Leave out sentiment if you choose. Ignore the fact that on one
side the few who enjoy everything are industriously squeezing the
many who have little enjoyment.
Look at things purely from the standpoint of benefit to the
nation and the nation's future.
If the hundred and fifty win, they will have a little more money.
Their wives and daughters will dress a little more grotesquely.
Their families will be able to go abroad oftener and stay longer.
Their heirs will be able to make more complete idiots of
themselves--and that is all. Personally we should like to see
all contractors' families prosperous--all American families
prosperous. No man's wife or daughter can be too happy to suit
us, provided things more important be not neglected. ----
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.