think as they must think till they have a different education. These theories and prepossessions are coherent with their usual intellectual methods, and with the whole body of their thought. They are such as should have been expected, under existing circumstances, from a class with their equipment and education.

I think the failures of this life can be traced far back, if not entirely to their sources. My friend has always been, as he himself declares, a dreamer and idealist. When he was young he loved to indulge in reverie,—in beautiful and happy imaginings of a world unblighted by evil and suffering. It would probably have required, even in early manhood, strenuous self-restraint, a severe and protracted course of effort and discipline, to overcome this inclination to luxurious, indolent thinking. The habit has so long been firmly fixed that probably no endeavor of which he is now capable would avail to free him from this bondage, a bondage which is in some rcspects not unlike that of opium or strong drink. Ilis neighbors cannot afford to employ him, because he so often forgets himself or his work. Even in such occupations as require the constant attention and reciprocal activity of two men, such as handling lumber or brick, he becomes oblivious, in the briefest interval, respecting the necessity of cooperation with his fellow-workman.

Our friend has never used intoxicating liquors, having been faithful to 1MS habit of total abstinence even while an officer in the army. An old neighbor and faithful friend of his, who is in no degree blind to Ids faults, says that the captain would face all possible obloquy in support of an unpopular principle or cause, and that he would undoubtedly meet death unflinchingly at the hands of an angry mob, if that were the penalty for protecting a helpless woman or child from abuse, or befriending an oppressed negro or Chinaman; and my own acquaintance with the man leads me to regard this estimate as only just. he is capable of any devotion or sacrifice that would not require faithful, patient industry, and a recognition of the hard facts and conditions of human life in tins world. He has always preferred illusions to truth.

At a meeting of a greenback club a few weeks ago, after our friend had made a speech in which representations of the woes of the unemployed millions of American workingmen were mingled with glowing millennial prophecies of the good time coming, “when the people shall have buried the capitalist and the politician in one wide, deep grave,” an old farmer gave his neighbors his view of the state of the country: “ The man who works for money and then saves it will have it, but the man who spends good working-days talking politics will never have much of anything. It’s well enough for neighbors to talk over these things on Saturday evenings down at the store, specially if there ’s anybody there that knows anything about such matters; but a good many men about here would rather talk all day on the streets about the hard times and the meanness of the bond-holders than to do an honest day’s work. T have been fanning here, in the edge of the village, for fifteen years. Before that I farmed in Northern New York. Flave always hired one or two hands. Men do not generally work so well of late years as before the war. The high wages just after the war seemed to spoil a good many of them. They acted as if they thought they were working entirely for their own interest, and not at all for mine. One of my hands told me once — that was in 1 86a or 1866 — that while he could make three dollars a day he would n’t stand natch orderin’ around from anybody. I discharged him at oftee, for I thought he might soon conclude that he owned the farm, instead of me. I always hired men from New York (where I used to live), for six months or a year at a time, till three years ago my wife and I thought, that as so many men here were out of employment, and there was real distress on account of it, I ought to give my neighbors a chance to do whatever work I had for hired men. But it has been unprofitable for me, and lias not seemed to do them much good. T have not found many men who were ready to go to work at any particular time. Some who had complained bitterly of (he hard times, and of not being employed, engaged to work for me, but they never came. Others came so late in the morning and worked so leisurely that it made me tired to see their movements. One man made greenback speeches to me nearly till one day ; they were pret ty good speeches, too, — of the kind. At night 1 paid him, and told liim 1 did not feel comfortable in having a man at work in my fields who could speak so well as he. I fe was very poor, and needed every cent be could make, but I would have paid him pretty good wages to stay away rather than have him on my place. I have tried to have some men work for me who get help from the town in winter, but I never could get much out of them.”

It is a little more than ten years since a sturdy young friend of mine, whom the neighbors called Jim, bought sixty acres of land about two miles from a thriving country town in one of the largest States. It was high ground, lying on the first “ bench ” or elevation above a river valley or “ bottom,” to use terms common in that region. It had been rendered nearly worthless for agriculture by the use of the upper stratum of clay over most of its surface in the manufacture of brick. Then it had been for a long time part of an unsettled estate belonging to non-resident heirs, and, as nobody took care of it, excavations were made upon it for earth to fill up low-lying lots, and for road-making, till it was as rough and uninviting a place as one would see in a day’s ride:,—made up mostly of irregular hillocks of clay, small ponds, and tracts of mire. At last it was to be sold, and this young fellow, who had just attained 1«is majority, was the purchaser. He was an orphan, free after he was sixteen years of age to make his own living, and without a dollar in tlie world, or any possession but sound health and a strong will. He bad at that time gone into the army, and after the war was over he had worked on the farms and in the stone quarries in the vicinity, and in these live years had saved enough to make a good first payment on this piece of land. He had now to improve his property and finish paying for it. He had a surveyor look over the ground and advise about, drains. Then he bought a little scrub mule and an old cart, as be was determined not to go in debt for anything besides the laud. He began digging down banks, opening ditches, and filling up ponds. he obtained permission to remove the earth thrown out in enlarging and extending a mill-race not far away, and engaged in carting this on to his land. He planted every foot of Ids ground that would produce anything, and labored early and late to bring more of it into a state of fitness for cultivation. When obliged to have money, he worked for a few days in the stone quarries. He put up a little cabin on his own ground, and brought an old negro woman from the town to keep bouse for him.

