278. A Hard Life

A Hard Life

Isa_41:7 : ’93So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth the anvil.’94

You have seen in factories a piece of mechanism passing from hand to hand, and from room to room, and one mechanic will smite it, and another will flatten it, and another will chisel it, and another will polish it, until the work be done. And so the prophet describes the idols of olden times as being made, part of them by one hand, part of them by another hand. Carpentry comes in, gold-beating comes in, smithery comes in, and three or four kinds of mechanism are employed. ’93So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer, him that smiteth the anvil.’94 When they met, they talked over their work, and they helped each other on with it. It was a very bad kind of business; it was making idols which were an insult to the Lord of heaven. I have thought if men in bad work can encourage each other, ought not men engaged in honest artisanship and mechanism speak words of good cheer?

Men see in their own work hardships and trials, while they recognize no hardships or trials in anybody else’92s occupation. Every man’92s burden is to him the heaviest, and every woman’92s task seems to her the hardest. We find people wanting to get other occupations and professions. I suppose, when the merchant comes home at night, his brain hot with the anxieties of commercial toil, disappointed and vexed, agitated about the excitements in the money markets, he says, ’93Oh, I wish I were a mechanic! When his day’92s work is done, the mechanic lies down; he is healthy in body, healthy in mind, and healthy in soul, but I can’92t sleep;’94 while, at that very moment, the mechanic is wishing he were a banker or a merchant. He says, ’93Then I could always have on select apparel; then I could move in the choicest circles; then I could bring up my children in a very different sphere from that in which I am compelled to bring them up.’94

Now, the beauty of our holy religion is that God looks down upon all the occupations and professions, and while I cannot understand your annoyances and you cannot understand mine, God understands them all. He knows all about the troubles of these men mentioned in my text’97the carpenter who encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer, and the gold-beaters.

I will speak this morning of the general hardships of the working-classes. You may not belong to this class, but you are bound as Christian men and women to know their sorrows and sympathize with them, and as political economists to come to their rescue. There is great danger that the prosperous classes, because of the bad things that have been said by the false friends of labor, shall conclude that all this labor trouble is a ’93hullabaloo’94 about nothing. Do not go off on that tangent. You would not, neither would I, submit without protest to the oppressions to which many of our laborers are subjected. You do a great wrong to the laboring classes if you hold them responsible for the work of the scoundrelly anarchists. You cannot hate their deeds more thoroughly than do all the industrial classes. At the head of the chief organ of the Knights of Labor, in big letters, I find the following vigorous disclaimer:

Let it be understood by all the world that the Knights of Labor have no affiliation, association, sympathy or respect for the band of cowardly murderers, cut-throats and robbers, known as anarchists, who sneak through the country like midnight assassins, stirring up the passions of ignorant foreigners, unfurling the red flag of anarchy and causing riot and bloodshed. Parsons, Spies, Fielding, Most and all their followers, sympathizers, aiders and abettors should be summarily dealt with. They are entitled to no more consideration than wild beasts. The leaders are cowards and their followers are fools.

You may do your duty toward your employees, but many do not, and the biggest business firm in America today is Grip, Gouge, Grind and Company. Look, for instance, at the woes of the female toilers, who have not made any strike and who are dying by the thousands, and dying by inches. I read a few lines from the last Labor Report, just out, as specimens of what female employees endure. ’93Poisoned hands and cannot work. Had to sue the man for fifty cents!’94 Another: ’93About four months of the year can, by hard work, earn a little more than three dollars per week.’94 Another: ’93She now makes wrappers at one dollar per dozen; can make eight wrappers per day.’94 Another: ’93We girls in our establishment have the following fines imposed: for washing your hands, twenty-five cents; eating a piece of bread at your loom, one dollar; also for sitting on a stool, taking a drink of water, and many trifling things too numerous to mention.’94 ’93Some of the worst villains of our cities are the employers of these women. They beat them down to the last penny, and try to cheat them out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is sharply inspected, the most insignificant flaw is picked out, and the wages refused and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back. The Woman’92s Protective Union reports a case where one of the poor souls, finding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to change employers, and went to get her pay for work done. The employer says, ’93I hear you are going to leave me?’94 ’93Yes,’94 she said, ’93and I have come to get what you owe me.’94 He made no answer. She said: ’93Are you not going to pay me?’94 ’93Yes.’94 he said, ’93I will pay you,’94 and he kicked her down stairs. I never swore a word in all my life, but I confess that when I read that I felt a stirring within me that was not at all devotional.

