BIDE YOUR TIME. Bide your time,-the morn is breaking, Man shall fetter man no longer! Liberty shall march sublime! Every moment makes you stronger,— Firm, unshrinking, bide your time! Bide your time,-one false step taken Perils all you yet have done; Men or States to greatness climb,- black slavery was abolished in the United States) that a man who was pecuniarily embarrassed took a boat from Missouri to New Orleans having with him his daughter then about seventeen. In conversation with some of the passengers he told them he was going to sell his daughter to pay off his indebtedness. A feeling of shame and indignation arose among the passengers and they remonstrated with 'Tis not by a rash endeavor him. He answered, I must sell her or have nothing left. Thus he would sell his own flesh and blood, lose his own child for the almighty dollar. No doubt, should any of these scabs see any person trying to sell their own children into slavery they would cry shame, and hiss and howl, yet they are bringing their children to that point where they can barely exist and not have as good food as did the black slave and if they are sick these so called men who furnish them with plenty of work will nei- The peerlesss son of all her years has found ther furnish doctor, medicine, nor attendant. They may die and they will not bury them. No, they care not for either body or soul. Bide your time, your worst transgression Were to strike, and strike in vain; He whose arm would smite oppression Must not need to smite again! Rashness is the coward's crime; When it comes-but, bide your time! HUGO. The lion of the flock is gone, and France is left to weep; eternal sleep; The creatures of the "Coup d' Etat" again shrink from his shade; His genius Canoized the pen, and sheathed the tyrant's blade. The tears of France now fall like rain upon his ccffin plate; The ery goes up: "Here lies the man that laughed at kingly state;" Let lilies bloom above his grave, the emblems of his purity; song of man's futurity. BROTHERHOOD. But Mr. Editor I will stop. The preamble of the Knights of Labor and of many other societies give us a good ground work, and what we must do as men is to try and do Nor time, nor change. shall ever dim his right to ourselves and justice to our employers, and while the employer may widely differ from us, yet by patience and perseverance the day will come when the Goddess of Liberty will no longer declare equality to all men, and yet, there are under her wing, millions of half-clad half-starved men, women and children, while others are rolling in their thousands and millions not knowing how to excel their rich neighbor. Yours, H. JAMES. "Improve your opportunities," said Bonaparte to a school of young men; "every hour lost now is a chance of future misfortune." It The doctrine of brotherhood cannot but be salutary in its influence upon the lives of men. It affords an effective rebuke to human exclusiveness and human pride. shows that the distinctions are very narrow and brief that divide men. It cultivates sympathies. It indicates kind and charitable judgement. We cannot be hard on a brother's faults, when we think of our own. We cannot but pity him when we think of our own need of pity. It is the inspiration of all philantrophic endeavor.-A. J. Pat erson. SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF STRIKES. Some working people and friends of labor are looking at the present struggle, between capital and labor, going on all over the country with an undefined feeling of dread, and apprehensions of impending disaster to the cause of la bor, and look into the future with gloomy forebodings of evil. No doubt the situation is serious and perplexing, and fraught with danger but, even though those engaged in the van of the present battle may be borne down and trampled on, which Heaven forbid; the cause of labor will not be permenantly checked, or even seriously impeded, for deep down in the great large hearts of the toilers are imbedded the seeds of knowledge; the truth has taken root, and will germinate and grow on to a strong, mighty, over-whelming idea that no power of concentrated tyranny can successfully combat. "The double night of ages, and of her night's daughter, ignorance, that wrapt and wrap all round us:"Is being rapidly dispelled, and the present struggle is the dawn breaking through the darkness that enshrouded the lot of the toilers. The light has penetrated the gloomy recesses of the shop and factory and revealed to the workers, in all its enormity "that vile ambition which built up between man and his hopes an adamantine wall." The recently published words of Henry George are full of hope; he says: "No matter who wins in the present fight the cause of Right will not suffer, as the eyes of the poeple are being opened to the great injustice of the existing industrial system, and an unjust system cannot long survive a knowledge of its injustice." Strikes are bad and ought to be avoided if possible; they are one of the swiftly vanishing relics of a barbarous era, when brute force was applied to the remedy of all evils. But as long as capital maintains the dogged attitude it has assumed and will not meet labor on an equality when arbitration is possble, so long will strikes be resorted to, and capital alone should be compelled to sustain the responsibility. Gen. Grant once said; "perpetual peace can be attained only by runs through conflict." In like manner arbitration will only be made possible by repeated strikes. When the ranks of labor are compact, resolute and number all those who toil on their roll call, the fear of a strike coupled with certain defeat to the capitalist, the dread of such a consequence will prove the best argument to induce capital to agree to arbitration. Considered as educators, strikes are