I sometimes saw him in those days, going out to the cabin on Sunday afternoons for a little talk with him. The old woman went to church regularly on Sunday morning, and Jim went along, because, as he said, it kept, fellows away whom he did not wish to associate with. 1 thought this a good reason, and did not press him for others. He did not use tobacco nor any kind of strong drink. “ The fact is,” he said, ” vices are luxuries, and I can’t afford to have any.' I found that his reputation among the farmers and business men was excellent for industry and faithfulness. One old man told me that Jim lost, less time in getting at his work than any other hand he had ever employed. “ He 11 be in the middle of a job, goin’ on steady and regular, while other men are sort o’ preparin’ to get ready.”

Last year I visited Jim again. Walking out to his place, T met, him driving a span of gigantic mules harnessed to a wagon-load of stone. He stopped his team, and sprang off his load, in order to greet me. Then, as there was a long reach of level road ahead, he invited me to share his seat, and we talked of old times, of (lie state of the country, and of his affairs. He had made the last payment for his place some months before, owned the team he was driving, and had made various improvements on the land, as he would show me in the afternoon. He told me, among other things, that a few years before he had bought, for a merely nominal sum, the privilege of cleaning the streets of the neighboring town, removing the sweepings to his place for their value as fertilizing material. He said the streets had not been cleaned before, in any thorough or systematic way, and that at, first he could not induce even idle men who were in quest of employment to assist in cleaning them for good wages. u No,” said one of the colored men, “ I ’se had pretty hard times; I ’se had to git down pretty low, but I ’se never come to that.” But Jim soon changed that by going into town on Saturday, when the streets were full of people, and loading up his vart before a crowd of wondering boys. One or two acquaintances jeered goodnaturedly; but Jim soon extended his operations, and hired men and boys to collect tlie street-sweepings, litter from stables and barns, and rubbish from door-vards, all of which enriched his land, and left the town one of the cleanest I have seen, whereas it was formerly a very dirty one. “ You see,” said he, “ my ground will bear a deal of fertilizing. It has a clay subsoil, and will keep all T give it.”

In the afternoon we looked over his place together. There was hardly a trace of its old appearance left. All the ground had been brought under cultivation; a barn had been built, trees planted, and the cabin enlarged. I saw a work-bench under a shed, and stopped to look at the tools. “ Yes,” said Jim, “ our workingmen buy too many tilings; buy tilings that they ought to make for them solves. I’ve saved a good many dollars here, and have n’t lost any time, for I should have to go twice to town for each job of repairing done there.” In the house the furniture was nearly all home-made. (T have been in scores of the homes of unemployed workingmen, in different parts of our country, during the last five years, where the chairs, tables, and bedsteads were all worn out and breaking down, so that in many instances there was not a safe or comfortable seal in the house. Yet the furniture had all been bought of dealers af high prices, if we consider its quality and its capacity for use, — or rather foi going to pieces, —and these workingmen were not able to repair it, or even to make new stools on which to sit while eating their food. They had been at work in shops, mills, or factories, and when these closed had so little power of self-help that months of idleness passed without anything being done to make their homes move comfortable. In such eases everything that comes into the house, or that is used about it, must be bought., and requires money for its purchase.)

The old colored woman was still housekeeper. On shelves against, the wall I saw two or three volumes of Gray’s Botanies, with some recent books on cliem* istry, geology, and mineralogy. “ I thought I would learn something about my own ground and what grows on it. I have given very little time to these things, — a few minutes now and then after dinner, or while the mules were resting; but it has been a kind of rest to me when T was tired to look for things, and then try to learn about them after I had found them. I was surprised to find so many different kinds of plants on this small piece of ground. 1 have found several which the books say are rare, and it is likely' there are many that 1 have not happened to see.”

“ Did you have no instruction? ”

“ Only from the books, at first, but they are very plain. All one needs is a start. I was plowing here one 'lay, when a man came along and asked if he might walk over the field and look at what grew on my ground. I said, Yes, and asked if T might go along. So I let my team stand, for I thought it worth while to leave my work for an hour if T could learn something. The gentleman knew about plants, and gave me some good bints, and said the real good of snob studies was in the discipline or cultivation that we get by observing and comparing things. It was an hour well spent. The gentleman advised me to make a list or record of all the plants and trees growing here, and also of the different minerals and kinds of stone; but I do not get along very fast, with it. Sometimes I wish I could have been here before the place was worked over so much.” There were many geological and mineralogiyal specimens in a little cabinet; a few' of them such as would be highly valued by' collectors. 111 have come really to love the place,” said my young friend, “but I am going to leave it soon.”