By what principle of justice is it that women in many of our cities get only two-thirds as much as men, and in many cases only half? Here is the gigantic injustice, that for work equally well, if not better done, woman receives far less compensation than man. Start with the National Government. Women clerks in Washington get nine hundred dollars for doing that for which men receive eighteen hundred dollars. The wheel of oppression is rolling over the necks of thousands of women who are at this moment in despair about what they are to do. Many of the largest mercantile establishments of our cities are accessory to these abominations, and from their large establishments there are scores of souls being pitched off into death, and their employers know it. Is there a God? Will there be a judgment? I tell you, if God rises up to redress woman’92s wrongs, many of our large establishments will be swallowed up quicker than a South American earthquake ever took down a city. God will catch these oppressors between the two millstones of his wrath, and grind them to powder.

I speak more fitly of woman’92s wrongs because she has not been heard in the present agitation. You know more of what men have suffered. I said to a colored man who, in Missouri, last March, came into my room in the morning to build my fire: ’93Sam, how much wages do you people get around here?’94 He replied: ’93Ten dollars a month, sir!’94 I asked: ’93Have you a family?’94 ’93Yes,’94 said he, ’93wife and children.’94 Think of it’97a hundred and twenty dollars a year to support a family on! My friends, there is in this world something awfully a-twist. When I think of these things I am not bothered as some of my brethren with the abstract questions as to why God let sin come into the world. The only wonder with me is that God does not smash this world up and start another in place of it.

One great trial that the working-classes feel is physical exhaustion. There are athletes who go out to their work at six or seven o’92clock in the morning, and come back at night as fresh as when they started. They turn their back upon the shuttle or the forge or the rising wall, and they come away elastic and whistling. That is the exception. I have noticed that when the factory bell taps for six o’92clock, the hardworking man wearily puts his arm into his coat-sleeve and starts for home. He sits down in the family circle, resolved to make himself agreeable, to be the means of culture and education to his children, but in five minutes he is sound asleep. He is fagged out’97strength of body, mind, and soul utterly exhausted. He rises in the morning only half rested from the toil. Indeed, he will never have any perfect rest in this world until he gets into one narrow spot which is the only perfect rest for the human body in this world. I think they call it a grave!

Has toil frosted the color of your cheeks? Has it taken all spontaneity from your laughter? Has it subtracted the spring from your step and the luster from your eye until it has left you only half the man you were when you first put your hand on the hammer and your foot on the wheel? To-morrow, in your place of toil, listen, and you will hear a voice above the hiss of the furnace and the groan of the foundry and the clatter of the shuttle’97a voice not of machinery, nor of the task-master, but the voice of an all-sympathetic God, as he says, ’93Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’94 Let all men and women of toil remember that this work will soon be over. Have they not heard that there is a great holiday coming? Oh, that home, and no long walk to get to it! Oh, that bread, and no sweating toil necessary to earn it! Oh, these deep wells of eternal rapture, and no heavy buckets to draw up! I wish they would put their head on this pillow stuffed with the down from the wing of all God’92s promises. There remains a rest for the people of God.

Do you say, ’93We have sewing-machines now in our great cities, and the trouble is gone’94? No; it is not. I see a great many women wearing themselves out amid the hardships of the sewing-machine. A Christian man went into a house of a good deal of destitution in New York, and he saw a poor woman there with a sick child and he was telling the woman how good a Christian she ought to be, and how she ought to put her trust in God. ’93Oh,’94 she said, ’93I have no God; I work from Monday morning until Saturday night and I get no rest, and I never hear anything that does my soul any good; and, when Sunday comes, I haven’92t any bonnet that I can wear to church, and I have sometimes got down to pray and then I got up, saying to my husband, ’91My dear, there’92s no use of my praying; I am so distracted I can’92t pray; it don’92t do any good!’92 Oh, sir, it is very hard to work on as we people do from year to year, and to see nothing bright ahead, and to see the poor little child getting thinner and thinner, and my man almost broken down, and to be getting no nearer to God, but to be getting farther away from him. Oh, if I were only ready to die!’94 May God comfort all who toil with the needle and the sewing-machine, and have compassion on those borne down under the fatigues of life.

