Part 47

If Union Labor wins, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families will be able to lead at least decent American workingmen's lives.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND wives will be able to dress their children comfortably and to dress themselves respectably.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families of children will be brought up more nearly as American children ought to be.

Which is more important:

THE WELFARE OF 150 CONTRACTORS' FAMILIES? (They will have enough anyhow.)

Or THE WELFARE OF 150,000 WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES? (They will have only a decent living at best.)

Perhaps you have drifted away from the early American idea, and refuse to admit that one family is as good as another. It may seem anarchistic to suggest that the workingman's wife, who acts as wife, mother, cook, washwoman, nurse and housekeeper, is as good as the lady who has less to attend to.

But admitting--which we don't--that one hundred and fifty contractors' families are more important than one hundred and fifty workingmen's families, surely all will agree that ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND of the alleged inferiors ought to offset the 150 alleged superiors. ----

If the contractors win, the Paris dressmakers will be richer, and a few families will have a little added to what they do not really need.

If the workingmen win, the future of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children will be made brighter, and the citizenship of the future made stronger by men better fed, better clothed and better educated. ----

This newspaper hopes for labor union victory and means to help it along, BECAUSE THE PUBLIC WELFARE DEMANDS IT.

TO-DAY'S WORLD-STRUGGLE

Far off in the distance shines the goal of present human ambition.

It is a shining, golden light. Toward that light the millions struggle, trampling each other, sacrificing everything in the harsh fight for the dollar.

Here and there a preacher thunders, here and there a philosopher proses against the money struggle. But they might as well whisper at the brink of Niagara. And often the preacher changes his thundering when a RICH church calls him, often the philosopher grasps the first chance to forget philosophy in Wall Street.

The men admired to-day are the men who have made millions--some are admired because they find excitement in giving the millions away, others because they silently pile more millions upon the others already gained.

"Society," the class devoted to pleasure, consists now, in America, of those who have much money.

Literary success depends upon the money which the writer accumulates.

The man talked about is he who has SOLD a hundred thousand books.

The rich boy at school is followed by toadies. In college he learns contempt for human nature from the sycophancy of others.

"Representatives" of the People may be found dogging the footsteps of those who need to buy laws, or to steal the people's rights. ----

It is a fierce and remorseless climb up the steep road to wealth.

There are many corpses, many crimes, many broken hearts, haggard faces and bitter disappointments on that road.

The man with the "Good-money-making idea" struggles on with it over the bodies of suicides and of those who have fallen in despair.

At the bottom of the road the murderer plies his trade with knife or poison--to make money. And the murderer who has tried for MUCH money calls forth special interest and special privileges, special new trials, special newspaper headings.

At the top of the road to wealth, another, more intelligent class, work with equally remorseless energy. They murder no individual. But they rob entire classes of society.

They tax others to fatten their pockets--they add to the cost of food that children eat--they coin human life into cash--smoothly and nicely, using law-makers as tools. Envy and admiration are theirs--such admiration as the retail murderer can never earn. ----

The struggle for money is the struggle of THE WHOLE WORLD to-day.