a stirring power; they waken thought and attract attention when peaceable means would be sneered at with contempt. The object for which a strike may be inaugurated may be defeated, and the strikers suffer, but strikes are never total failures, and each one brings us nearer the culmination point and final solution. As a result of the present strike, we hear of the ministers of the gospel making the labor troubles the text of their Sunday sermons, and admonishing the worshippers of mammon to heed the voice of the people before it is too late. A few years ago the press of the Country reviled or intirely ignored the labor movement. Labor conventions passed unnoticed. The voice of labor was unheard or unheeded, and scarcely an utterance of prominent labor reformers could find its way into even the remotest corners of the daily press. To-day we see the dispatches of the associated press freighted with news of labor strikes and struggles. The words of Powderly, Turner and others prominent in the labor matters are eagerly watched for and pounced upon, and heralded from one end of the country to the other. Editorial writers, high and low, from the little village weekly to the great city dailies devote labored articles to the labor problem; and though the majority give utterance to sentiments favorable to the oppressor, still they aid in the process of education. They aid education because they attract attention and thought to the labor movement; thought leads to investigation and investigation honestly persued finally leads to the truth. The great underlying principle on which the industrial system is founded is discovered and its fallacy exposed, and then the structure itself will come down with a crash swept away by a cyclone of popular indignation. Out of the chaos resulting therefrom the good sense of the American people will found and erect a system more nearly just, that will give to each the full product of his labor and establish lasting, harmonious relations. Recently the chaplin of the House of Congress offered a prayer at opening which was a most emphatic denunciation of the selfishness of monopoly and a scathing rebuke to the wealthy for breach of trust and lack of patriotism. The prayer was so extraordinary, coming from such a source, and on such an opportune occasion that Congressman Grosvenor of Ohio asked unanimous consent to have it printed in the Congressional Record, but Congressman James of New York objected on the grounds that it was an incendiary speech. As I write news comes that Congress is working on a bill to provide for arbitration of difference between employers and employes engaged in inter-state commerce. Straws show which way the wind blows, and the incident mentioned show beyond doubt that the agitation and strife is bearing good fruit and that the seed cast out from the ranks of intelligent labor is taking root in the most unpromising soil, and their ideas finding echo in the most unexpected places. Be of good cheer friends, keep stout hearts, remember. "Freedom's battle once begun We do not stake all on the success or failure of a strike, it is only a side issue; there are mightier forces at our command and if we are true to our manhood and our interests we will use them with telling effect. The ballot is ours, and we have Public the power of numbers. opinion is ours, if we have the inteligence and tact to shape it. The mightiest power of all knowledge is ours if we but open our minds to receive it. Knowledge is a wonderous power, And stronger than the mind; BREFFNI. TERRENCE V. POWDERLY. The negotiations concerning the great Southwestern strike, if not yet crowned with success, have at least demonstrated the firmness, dignity, practical good sense and honesty of the supreme leader of the Knights of Labor organization. Grand Master Workman Terrence V. Powderly is not yet a middleaged man, but he has been a practical laborer and mechanic for nearly twenty-five years of his life. He was born of Irish parents, in Carbondale, Pa., January 24th, 1849. After attending school for six years, he went to work, at the age of thirteen, as a switch-tender for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. At seventeen he entered the machine-shop of the company, which he left in 1869 to find employment in the shops of the Deleware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, at Scranton. Working at lathe and forge during the day, and over the draughtingboard during the evening, he made himself a master mechanic, so that he might open a shop for himself whenever opportunity should offer. In 1870, Mr. Powderly joined the Machinists' and Blacksmiths' National Union, of which he was soon elected president; and about the same time he began the practical study of the labor problem. "With the introduction of labor-saving machinery," he says, "the trade was all cut up, so that a man who had served an apprenticeship of five years might be brought into competition with a machine run by, a boy and the boy would do the most and the best work. The machinist was being brought down to the level of the day laborer." Mr. Powderly's idea was, as he expresses it, to dignify the laborer. He believed that no organization could thrive until it included every class of laboring men; but the machinists did not at first take kindly to this proposition. In November, 1874, he was taken by a friend to a meeting of a local assembly of the Knights of Labor, then a secret organization. Here were gathered men of all trades and crafts; and Mr. Powderly, finding it his idea of labor organization, at once joined and entered heartily into its plans. He induced the Machinists and Blacksmiths' Union to go over in a body to the Knights, and thus Local Assembly No. 222 was organized in November, 1876. Half a dozen or more local assemblies having been formed in Lackawanna County, a district assembly was organized, with Mr. Powderly as secretary-a position which he has ever since retained from choice. The Order grew rapidly, West as well as East, and in January, 1878, the first General Assembly of the Knights of Labor was held at Reading, Pa. A constitution was adopted and Uriah S. Stevens, who founded the Order in 1869, was chosen Grand Master Workman. The following year at the convention held in St. Louis, Mr. Stevens was re-elected, and Mr. Powderly chossen to the second position of General Worthy Foreman. In 1879, at Chicago, upon the resignation of Mr. Stevens, Mr. Powderly was chosen Grand Master Workman; and he has been re-elected to that position each succeeding year, up to the present time. During these years he has given his entire attention to the labor cause, living on the modest salary of $1,500 paid him by the Order of Knights. He has virtually reorganized the Order, by effectively urging the abolition of oaths and removal of secrecy, he at once placed it on a basis of popular confidence; and the conduct of the vast and powerful body under his control during the trying difficulties of the past few months has secured it a high place in the sympathy and esteem of the community. The numerical strength of the organization cannot at present be closely estimated. The total membership throughout the country may be stated at not less than 500,000, and not more than 1,000,000; the latter being, in all probability, the nearer to the actual figure. The liquor traffic is not allowed representation in the Order; and plans are now in progres to bar out habitual drinkers as well. In person, Grand Master Powder. ly is of medium height, of somewhat scholarly and wholly unaggressive appearance. His speech is ready, clear, undogmatic, and pointed with Irish wit. Although something of a reader, and a concise, forcible writer, Mr. Powderly has gained his equipment for his special work through personal experience and inquiry amongst working people, rather than through books or communication with theorists. He has never traveled abroad, but has under consideration the offer of a commission from a newspaper syndicate to visit Europe and write, from his point of view, of the condition of the laboring classes there. Mr. Powderly was was married in 1876, but he has no children living.-Frank Leslies. THE SLLF-RIGHTEOUS CONVICTED. Several years ago, in a Western town, a young lawyer, a member of a large church, got drunk. The brethren said he must confess. He demurred. He knew the members to be good people, but they had their little faults, such as driving sharp bargains, screwing the laborer down to low wages, loaning money at illegal rates, misrepresenting articles they had for sale, etc. But they were good people, and pressed the lawyer to come before the meeting and own up his sin to have taken a glass too much, for they were temperance people and abhorred intemperance. The sinner went to confession, found a large gathering of brethren and sisters, whose bowed heads rose, and whose eyes glistened with pure delight as the lawyer began his confession. money." THE MAN WITH THE AX. We have no doubt that he has already made his appearance and knocked at the door of your Assembly for admittance. He wants his ax ground and he has come to the Knights to grind it. Perhaps he wants to be mayor, perhaps he doesn't aspire that high, and may be his aspirations are a great deal higher. That makes no difference. He is there for a personal purpose, and for the good of your Assembly we want to warn you against him. When his ax is ground he will desert you. If you do not grind it he will desert you, and we don't want any deserters in the camp. It is a great deal easier to keep a man out of the Assembly than it is to get him out after he once gets in. Use due discretion and when the man with the ax to grind comes, treat him as he deserves.- Workingmen's Advocate. SOME MOTHER'S CHILD. "I confess," he said, "that I At home, or away, in the alley or street, never took ten per cent for On that confession down went a brother's head with a groan. "I never turned a poor man from my door who needed food and sheltel." Down went another. "I confess I have never sold a skim-milk cheese for a new one; whereupon a woman shrieked for mercy. Wherever I chance in this wide world to meet A girl that is thoughtless, or a boy that is wild, My heart echoes softly: ""Tis some mother's child. And when I see those o'er whom long years have rolled, Whose hearts have grown hardened, whose spirits are cold, Be it woman all fallen, or man all defiled, A voice whispers softly: "Ah! some mother's child!" No matter how far from the right she has strayed, No matter what inroads dishoner has made, No matter what elements cankered the peril, "I confess that I have not been Pharisaical and self-righteous, and have not sought to injure or persecute those who have not happened Though tarnished and sullied she is some to agree with me," when down dropped numerous heads. mother's girl. No matter how wayward his footsteps have been, No matter how deep he is sunken in sin, No matter how low is his standard of joyThough guiltly and loathsome, he is some "I confess that I never played the hypocrite and do not lie, and that I have not used religion as a cloak," when down went several heads, and among them the heads of every one who was so anxious That head hath been pillowed on some tenthat he should confess. "But," concluded the sinner, "I have been drunk and I am very sorry for it,"--whereupon the meeting quickly dispersed. mother's boy. der breast, That form hath been wept o'er; those lips hath been pressed, That soul hath been prayed for in tones sweet and mild, For her sake deal gently with-some mother's child. |