Another great trial is privation of taste and sentiment. I do not know of anything much more painful than to have a fine taste for painting and sculpture and music and glorious sunsets and the expanse of the blue sky, and yet not to be able to get the dollar for the oratorio or to get a picture or to buy one’92s way into the country to look at the setting sun and. at the bright heavens. While there are men in great affluence, who have around them all kinds of luxuries in art, themselves entirely unable to appreciate these luxuries’97buying their books by the square foot, their pictures sent to them by some artist who is glad to get the miserable daubs out of the studio’97there are multitudes of refined, delicate women who are born artists, and shall reign in the kingdom of heaven as artists, who are denied every picture and every sweet song and every musical instrument. Oh, let me cheer such persons by telling them to look up and behold the inheritance that God has reserved for them!

Then there are a great many who suffer not only in privation of their taste, but in the apprehensions and the oppressive surroundings of life that were well described by an English writer. He said: ’93To be a poor man’92s child, and look through the rails of the playground, and envy richer boys for the saks of their many books, and yet to be doomed to ignorance. To be apprenticed to some harsh stranger, and feel forever banished from a mother’92s tenderness and a sister’92s love. To work when very weary, and work when the heart is sick and the head is sore. To see a wife or a darling child wasting away, and not to be able to get the best advice. To think that the better food or purer air might set her up again, but that food you cannot buy, that air you must never hope to breathe. To be obliged to let her die. To come home from the daily task some evening, and see her sinking. To sit up all night in hope to catch again those precious words you might have heard could you have afforded to stay at home all day, but never hear them. To have no mourners at the funeral, and even to have to carry on your own shoulder through the merry streets the light deal coffin. To see huddled into a promiscuous hole the dust which is so dear to you, and not venture to mark the spot by planted flower or lowliest stone.’94

But I have no time longer to dwell upon the hardships and the trials of those who toil with hand and foot, for I must go on to offer some grand and glorious encouragements, for such; and the first encouragement is, that one of the greatest safeguards against evil is plenty to do. When men sin against the law of their country, where do the police detectives go to find them? Not amid the dust of factories, not among those who have on their ’93overalls,’94 but among those who stand with their hands in their pockets around the doors of saloons and restaurants and taverns. Active employment is one of the greatest sureties for a pure and upright life. There are but very few men with character stalwart enough to endure protracted idleness.

I see a pool of water in the country, and I say, ’93Thou slimy, fetid thing, what does all this mean? Did I not see you playing with those shuttles and turning that grist-mill?’94 ’93Oh, yes,’94 says the water, ’93I used to earn my living.’94 I say again, ’93Then what makes you look so sick? Why are you covered with this green scum? Why is your breath so vile?’94 ’93Oh,’94 says the water, ’93I have nothing to do. I am disgusted with shuttles and wheels. I am going to spend my whole lifetime here, and while yonder stream sings on its way down the mountain side, here I am left to fester and die accursed of God because I have nothing to do!’94 Sin is an old pirate that bears down on vessels whose sails are flapping idly in the wind. The arrow of sin has hard work to puncture the leather of a working apron. Be encouraged by the fact that your shops, your rising walls, your anvils are fortresses in which you may hide, and from which you may fight against the temptations of your life. Morning, noon, and night, Sundays and week-days, thank God for plenty to do.

Another encouragement is the fact that their families are going to have the very best opportunity for development and usefulness. That may sound strange to you, but the children of fortune are very apt to turn out poorly. In nine cases out of ten the lad finds out if a fortune is coming, by twelve years of age; he finds out there is no necessity for toil, and he makes no struggle, and a life without struggle goes into dissipation or stupidity. You see the sons of wealthy parents going out into the world, inane, nerveless, dyspeptic, or they are incorrigible and reckless, while the son of the porter that kept the gate learns his trade, gets a robust physical constitution, achieves high moral culture, and stands in the front rank of Church and State.