“ Why,” said I, “ why is that? ”

“Well, it. is getting to be very comfortable here, and easy, and I am too young for that. Whenever I see a rough, wild piece of ground, that has never had any chance, I feel like taking hold to see what can be made of it. We never know what is in such a wild, forsaken place till we begin to work with it; then the land seems to take hold and do the best it can. There’s a very rough place out among the hills, a few miles from here, that I should like to make a partnership with for a few years. It’s entirely different from this, so I shall like it for that. It’s full of rocks, and is very uneven, with another kind of soil, and I shall have to learn nearly everything new. I have concluded to buy' it.”

In the evening Jim harnessed his mules and drove me to town. As we left his gate I said, 11 You like mules best?”

He laughed, and answered, “They are not handsome, but in the mud and on rough ground they can do what’s wanted of them, and are worth more than fine horses. I think, sometimes, there’s a good deal of hard mule work wanted in this country. I know when I came here I needed about as much straightening out as this piece of ground ; and you remember how it looked. The mules have helped me a little besides improving the place.”

“ Have von not wished you had some easier work? Some of your neighbors here, I believe, think men ought not to work so m ucli or so hard. ’7

“ I do not know how it may be with others, — though I think most young fellow’s are much alike, — but it takes about twelve hours a day to keep me up to what a man ought to be. T am sometimes almost frightened to find how fast the weeds will grow in a fellow’s disposition with a little idleness. All sorts of unprofitable and dreamy thoughts come up, and get stronger and stronger. It would nol take long to feel meddlesome and envious and sour and discontented. I believe I should soon be a savage if it were not for hard work.”

11 Do you see much of other young men here ? ”

“ Most of them belong to so many societies in the town that they have no time for anything but their meetings. They wanted me to join all of them, and I asked what they did. So they told me their course of proceeding for the evening. That might do very well for one time, I thought, but they said they did the same things over again every time they came together, and that would not do for me. The young fellows that belong to these societies don’t seem to know what to do with themselves when they are at home or alone.”

4 4 Do they seem to be well informed ? ”

4 4 None of us are well informed. A few of us know a little of a good many things, but we know nothing to the bottom. And now this reminds me of what I have for a long time wished to ask you. What shall I read? What can T tell these young men to read? Some of them are not satisfied with the way they are going on. One day I was thinking how reasonable it was that I should know something about the ground I was working over every day, and I wished I could know about the history of this very spot all the way through the old ages, and how it had come to be what it is now. I thought it might help me to know what to do with it. And I should like to know about human society, especially in our own country,—about the changes and steps by which it has come to be what it is now. I can’t find out very well wliat it is now, — what is the real condition of things. I see different people working in different directions. Some of these movements must be wrong, and I should like to know which I ought to help and work with. 1 can’t read the great newspapers. They are too large, and it would take more time than workingmen can spare to read them. The writers seem to think people have nothing else to do but read their long articles. Is there any rather small paper that will tell the truth and explain things plainly, that I can read and show to the young men about here? ”

(The same inquiry has been addressed to me hundreds of times during the last dozen years by workingmen in nearly all the Northern States, when I have conversed with them about the state of the country, and the interests and duties of lheir class. I have always had to answer that although we have a few invaluable publications which are organs of wise and sound thinking, they are for the most part addressed to the cultivated classes, and are more elaborate and bookish, as well as more costly, than reading for workingmen should be; and that there is as yet no means for the education of the workingmen which such a paper would supply. Of late I have to reflect that, although 1 cannot yet point workingmen to such a newspaper as they need, hundreds of thousands of them receive each week one that is devoted to the propagation of theories of government and a philosophy of life which, if generally accepted by its readers, must not only stimulate the growth of erroneous opinions, but also lower the tone and standard of character among American workingmen; and this organ of illusion and destructive error, although as large as our leading American newspapers, is supplied to subscribers for the price of twenty-five cents per year. Why should sound and wholesome teaching cost so much more than that which is mischievous? Although the exponents of prehistoric or uncivilized thought claim to be the friends and representatives of the poor, they are not without means for the propagation of their ideas. They give their publishing enterprises a vigorous support, and are ready to pay large sums for the services of acceptable speakers.) I told my young friend I thought there would he such a paper before many years had passed, and advised him to ask two oi1 three of the most thoughtful young men to join him in taking one or two of the best newspapers, and to buy such numbers of the magazines as contain articles of special interest and value; and then we parted.

My observation of the life and thought of workingmen impresses me with the conviction that the cultivated men of the country are not, in a sufficient degree, in communication with the great body of the laboring people; and that a more direct and vital relation between them would he a great gain to both classes. The things which our best and wisest men are saying to each other should he addressed, and in suitable forms of utterance might be addressed, to the workingmen of the nation.

There is danger that we shall accept as necessary and inevitable the permanence of the conditions which have produced our present difficulties; that even cur leaders, those who l' in their motion are full-welling fountain-heads of change,” may not see how imperative is the need of a system of education that shall be so disciplinary of the mass of the people as to make them truly self-governing; or, in other words, to make purely democratic institutions compatible with progress in civilization. Existing means and agencies for the political education of our people are very inadequate. We have depended upon our common schools for results which they alone could not possibly produce.

I suppose few intelligent men now think our chief peril is from communistic outbreaks or revolution. But, it is somewhat remarkable that people should so readily conclude that if we are not threatened by this particular danger we have no cause for apprehension; and that the condition and prospects of our country are therefore, on the whole, satisfactory and encouraging. About the utmost mischief in the power of communistic mobs would be the burning of some of our cities, and to accomplish even so much as that they would have to be aided by the accidental concurrence of many favoring conditions. But history shows us that nations have often been lulled into fancied security by their deliverance from one form of danger, while from sources unnoticed or deemed contemptible more serious mischiefs arose, and wrought lasting injury.

Are not the conditions of intellectual soil and atmosphere favorable for the growth of plausible fallacies, of illusions about what can be accomplished by legislation in lightening the burdens of poverty and toil, and bringing back the days of prosperity to a suffering people,” — illusions which will lead the minds of men away from the study of the real problems of the time, and make them nore and more impatient and unteachable? May we not reasonably anticipate a long period of wasteful and often very perilous experiments (if we can rightly use the word “ experiment ” for what is the result of mere impulse and recklessness; for what is undertaken without foresight, carried forward without critical observation or intelligence, and looked back to when it is past with no increase of wisdom from experience),— experiments which will greatly exhaust the national vitality and resources, and which art; therefore too costly to be undertaken if they can be avoided? But it is common among cultivated people, who feel, not unreasonably, a kind of awe of the vastness and complexity of our modern life, to urge that each of these mischievous fallacies and illusions “ will play its part in the education of the people,” and that the result of this educational process is what we must chiefly depend upon for the increase of wisdom among us, and for the development of such qualities in the national character as shall secure our continued progress in civilization.

Let us examine this briefly. We have need of clear thinking here. A trust in events, in general conditions, and in the influence of the total environment of society, as the chief means or sources of change, is one of the prominent features of modern cultivated thought. A,s it is now held, this trust, with the scientific and philosophical theories with which it is correlated, marks an important stage in intellectual and social evolution, hut it admits of modification and farther development. We are apt to he somewhat dazed and bewildered by the modern revelations of the immensity of the universe. Everywhere we encounter a tangle and maze of elements, conditions, and relations, practically of infinite extent; and in the study of civilization, or the evolution of society, this impression of the slow working of resistless forces, through a limitless complexity of causes and effects, recurs continually, and with especial emphasis. If everything around us is the result of movements which began when the primordial atoms floated together, where is there room for us to put in our hand ? What can we do but wait for eventsV The moral or social world seems to many of the cultivated minds of our time a great stage for tlie vast spectacular drama of history. It is one of their illusions that they are only spectators and critics of the play. But the vast, eternal movement easily incorporates human and personal effort. A man’s thought or work becomes, in the measure of his wisdom and personal vitality, a factor in the life of his time, a source of change, a cause which transmits some effect to the near future.

But, more specifically, men and nations ai*e commonly educated by events only as the events are wisely interpreted ami explained by competent teachers and guides. There is no magical power in the mere succession of occurrences of any kind to give men wisdom. One insanity or popular delusion may succeed another, leading to any number of disastrous experiments, and the masses may garner no stores of valuable experience from such fateful seed-sowing, unless the time brings forward teachers who can show to the people the meaning, origin., and tendencies of contemporary events; who can come to their work with a power of analvsis which will enable them to distinguish the several factors of the life of the time, and a synthetic judgment by which to estimate the national character, position, and capabilities. The groat need of our people to-day is precisely this wise interpretation of the events of the last twenty years, this competent, explanation of current legislation and the other important factors of our national life and thought. Even partisans should be able to appreciate the fact that much of the prevalent dissatisfaction with the older political organizations has been produced by the partisan interpretations of political issues and events so persistently advanced by the newspapers and orators of both parties. The substitution of unreal for real issues has been so general that the people have nearly everywhere recognized it, and many of those whom they formerly trusted are not now believed even when they te.ll the truth.