Who are the men mightiest in our Legislatures and Congress and Cabinets? Did they walk up the steep of life in silver slippers? Oh, no! The mother put him down under the tree in the shade, while she spread the hay. Many of these mighty men ate out of an iron spoon and drank out of the roughest earthenware’97their whole life a forced march. They never had any luxuries until, after a while, God gave them affluence and usefulness and renown as a reward for their persistence. Remember, then, that though you may have poor surroundings and small means for the education of your children, they are actually starting under better advantages than though you had a fortune to give them. Hardship and privation are not a damage to them, but an advantage. Akenside rose to his eminent sphere from his father’92s butcher-shop. Robert Burns started as a shepherd. Prideaux used to sweep Exeter College. Gilford was a shoemaker, and the son of every man of toil may rise to heights of intellectual and moral power if he will only trust God and keep busy.

Again, I offer as encouragement that you have so many opportunities of gaining information. Plato gave thirteen hundred dollars for two books. The Countess of Anjou gave two hundred sheep for one volume. Jerome ruined himself financially by buying one copy of Origen. Oh, the contrast! Now there are tens of thousands of pens gathering up information. Type-setters are calling for ’93copy.’94 All our cities quake with the rolling cylinders of the Harpers and the Appletons and the Lippincotts and the Petersons and the Ticknors, and you now buy more than Benjamin Franklin ever knew for fifty cents! There are people who toil from seven o’92clock in the morning until six o’92clock at night who know more about anatomy than the old physiologists, and who know more about astronomy than the old philosophers. If you should take the learned men of two hundred years ago and put them on one bench, and take twenty children from the common schools in Brooklyn and put them down on the other bench, the children could examine the philosophers, and the philosophers could not examine the children. ’93Ah!’94 says Isaac Newton, coming up and talking to some intelligent lad of seven years, ’93What is that?’94 ’93Oh, that is a rail-train!’94 ’93What is that?’94 ’93That is a telegraph.’94 ’93What is that?’94 ’93It is a telephone.’94 ’93Dear me! I think I shall go back to my bed in the dust, for I am bewildered and my head turns.’94 Rejoice that you have all these opportunities of information spread out before you, and that, seated in your chair at home, by the evening light, you can look over all nations and see the ascending morn of a universal day.

One more encouragement: your toils in this world are only intended to be a discipline by which you shall be prepared for heaven. ’93Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy,’94 and tell you that Christ, the carpenter of Nazareth, is the working man’92s Christ. You get his love once in your heart, O working man! and you can sing on the wall in the midst of the storm, and in the shop amid the shoving of the plane, and down in the mine amid the plunge of the crowbar, and on shipboard while climbing ratlines. If you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, he will count the drops of sweat on your brow. He knows every ache and every pain you have ever suffered in your worldly occupation. Are you weary? He will give you rest. Are you sick? He will give you health. Are you cold? He will give you health. Are you cold? He will wrap around you the warm mantle of his eternal love.

And besides that, my friends, you must remember, that all this is only preparatory’97prefatory and introductory. I see a great multitude before the throne of God. Who are they? ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93those are, princes; they must have always been in a royal family; they dress like princes, they walk like princes, they are princes; there are none of the common people there; none of the people that ever toiled with hand and foot!’94 Ah! you are mistaken. Who is that bright spirit before the throne? Why, that was a sewing-girl who, work as she could, could make but two shillings the day. What are those kings and queens before the throne? Many of them went up from Birmingham mills and from Lowell carpet factories. And now I hear a sound like the rustling of robes, and now I see a taking up of harps as though they were going to strike a thanksgiving anthem, and all the children of the saw, and the disciples of the shuttle are in glorious array, and they lift a song so clear and sweet I wish you could hear it. It would make the pilgrim’92s burden very light, and the pilgrim’92s journey very short. Not one weak voice or hoarse throat in that great assemblage. The accord is as perfect as though they had been all eternity practising, and I ask them what is the name of that song they sing before the throne, and they tell me it is the song of the redeemed working-people. And the angel cries out: ’93Who are these so near the throne?’94 and the answer comes back: ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation, and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage