BOOK I_The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

[Illustration: THE HEAVY SLEDGE

MAHONRI YOUNG

(_American sculptor, born 1877_)]

THE CRY FOR JUSTICE

An Anthology of the Literature

of Social Protest

THE WRITINGS OF PHILOSOPHERS, POETS, NOVELISTS,

SOCIAL REFORMERS, AND OTHERS WHO HAVE

VOICED THE STRUGGLE AGAINST

SOCIAL INJUSTICE

_SELECTED FROM TWENTY-FIVE LANGUAGES_

Covering a Period of Five Thousand Years

Edited by

UPTON SINCLAIR

_Author of "Sylvia," "The Jungle," Etc._

With an Introduction by

JACK LONDON

_Author of "The Sea Wolf," "The Call of the Wild,"

"The Valley of the Moon," Etc., Etc._

_ILLUSTRATED WITH REPRODUCTIONS

OF SOCIAL PROTEST IN ART_

PUBLISHED BY

UPTON SINCLAIR

NEW YORK CITY AND PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

Dr. John R. Haynes, of Los Angeles, very generously purchased

from the publishers the plates and copyright of this book, in

order to make possible the issuing of this edition. I asked

Dr. Haynes if he would let me make acknowledgment to him in

the book, and he answered: "Dedicate the book to those unknown

ones, who by their dimes and quarters keep the Socialist

movement going; to the poor and obscure people who sacrifice

themselves in order to bring about a better world, which they

may never live to see. Write this as eloquently as you can,

and it will be the best possible dedication to 'The Cry for

Justice'."

I decided, after thinking it over, to combine my own idea with

the idea of Dr. Haynes.

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.

Introduction by Jack London

This anthology, I take it, is the first edition, the first

gathering together of the body of the literature and art of the

humanist thinkers of the world. As well done as it has been

done, it will be better done in the future. There will be much

adding, there will be a little subtracting, in the succeeding

editions that are bound to come. The result will be a monument

of the ages, and there will be none fairer.

Since reading of the Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud has

enabled countless devout and earnest right-seeking souls to be

stirred and uplifted to higher and finer planes of thought and

action, then the reading of this humanist Holy Book cannot fail

similarly to serve the needs of groping, yearning humans who

seek to discern truth and justice amid the dazzle and murk of

the thought-chaos of the present-day world.

No person, no matter how soft and secluded his own life has

been, can read this Holy Book and not be aware that the

world is filled with a vast mass of unfairness, cruelty, and

suffering. He will find that it has been observed, during

all the ages, by the thinkers, the seers, the poets, and the

philosophers.

And such person will learn, possibly, that this fair world

so brutally unfair, is not decreed by the will of God nor by

any iron law of Nature. He will learn that the world can be

fashioned a fair world indeed by the humans who inhabit it, by

the very simple, and yet most difficult process of coming to

an understanding of the world. Understanding, after all, is

merely sympathy in its fine correct sense. And such sympathy,

in its genuineness, makes toward unselfishness. Unselfishness

inevitably connotes service. And service is the solution of

the entire vexatious problem of man.

He, who by understanding becomes converted to the gospel of

service, will serve truth to confute liars and make of them

truth-tellers; will serve kindness so that brutality will

perish; will serve beauty to the erasement of all that is not

beautiful. And he who is strong will serve the weak that they

may become strong. He will devote his strength, not to the

debasement and defilement of his weaker fellows, but to the

making of opportunity for them to make themselves into men

rather than into slaves and beasts.

One has but to read the names of the men and women whose

words burn in these pages, and to recall that by far more

than average intelligence have they won to their place in

the world's eye and in the world's brain long after the dust

of them has vanished, to realize that due credence must be

placed in their report of the world herein recorded. They were

not tyrants and wastrels, hypocrites and liars, brewers and

gamblers, market-riggers and stock-brokers. They were givers

and servers, and seers and humanists. They were unselfish. They

conceived of life, not in terms of profit, but of service.

Life tore at them with its heart-break. They could not escape

the hurt of it by selfish refuge in the gluttonies of brain

and body. They saw, and steeled themselves to see, clear-eyed

and unafraid. Nor were they afflicted by some strange myopia.

They all saw the same thing. They are all agreed upon what they

saw. The totality of their evidence proves this with unswerving

consistency. They have brought the report, these commissioners

of humanity. It is here in these pages. It is a true report.

But not merely have they reported the human ills. They have

proposed the remedy. And their remedy is of no part of all

the jangling sects. It has nothing to do with the complicated

metaphysical processes by which one may win to other worlds

and imagined gains beyond the sky. It is a remedy for this

world, since worlds must be taken one at a time. And yet, that

not even the jangling sects should receive hurt by the making

fairer of this world for this own world's sake, it is well, for

all future worlds of them that need future worlds, that their

splendor be not tarnished by the vileness and ugliness of this

world.

It is so simple a remedy, merely service. Not one ignoble

thought or act is demanded of any one of all men and women in

the world to make fair the world. The call is for nobility of

thinking, nobility of doing. The call is for service, and, such

is the wholesomeness of it, he who serves all, best serves

himself.

Times change, and men's minds with them. Down the past,

civilizations have exposited themselves in terms of power, of

world-power or of other-world power. No civilization has yet

exposited itself in terms of love-of-man. The humanists have no

quarrel with the previous civilizations. They were necessary

in the development of man. But their purpose is fulfilled, and

they may well pass, leaving man to build the new and higher

civilization that will exposit itself in terms of love and

service and brotherhood.

To see gathered here together this great body of human beauty

and fineness and nobleness is to realize what glorious humans

have already existed, do exist, and will continue increasingly

to exist until all the world beautiful be made over in their

image. We know how gods are made. Comes now the time to make a

world.

HONOLULU, March 6, 1915.

Acknowledgments

The editor has used his best efforts to ascertain what material

in the present volume is protected by copyright. In all such

cases he has obtained the permission of author and publisher

for the use of the material. Such permission applies only to

the present volume, and no one should assume the right to make

any other use of it without seeking permission in turn. If

there has been any failure upon the editor's part to obtain a

necessary consent, it is due solely to oversight, and he trusts

that it may be overlooked. The following publishers have to be

thanked for the permissions which they have kindly granted; the

thanks applying also to the authors of the works.

MITCHELL KENNERLEY

Patrick MacGill, "Songs of the Dead End." Harry Kemp, "The

Cry of Youth." Charles Hanson Towne, "Manhattan." Hjalmar

Bergström, "Lynggaard & Co." Donald Lowrie, "My Life in

Prison." John G. Neihardt, "Cry of the People." Frank Harris,

"The Bomb." Vachel Lindsay, "The Eagle that is Forgotten" and

"To the United States Senate." Frederik van Eeden, "The Quest."

Edwin Davies Schoonmaker, "Trinity Church." Walter Lippman, "A

Preface to Politics." L. Andreyev, "Savva." J. C. Underwood,

"Processionals." Bliss Carman, "The Rough Rider." Percy Adams

Hutchison, "The Swordless Christ."

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.

Frank Norris, "The Octopus." Helen Keller, "Out of the Dark."

Frederik van Eeden, "Happy Humanity." Bouck White, "The Call of

the Carpenter." Alexander Irvine, "From the Bottom Up." John

D. Rockefeller, "Random Reminiscences." G. Lowes Dickinson,

"Letters from a Chinese Official." Ben B. Lindsey and Harvey

J. O'Higgins, "The Beast." Franklin P. Adams, "By and Large."

Edwin Markham, "The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems." Gerald

Stanley Lee, "Crowds." Woodrow Wilson, "The New Freedom."

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO.

William Vaughn Moody, "Poems." Vida D. Scudder, "Social

Ideals." Florence Wilkinson Evans, "The Ride Home." Peter

Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid" and "Memoirs of a Revolutionist." Helen

G. Cone, "Today." T. B. Aldrich, "Poems." T. W. Higginson,

"Poems."

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

H. G. Wells, "A Modern Utopia." Björnstjerne Björnson, "Beyond

Human Power." Edith Wharton, "The House of Mirth." John

Galsworthy, "A Motley." Maxim Gorky, "Fóma Gordyéeff." J. M.

Barrie, "Farm Laborers." Walter Wyckoff, "The Workers."

THE MACMILLAN CO.

John Masefield, "Dauber" and "A Consecration." Jack London,

"The People of the Abyss" and "Revolution." Robert Herrick, "A

Life for a Life." Israel Zangwill, "Children of the Ghetto."

Albert Edwards, "A Man's World" and "Comrade Yetta." Walter

Rauschenbusch, "Christianity and the Social Crisis." Winston

Churchill, "The Inside of the Cup." Rabindranath Tagore,

"Gitanjali." Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure

Class." Edward Alsworth Ross, "Sin and Society." W. J. Ghent,

"Socialism and Success." Vachel Lindsay, "The Congo." Wilfrid

Wilson Gibson, "Fires." Percy Mackaye, "The Present Hour."

Robert Hunter, "Violence and the Labor Movement." Ernest Poole,

"The Harbor."

THE CENTURY CO.

Louis Untermeyer, "Challenge." Richard Whiteing, "No. 5 John

Street." George Carter, "Ballade of Misery and Iron." James

Oppenheim, "Songs for the New Age." H. G. Wells, "In the Days

of the Comet." Alex. Irvine, "My Lady of the Chimney Corner."

Edwin Björkman, "Dinner à la Tango."

SMALL, MAYNARD & CO.

Charlotte P. Gilman, "In this Our World" and "Women and

Economics." Finley P. Dunne, "Mr. Dooley."

BRENTANO

G. Bernard Shaw, "Preface to Major Barbara" and "The Problem

Play." Eugene Brieux, "The Red Robe." W. L. George, "A Bed of

Roses."

DUFFIELD & CO.

Elsa Barker, "The Frozen Grail." H. G. Wells, "Tono-Bungay."

B. W. HUEBSCH

James Oppenheim, "Pay Envelopes." Gerhart Hauptmann, "The

Weavers." Maxim Gorky, "Tales of Two Countries."

G. P. PUTNAM SONS

Antonio Fogazzaro, "The Saint." J. L. Jaurès, "Studies in

Socialism."

GEORGE H. DORAN CO.

Will Levington Comfort, "Midstream." Charles E. Russell, "These

Shifting Scenes."

FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

Robert Tressall, "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists."

Wilhelm Lamszus, "The Human Slaughter House." Olive Schreiner,

"Woman and Labor." Alfred Noyes, "The Wine Press."

MCCLURE PUBLISHING CO.

Dana Burnet, "A Ballad of Dead Girls." Lincoln Steffens, "The

Dying Boss" and "The Reluctant Grafter."

THE "MASSES"

John Amid, "The Tail of the World." Dana Burnet, "Sisters of

the Cross of Shame." Carl Sandburg, "Buttons." J. E. Spingarn,

"Heloise sans Abelard." Louis Untermeyer, "To a Supreme Court

Judge."

JAMES POTT & CO.

David Graham Phillips, "The Reign of Gilt."

BARSE & HOPKINS

R. W. Service, "The Spell of the Yukon."

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

August Bebel, "Memoirs."

CHARLES H. SERGEL CO.

Verhaeren, "The Dawn: Translation by Arthur Symons."

ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI

Horace Traubel, "Chants Communal."

A. C. MCCLURG & CO.

W. E. B. du Bois, "The Souls of Black Folk."

MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING CO.

A. Berkman, "Prison Memories of an Anarchist." Voltairine de

Cleyre, "Works." Emma Goldman, "Anarchism."

MOFFAT, YARD & CO.

Reginald Wright Kauffman, "The House of Bondage."

JOHN LANE

Anatole France, "Penguin Island." William Watson, "Poems."

BOBBS-MERRILL CO.

Brand Whitlock, "The Turn of the Balance."

E. P. DUTTON & CO.

Patrick MacGill, "Children of the Dead End."

CHARLES H. KERR CO.

"When the Leaves Come Out."

HILLACRE BOOKHOUSE

Arturo Giovannitti, "The Walker."

HENRY HOLT & CO.

Romain Rolland, "Jean-Christophe."

RICHARD G. BADGER (_Poet Lore_)

Andreyev, "King Hunger." Gorky, "A Night's Lodging."

MRS. ARTHUR UPSON

Poems by Arthur Upson.

_New York Times_

Elsa Barker, "Breshkovskaya."

_Collier's Weekly_

Herman Hagedorn, "Fifth Avenue, 1915."

_Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_

F. Kiper Frank, "A Girl Strike Leader."

_Life_

Max Eastman, "To a Bourgeois Litterateur."

WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO.

(P. P. SIMMONS CO., New York)

Joseph Skipsey, "Mother Wept." Jethro Bithell's translation of

Verhaeren in "Contemporary Belgian Poetry" and of Dehmel in

"Contemporary German Poetry." Rimbaud's "Waifs and Strays" in

"Contemporary French Poetry."

ELKIN MATHEWS & CO.

William H. Davies, "Songs of Joy."

CONSTABLE & CO.

Harold Monro, "Impressions."

DUCKWORTH & CO.

Hilaire Belloc, "The Rebel."

SWAN, SONNENSCHEIN & CO.

Edward Carpenter, "Towards Democracy."

* * * * *

Acknowledgments have also to be made to the following artists,

who have kindly consented to have their works used in the

volume: Mahonri Young, Wm. Balfour Ker, Ryan Walker, Charles A.

Winter, Abastenia Eberle, John Mowbray-Clarke, Isidore Konti,

Walter Crane, and Will Dyson. Also to _Life_ Publishing Co. and

the _New Age_, London, for permission to use a drawing from

their files.

Contents

BOOK PAGE

I. TOIL 27

II. THE CHASM 73

III. THE OUTCAST 121

IV. OUT OF THE DEPTHS 179

V. REVOLT 227

VI. MARTYRDOM 289

VII. JESUS 345

VIII. THE CHURCH 383

IX. THE VOICE OF THE AGES 431

X. MAMMON 485

XI. WAR 551

XII. COUNTRY 593

XIII. CHILDREN 637

XIV. HUMOR 679

XV. THE POET 725

XVI. SOCIALISM 783

XVII. THE NEW DAY 835

List of Illustrations

THE HEAVY SLEDGE, _Mahonri Young_ Frontispiece

PAGE

THE MAN WITH THE HOE, _Jean François Millet_ 32

THE VAMPIRE, _E. M. Lilien_ 33

KING CANUTE, _William Balfour Ker_ 93

THE HAND OF FATE, _William Balfour Ker_ 92

WITHOUT A KENNEL, _Ryan Walker_ 136

THE WHITE SLAVE, _Abastenia St. Leger Eberle_ 137

COLD, _Roger Bloche_ 200

THE PEOPLE MOURN, _Jules Pierre van Biesbroeck_ 201

THE LIBERATRESS, _Theophile Alexandre Steinlen_ 233

OUTBREAK, _Käthe Kollwitz_ 232

THE END, _Käthe Kollwitz_ 297

THE SURPRISE, _Ilyá Efímovitch Repin_ 296

ECCE HOMO, _Constantin Meunier_ 368

DESPISED AND REJECTED OF MEN, _Sigismund Goetze_ 369

"TO SUSTAIN THE BODY OF THE CHURCH, IF YOU

PLEASE," _Denis Auguste Marie Raffet_ 392

CHRIST, _John Mowbray-Clarke_ 393

THE DESPOTIC AGE, _Isidore Konti_ 456

"COURAGE, YOUR MAJESTY, ONLY ONE STEP MORE!" 457

MARRIAGE À LA MODE, _William Hogarth_ 489

MAMMON, _George Frederick Watts_ 488

WAR, _Arnold Böcklin_ 584

LONDON, _Paul Gustave Doré_ 585

A CITIZEN LOST, _Ryan Walker_ 649

"OLIVER TWIST ASKS FOR MORE," _George Cruikshank_ 648

THE COAL FAMINE, _Thomas Theodor Heine_ 680

MY SOLICITOR SHALL HEAR OF THIS, _Will Dyson_ 681

THE MILITANT, _Charles A. Winter_ 744

THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON, _Henry Wallis_ 745

ONCE YE HAVE SEEN MY FACE YE DARE NOT MOCK 808

JUSTICE, _Walter Crane_ 809

Editor's Preface

When the idea of this collection was first thought of, it was

a matter of surprise that the task should have been so long

unattempted. There exist small collections of Socialist songs

for singing, but apparently this is the first effort that has

been made to cover the whole field of the literature of social

protest, both in prose and poetry, and from all languages and

times.

The reader's first inquiry will be as to the qualifications of

the editor. Let me say that I gave nine years of my life to a

study of literature under academic guidance, and then, emerging

from a great endowed university, discovered the modern movement

of proletarian revolt, and have given fifteen years to the

study and interpretation of that. The present volume is thus

a blending of two points of view. I have reread the favorites

of my youth, choosing from them what now seemed most vital;

and I have sought to test the writers of my own time by the

touchstone of the old standards.

The size of the task I did not realize until I had gone too

far to retreat. It meant not merely the rereading of the

classics and the standard anthologies; it meant going through a

small library of volumes by living writers, the files of many

magazines, and a dozen or more scrap-books and collections of

fugitive verse. At the end of this labor I found myself with

a pile of typewritten manuscript a foot high; and the task of

elimination was the most difficult of all.

To a certain extent, of course, the selection was

self-determined. No anthology of social protest could omit

"The Song of the Shirt," and "The Cry of the Children,"

and "A Man's a Man for A' That"; neither could it omit the

"Marseillaise" and the "Internationale." Equally inevitable

were selections from Shelley and Swinburne, Ruskin, Carlyle

and Morris, Whitman, Tolstoy and Zola. The same was true of

Wells and Shaw and Kropotkin, Hauptmann and Maeterlinck, Romain

Rolland and Anatole France. When it came to the newer writers,

I sought first their own judgment as to their best work; and

later I submitted the manuscript to several friends, the best

qualified men and women I knew. Thus the final version was the

product of a number of minds; and the collection may be said

to represent, not its editor, but a whole movement, made and

sustained by the master-spirits of all ages.

For this reason I may without suspicion of egotism say what I

think about the volume. It was significant to me that several

persons reading the manuscript and writing quite independently,

referred to it as "a new Bible." I believe that it is, quite

literally and simply, what the old Bible was--a selection

by the living minds of a living time of the best and truest

writings known to them. It is a Bible of the future, a Gospel

of the new hope of the race. It is a book for the apostles of a

new dispensation to carry about with them; a book to cheer the

discouraged and console the wounded in humanity's last war of

liberation.

The standards of the book are those of literature. If there has

been any letting down, it has been in the case of old writings,

which have an interest apart from that of style. It brings us

a thrill of wonder to find, in an ancient Egyptian parchment,

a father setting forth to his son how easy is the life of the

lawyer, and what a dog's life is that of the farmer. It amuses

us to read a play, produced in Athens two thousand, two hundred

and twenty-three years ago, in which is elaborately propounded

the question which thousands of Socialist "soap-boxers" are

answering every night: "Who will do the dirty work?" It makes

us shudder, perhaps, to find a Spaniard of the thirteenth

century analyzing the evil devices of tyrants, and expounding

in detail the labor-policy of some present-day great

corporations in America.

Let me add that I have not considered it my function to act

as censor to the process of social evolution. Every aspect of

the revolutionary movement has found a voice in this book.

Two questions have been asked of each writer: Have you had

something vital to say? and Have you said it with some special

effectiveness? The reader will find, for example, one or two

of the hymns of the "Christian Socialists"; he will also find

one of the parodies on Christian hymns which are sung by the

Industrial Workers of the World in their "jungles" in the Far

West. The Anarchists and the apostles of insurrection are also

represented; and if some of the things seem to the reader the

mere unchaining of furies, I would say, let him not blame the

faithful anthologist, let him not blame even the writer--let

him blame himself, who has acquiesced in the existence of

conditions which have driven his fellow-men to the extremes of

madness and despair.

In the preparation of this work I have placed myself under

obligation to so many people that it would take much space to

make complete acknowledgments. I must thank those friends who

went through the bulky manuscript, and gave me the benefit of

their detailed criticism: George Sterling, Max Eastman, Floyd

Dell, Clement Wood, Louis Untermeyer, and my wife. I am under

obligation to a number of people, some of them strangers, who

went to the trouble of sending me scrap-books which represented

years and even decades of collecting: Elizabeth Balch,

Elizabeth Magie Phillips, Frank B. Norman, Frank Stuhlman, J.

M. Maddox, Edward J. O'Brien, and Clement Wood. Among those

who helped me with valuable suggestions were: Edwin Björkman,

Reginald Wright Kauffman, Thomas Seltzer, Jack London, Rose

Pastor Stokes, May Beals, Elizabeth Freeman, Arthur W.

Calhoun, Frank Shay, Alexander Berkman, Joseph F. Gould, Louis

Untermeyer, Harold Monro, Morris Hillquit, Peter Kropotkin, Dr.

James P. Warbasse, and the Baroness von Blomberg. The fullness

of the section devoted to ancient writings is in part due to

the advice of a number of scholars: Dr. Paul Carus, Professor

Crawford H. Toy, Professor William Cranston Lawton, Professor

Charles Burton Gulick, Professor Thomas D. Goodell, Professor

Walton Brooks McDaniels, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Professor

George F. Moore, Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch, and Professor

Charles R. Lanman.

With regard to the illustrations in the volume, I endeavored

to repeat in the field of art what had been done in the field

of literature: to obtain the best material, both old and new,

and select the most interesting and vital. I have to record

my indebtedness to a number of friends who made suggestions

in this field--Ryan Walker, Art Young, John Mowbray-Clarke,

Martin Birnbaum, Odon Por, and Walter Crane. Also I must thank

Mr. Frank Weitenkampf and Dr. Herman Rosenthal of the New

York Public Library, and Dr. Clifford of the Library of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art. To the artists whose copyrighted

work I have used I owe my thanks for their permission: as

likewise to the many writers whose copyrighted books I have

quoted. Elsewhere in the volume I have made acknowledgments to

publishers for the rights they have kindly granted. Let me here

add this general caution: _The copyrighted passages used have

been used by permission, and any one who desires to reprint

them must obtain similar permission._

One or two hundred contemporary authors responded to my

invitation and sent me specimens of their writings. Of these

authors, probably three-fourths will not find their work

included--for which seeming discourtesy I can only offer the

sincere plea of the limitations of space which were imposed

upon me. I am not being diplomatic, but am stating a fact

when I say that I had to leave out much that I thought was of

excellent quality.

What was chosen will now speak for itself. Let my last word be

of the hope, which has been with me constantly, that the book

may be to others what it has been to me. I have spent with

it the happiest year of my lifetime: the happiest, because

occupied with beauty of the greatest and truest sort. If the

material in this volume means to you, the reader, what it has

meant to me, you will live with it, love it, sometimes weep

with it, many times pray with it, yearn and hunger with it,

and, above all, resolve with it. You will carry it with you

about your daily tasks, you will be utterly possessed by it;

and again and again you will be led to dedicate yourself to the

greatest hope, the most wondrous vision which has ever thrilled

the soul of humanity. In this spirit and to this end the book

is offered to you. If you will read it through consecutively,

skipping nothing, you will find that it has a form. You will

be led from one passage to the next, and when you reach the

end you will be a wiser, a humbler, and a more tender-hearted

person.

A Consecration

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers

Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years,

Rather the scorned--the rejected--the men hemmed in with the spears;

The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies,

Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,

The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.

Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne,

Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown,

But the lads who carried the koppie and cannot be known.

Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,

The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,

The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.

The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout,

The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,

The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired lookout.

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,

The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;--

Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!

Theirs be the music, the color, the glory, the gold;

Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold--

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told.

AMEN.

BOOK I

_Toil_

The dignity and tragedy of labor; pictures of the actual

conditions under which men and women work in mills and

factories, fields and mines.

The Man With the Hoe[A]

[A] By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

(This poem, which was written after seeing Millet's world-famous

painting, was published in 1899 by a California school-principal, and

made a profound impression. It has been hailed as "the battle-cry of

the next thousand years")

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans

Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,

The emptiness of ages in his face,

And on his back the burden of the world.

Who made him dead to rapture and despair,

A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave

To have dominion over sea and land;

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;

To feel the passion of Eternity?

Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns

And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?

Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf

There is no shape more terrible than this--

More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed--

More filled with signs and portents for the soul--

More fraught with menace to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him

Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?

What the long reaches of the peaks of song,

The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;

Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;

Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,

Plundered, profaned and disinherited,

Cries protest to the Judges of the World,

A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

Is this the handiwork you give to God,

This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

How will you ever straighten up this shape;

Touch it again with immortality;

Give back the upward looking and the light;

Rebuild in it the music and the dream;

Make right the immemorial infamies,

Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

How will the Future reckon with this Man?

How answer his brute question in that hour

When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--

With those who shaped him to the thing he is--

When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,

After the silence of the centuries?

Country Life

(_From "The Village"_)

BY GEORGE CRABBE

(One of the earliest of English realistic poets, 1754-1832;

called "The Poet of the Poor")

Or will you deem them amply paid in health,

Labor's fair child, that languishes with wealth?

Go then! and see them rising with the sun,

Through a long course of daily toil to run;

See them beneath the dog-star's raging heat,

When the knees tremble and the temples beat;

Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er

The labor past, and toils to come explore;

See them alternate suns and showers engage,

And hoard up aches and anguish for their age;

Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue,

Where their warm pores imbibe the evening dew;

Then own that labor may as fatal be

To these thy slaves, as thine excess to thee.

An Aged Laborer

BY RICHARD JEFFERIES

(English essayist and nature student, 1848-1887)

For weeks and weeks the stark black oaks stood straight out

of the snow as masts of ships with furled sails frozen and

ice-bound in the haven of the deep valley. Never was such a

long winter.

One morning a laboring man came to the door with a spade,

and asked if he could dig the garden, or try to, at the risk

of breaking the tool in the ground. He was starving; he had

had no work for six months, he said, since the first frost

started the winter. Nature and the earth and the gods did not

trouble about him, you see. Another aged man came once a week

regularly; white as the snow through which he walked. In summer

he worked; since the winter began he had had no employment, but

supported himself by going round to the farms in rotation. He

had no home of any kind. Why did he not go into the workhouse?

"I be afeared if I goes in there they'll put me with the rough

'uns, and very likely I should get some of my clothes stole."

Rather than go into the workhouse, he would totter round in

the face of the blasts that might cover his weak old limbs

with drift. There was a sense of dignity and manhood left

still; his clothes were worn, but clean and decent; he was

no companion of rogues; the snow and frost, the straw of the

outhouses, was better than that. He was struggling against age,

against nature, against circumstances; the entire weight of

society, law and order pressed upon him to force him to lose

his self-respect and liberty. He would rather risk his life in

the snow-drift. Nature, earth and the gods did not help him;

sun and stars, where were they? He knocked at the doors of the

farms and found good in man only--not in Law or Order, but in

individual man alone.

Farm Laborers

BY JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE

(English poet, playwright and novelist, born 1860)

Grand, patient, long-suffering fellows these men were, up at

five, summer and winter, foddering their horses, maybe, hours

before there would be food for themselves, miserably paid,

housed like cattle, and when rheumatism seized them, liable

to be flung aside like a broken graip. As hard was the life

of the women: coarse food, chaff beds, damp clothes their

portion, their sweethearts in the service of masters who were

loath to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these

lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly on their

one free day; that these girls, starved of opportunities for

womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest

lady, sometimes woke after a holiday to wish that they might

wake no more?

Helotage

(_From "Sartor Resartus"_)

BY THOMAS CARLYLE

(One of the most famous of British essayists, 1795-1881;

historian of the French Revolution, and master of a vivid and

picturesque prose-style)

It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we

must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which

is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The

poor is hungry and athirst; but for him also there is food

and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the

Heavens send sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a

clear dewy haven of rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings

of cloud-skirted dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that

the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly,

or even of earthly, knowledge should visit him; but only, in

the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation

bear him company. Alas, while the body stands so broad and

brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost

annihilated!, Alas, was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in

heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--That there should

one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I

call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the

minute, as by some computations it does. The miserable fraction

of Science which our united Mankind, in a wide universe of

Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence,

imparted to all?

[Illustration: THE VAMPIRE

E. M. LILIEN

(_Contemporary German illustrator_)]

[Illustration:

THE MAN WITH THE HOE

JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

(_French painter of peasant life, 1814-75_)

]

Played Out

(_From "Songs of the Dead End"_)

BY PATRICK MACGILL

(A young Irishman, called the "Navvy poet"; born 1890. From the age of

twelve to twenty a farm laborer, ditch-digger and quarry-man. As this

work goes to press, he is fighting with his regiment in Flanders)

As a bullock falls in the crooked ruts, he fell when the day was o'er,

The hunger gripping his stinted guts, his body shaken and sore.

They pulled it out of the ditch in the dark, as a brute is pulled

from its lair,

The corpse of the navvy, stiff and stark, with the clay on its

face and hair.

In Christian lands, with calloused hands, he labored for others' good,

In workshop and mill, ditchway and drill, earnest, eager, and rude;

Unhappy and gaunt with worry and want, a food to the whims of fate,

Hashing it out and booted about at the will of the goodly and great.

To him was applied the scorpion lash, for him the gibe and the goad--

The roughcast fool of our moral wash, the rugous wretch of the road.

Willing to crawl for a pittance small to the swine of the tinsel sty,

Beggared and burst from the very first, he chooses the ditch to die--

... Go, pick the dead from the sloughy bed, and hide him from

mortal eye.

He tramped through the colorless winter land, or swined in the

scorching heat,

The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering on his feet;

He wallowed in mire unseen, unknown, where your houses of

pleasure rise,

And hapless, hungry, and chilled to the bone, he builded the edifice.

In cheerless model[A] and filthy pub, his sinful hours were passed,

Or footsore, weary, he begged his grub, in the sough of the

hail-whipped blast,

So some might riot in wealth and ease, with food and wine be crammed,

He wrought like a mule, in muck to his knees, dirty, dissolute, damned.

[A] A "model" is an English resort for wayfarers, maintained by

charity.

Arrogant, adipose, you sit in the homes he builded high;

Dirty the ditch, in the depths of it he chooses a spot to die,

Foaming with nicotine-tainted lips, holding his aching breast,

Dropping down like a cow that slips, smitten with rinderpest;

Drivelling yet of the work and wet, swearing as sinners swear,

Raving the rule of the gambling school, mixing it up with a prayer.

He lived like a brute as the navvies live, and went as the cattle go,

No one to sorrow and no one to shrive, for heaven ordained it so--

He handed his check to the shadow in black, and went to the

misty lands,

Never a mortal to close his eyes or a woman to cross his hands.

_As a bullock falls in the rugged ruts

He fell when the day was o'er,

Hunger gripping his weasened guts,

But never to hunger more_--

_They pulled it out of the ditch in the dark,

The chilling frost on its hair,

The mole-skinned navvy stiff and stark

From no particular where._

Rounding the Horn[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "Dauber"_)

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

(An English poet who has had a varied career as sailor, laborer and

even bartender upon the Bowery, New York. Born 1873, his narrative

poems of humble life made him famous almost over night)

Then came the cry of "Call all hands on deck!"

The Dauber knew its meaning; it was come:

Cape Horn, that tramples beauty into wreck,

And crumples steel and smites the strong man dumb.

Down clattered flying kites and staysails: some

Sang out in quick, high calls: the fair-leads skirled,

And from the south-west came the end of the world....

"Lay out!" the Bosun yelled. The Dauber laid

Out on the yard, gripping the yard, and feeling

Sick at the mighty space of air displayed

Below his feet, where mewing birds were wheeling.

A giddy fear was on him; he was reeling.

He bit his lip half through, clutching the jack.

A cold sweat glued the shirt upon his back.

The yard was shaking, for a brace was loose.

He felt that he would fall; he clutched, he bent,

Clammy with natural terror to the shoes

While idiotic promptings came and went.

Snow fluttered on a wind-flaw and was spent;

He saw the water darken. Someone yelled,

"Frap it; don't stay to furl! Hold on!" He held.

Darkness came down--half darkness--in a whirl;

The sky went out, the waters disappeared.

He felt a shocking pressure of blowing hurl

The ship upon her side. The darkness speared

At her with wind; she staggered, she careered,

Then down she lay. The Dauber felt her go;

He saw her yard tilt downwards. Then the snow

Whirled all about--dense, multitudinous, cold--

Mixed with the wind's one devilish thrust and shriek,

Which whiffled out men's tears, defeated, took hold,

Flattening the flying drift against the cheek.

The yards buckled and bent, man could not speak.

The ship lay on her broadside; the wind's sound

Had devilish malice at having got her downed....

How long the gale had blown he could not tell,

Only the world had changed, his life had died.

A moment now was everlasting hell.

Nature an onslaught from the weather side,

A withering rush of death, a frost that cried,

Shrieked, till he withered at the heart; a hail

Plastered his oilskins with an icy mail....

"Up!" yelled the Bosun; "up and clear the wreck!"

The Dauber followed where he led; below

He caught one giddy glimpsing of the deck

Filled with white water, as though heaped with snow.

He saw the streamers of the rigging blow

Straight out like pennons from the splintered mast,

Then, all sense dimmed, all was an icy blast

Roaring from nether hell and filled with ice,

Roaring and crashing on the jerking stage,

An utter bridle given to utter vice,

Limitless power mad with endless rage

Withering the soul; a minute seemed an age.

He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail,

Thinking that comfort was a fairy-tale

Told long ago--long, long ago--long since

Heard of in other lives--imagined, dreamed--

There where the basest beggar was a prince.

To him in torment where the tempest screamed,

Comfort and warmth and ease no longer seemed

Things that a man could know; soul, body, brain,

Knew nothing but the wind, the cold, the pain.

Insouciance in Storm

(_From "The Cry of Youth"_)

BY HARRY KEMP

(A young American poet who has wandered over the world as

sailor, harvest hand and tramp; born 1883)

Deep in an ore-boat's hold

Where great-bulked boilers loom

And yawning mouths of fire

Irradiate the gloom,

I saw half-naked men

Made thralls to flame and steam,

Whose bodies, dripping sweat,

Shone with an oily gleam.

There, all the sullen night,

While waves boomed overhead

And smote the lurching ship,

The ravenous fires they fed;

They did not think it brave:

They even dared to joke!

I saw them light their pipes

And puff calm rings of smoke!

I saw a Passer sprawl

Over his load of coal--

At which a Fireman laughed

Until it shook his soul:

_All this in a hollow shell

Whose half-submerged form

On Lake Superior tossed

'Mid rushing hills of storm!_

FROM THE SAILORS' CATECHISM

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,

The seventh, holystone the deck and scrub the cable.

Stokers[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "The Harbor"_)

BY ERNEST POOLE

(American playwright and novelist, born 1880)

We crawled down a short ladder and through low passageways,

dripping wet, and so came into the stokehole.

This was a long narrow chamber with a row of glowing furnace

doors. Wet coal and coal-dust lay on the floor. At either end a

small steel door opened into bunkers that ran along the sides

of the ship, deep down near the bottom, containing thousands of

tons of soft coal. In the stokehole the fires were not yet up,

but by the time the ship was at sea the furnace mouths would

be white hot and the men at work half naked. They not only

shovelled coal into the flames, they had to spread it as well,

and at intervals rake out the "clinkers" in fiery masses on the

floor. On these a stream of water played, filling the chamber

with clouds of steam. In older ships, like this one, a "lead

stoker" stood at the head of the line and set the pace for the

others to follow. He was paid more to keep up the pace. But on

the big new liners this pacer was replaced by a gong.

"And at each stroke of the gong you shovel," said Joe. "You do

this till you forget your name. Every time the boat pitches the

floor heaves you forward, the fire spurts at you out of the

doors, and the gong keeps on like a sledge-hammer coming down

on top of your mind. And all you think of is your bunk and the

time when you're to tumble in."

From the stokers' quarters presently there came a burst of

singing.

"Now let's go back," he ended, "and see how they're getting

ready for this."

As we crawled back, the noise increased, and swelled to a roar

as we entered. The place was pandemonium. Those groups I had

noticed around the bags had been getting out the liquor, and

now at eight o'clock in the morning half the crew were already

well soused. Some moved restlessly about. One huge bull of

a creature with limpid shining eyes stopped suddenly with a

puzzled stare, and then leaned back on a bunk and laughed

uproariously. From there he lurched over the shoulder of a

thin, wiry, sober man who, sitting on the edge of a bunk, was

slowly spelling out the words of a newspaper aeroplane story.

The big man laughed again and spit, and the thin man jumped

half up and snarled.

Louder rose the singing. Half the crew was crowded close around

a little red-faced cockney. He was the modern "chanty man."

With sweat pouring down his cheeks and the muscles of his neck

drawn taut, he was jerking out verse after verse about women.

He sang to an old "chanty" tune, one that I remembered well.

But he was not singing out under the stars, he was screaming at

steel walls down here in the bottom of the ship. And although

he kept speeding up his song, the crowd were too drunk to wait

for the chorus; their voices kept tumbling in over his, and

soon it was only a frenzy of sound, a roar with yells rising

out of it. The singers kept pounding each other's backs or

waving bottles over their heads. Two bottles smashed together

and brought a still higher burst of glee.

"I'm tired!" Joe shouted. "Let's get out!"

I caught a glimpse of his strained frowning face. Again it came

over me in a flash, the years he had spent in holes like this,

in this hideous rotten world of his, while I had lived joyously

in mine. And as though he had read the thought in my disturbed

and troubled eyes, "Let's go up where _you_ belong," he said.

I followed him up and away from his friends. As we climbed

ladder after ladder, fainter and fainter on our ears rose that

yelling from below. Suddenly we came out on deck and slammed an

iron door behind us. And I was where _I_ belonged.

I was in dazzling sunshine and keen, frosty autumn air. I

was among gay throngs of people. Dainty women brushed me by.

I felt the softness of their furs, I breathed the fragrant

scent of them and of the flowers that they wore, I saw their

trim, fresh, immaculate clothes. I heard the joyous tumult of

their talking and their laughing to the regular crash of the

band--all the life of the ship I had known so well.

And I walked through it all as though in a dream. On the dock

I watched it spell-bound--until with handkerchiefs waving and

voices calling down good-byes, that throng of happy travellers

moved slowly out into midstream.

And I knew that deep below all this, down in the bottom of the

ship, the stokers were still singing.

Caliban in the Coal Mines

(_From "Challenge"_)

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

(American poet, born 1885)

God, we don't like to complain--

We know that the mine is no lark--

But--there's the pools from the rain;

But--there's the cold and the dark.

God, You don't know what it is--

You, in Your well-lighted sky,

Watching the meteors whizz;

Warm, with the sun always by.

God, if You had but the moon

Stuck in Your cap for a lamp,

Even You'd tire of it soon,

Down in the dark and the damp.

Nothing but blackness above,

And nothing that moves but the cars--

God, if You wish for our love,

Fling us a handful of stars!

The Fertilizer Man

(_From "The Jungle"_)

BY UPTON SINCLAIR

(A novel portraying the lives of the workers in the Chicago

stockyards; published in 1906)

His labor took him about one minute to learn. Before him was

one of the vents of the mill in which the fertilizer was being

ground--rushing forth in a great brown river, with a spray of

the finest dust floating forth in clouds. Jurgis was given a

shovel, and along with half a dozen others it was his task to

shovel this fertilizer into carts. That others were at work he

knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes collided

with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there,

for in the blinding dust-storm a man could not see six feet in

front of his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope

around him until another came, and if there was none on hand he

continued to grope till one arrived. In five minutes he was,

of course, a mass of fertilizer from head to feet; they gave

him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that he could breathe,

but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids from caking

up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like a

brown ghost at twilight--from hair to shoes he became the color

of the building and of everything in it, and for that matter

a hundred yards outside it. The building had to be left open,

and when the wind blew Durham and Company lost a great deal of

fertilizer.

Working in his shirt-sleeves, and with the thermometer at over

a hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of

Jurgis' skin, and in five minutes he had a headache, and in

fifteen was almost dazed. The blood was pounding in his brain

like an engine's throbbing; there was a frightful pain in

the top of his skull, and he could hardly control his hands.

Still, with the memory of his four jobless months behind him,

he fought on, in a frenzy of determination; and half an hour

later he began to vomit--he vomited until it seemed as if his

inwards must be torn into shreds. A man could get used to the

fertilizer-mill, the boss had said, if he would only make up

his mind to it; but Jurgis now began to see that it was a

question of making up his stomach.

At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He

had to catch himself now and then, and lean against a building

and get his bearings. Most of the men, when they came out,

made straight for a saloon--they seemed to place fertilizer

and rattlesnake poison in one class. But Jurgis was too ill to

think of drinking--he could only make his way to the street

and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor, and later

on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to

board a street-car and see what happened. Now, however, he was

too ill to notice it--how the people in the car began to gasp

and sputter, to put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and

transfix him with furious glances. Jurgis only knew that a man

in front of him immediately got up and gave him a seat; and

that half a minute later the two people on each side of him

got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was nearly

empty--those passengers who could not get room on the platform

having gotten out to walk.

Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer-mill

a minute after entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his

skin--his whole system was full of it, and it would have taken

a week not merely of scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to

get it out of him. As it was, he could be compared with nothing

known to man, save that newest discovery of the savants, a

substance which emits energy for an unlimited time, without

being itself in the least diminished in power. He smelt so that

he made all the food at the table taste, and set the whole

family to vomiting; for himself it was three days before he

could keep anything upon his stomach--he might wash his hands,

and use a knife and fork, but were not his mouth and throat

filled with the poison?

And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches

he would stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once

more, and begin to shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And

so at the end of the week he was a fertilizer-man for life--he

was able to eat again, and though his head never stopped

aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not work.

Pittsburgh

BY JAMES OPPENHEIM

(American poet and novelist; born 1882)

Over his face his gray hair drifting hides his Labor-glory in smoke,

Strange through his breath the soot is sifting, his feet are buried

in coal and coke.

By night hands twisted and lurid in fires, by day hands blackened

with grime and oil,

He toils at the foundries and never tires, and ever and ever his

lot is toil.

He speeds his soul till his body wrestles with terrible tonnage

and terrible time,

Out through the yards and over the trestles the flat-cars clank

and the engines chime,

His mills through windows seem eaten with fire, his high cranes

travel, his ingots roll,

And billet and wheel and whistle and wire shriek with the

speeding up of his soul.

Lanterns with reds and greens a-glisten wave the way and the

head-light glares,

The back-bent laborers glance and listen and out through the

night the tail-light flares--

Deep in the mills like a tipping cradle the huge converter

turns on its wheel

And sizzling spills in the ten-ton ladle a golden water of

molten steel.

Yet screwed with toil his low face searches shadow-edged fires

and whited pits,

Gripping his levers his body lurches, grappling his irons he

prods and hits,

And deaf with the roll and clangor and rattle with its sharp

escaping staccato of steam,

And blind with flame and worn with battle, into his tonnage he

turns his dream.

The world he has builded rises around us, our wonder-cities and

weaving rails,

Over his wires a marvel has found us, a glory rides in our

wheeled mails,

For the Earth grows small with strong Steel woven, and they

come together who plotted apart--

But he who has wrought this thing in his oven knows only toil

and the tired heart.

The Navvy[A]

[A] By permission of E. P. Dutton & Co.

(_From "Children of the Dead End"_)

BY PATRICK MACGILL

(See page 32)

At that time there were thousands of navvies working at

Kinlochleven waterworks. We spoke of waterworks, but only the

contractors knew what the work was intended for. We did not

know, and we did not care. We never asked questions concerning

the ultimate issue of our labors, and we were not supposed to

ask questions. If a man throws red muck over a wall today and

throws it back again tomorrow, what the devil is it to him if

he keeps throwing that same muck over the wall for the rest

of his life, knowing not why nor wherefore, provided he gets

paid sixpence an hour for his labor? There were so many tons

of earth to be lifted and thrown somewhere else; we lifted

them and threw them somewhere else; so many cubic yards of

iron-hard rocks to be blasted and carried away; we blasted and

carried them away, but never asked questions and never knew

what results we were laboring to bring about. We turned the

Highlands into a cinder-heap, and were as wise at the beginning

as at the end of the task. Only when we completed the job, and

returned to the town, did we learn from the newspapers that we

had been employed on the construction of the biggest aluminium

factory in the kingdom. All that we knew was that we had gutted

whole mountains and hills in the operations....

Above and over all, the mystery of the night and the desert

places hovered inscrutable and implacable. All around the

ancient mountains sat like brooding witches, dreaming on their

own story of which they knew neither the beginning nor the end.

Naked to the four winds of heaven and all the rains of the

world, they had stood there for countless ages in all their

sinister strength, undefied and unconquered, until man, with

puny hands and little tools of labor, came to break the spirit

of their ancient mightiness.

And we, the men who braved this task, were outcasts of the

world. A blind fate, a vast merciless mechanism, cut and shaped

the fabric of our existence. We were men despised when we were

most useful, rejected when we were not needed, and forgotten

when our troubles weighed upon us heavily. We were the men

sent out to fight the spirit of the wastes, rob it of all its

primeval horrors, and batter down the barriers of its world-old

defences. Where we were working a new town would spring up some

day; it was already springing up, and then, if one of us walked

there, "a man with no fixed address," he would be taken up and

tried as a loiterer and vagrant.

Even as I thought of these things a shoulder of jagged rock

fell into a cutting far below. There was the sound of a scream

in the distance, and a song died away in the throat of some

rude singer. Then out of the pit I saw men, red with the muck

of the deep earth and redder still with the blood of a stricken

mate, come forth, bearing between them a silent figure. Another

of the pioneers of civilization had given up his life for the

sake of society....

The plaintive sunset waned into a sickly haze one evening, and

when the night slipped upwards to the mountain peaks never a

star came out into the vastness of the high heavens. Next

morning we had to thaw the door of our shack out of the muck

into which it was frozen during the night. Outside the snow

had fallen heavily on the ground, and the virgin granaries of

winter had been emptied on the face of the world.

Unkempt, ragged, and dispirited, we slunk to our toil, the

snow falling on our shoulders and forcing its way insistently

through our worn and battered bluchers. The cuttings were full

of slush to the brim, and we had to grope through them with our

hands until we found the jumpers and hammers at the bottom.

These we held under our coats until the heat of our bodies

warmed them, then we went on with our toil.

At intervals during the day the winds of the mountain put their

heads together and swept a whirlstorm of snow down upon us,

wetting each man to the pelt. Our tools froze until the hands

that gripped them were scarred as if by red-hot spits. We

shook uncertain over our toil, our sodden clothes scalding and

itching the skin with every movement of the swinging hammers.

Near at hand the lean derrick jibs whirled on their pivots

like spectres of some ghoulish carnival, and the muck-barrows

crunched backwards and forwards, all their dirt and rust hidden

in woolly mantles of snow. Hither and thither the little black

figures of the workers moved across the waste of whiteness like

shadows on a lime-washed wall. Their breath steamed out on the

air and disappeared in space like the evanescent and fragile

vapor of frying mushrooms....

When night came on we crouched around the hot-plate and told

stories of bygone winters, when men dropped frozen stiff in the

trenches where they labored. A few tried to gamble near the

door, but the wind that cut through the chinks of the walls

chased them to the fire.

Outside the winds of the night scampered madly, whistling

through every crevice of the shack and threatening to smash all

its timbers to pieces. We bent closer over the hot-plate, and

the many who could not draw near to the heat scrambled into

bed and sought warmth under the meagre blankets. Suddenly the

lamp went out, and a darkness crept into the corners of the

dwelling, causing the figures of my mates to assume fantastic

shapes in the gloom. The circle around the hot-plate drew

closer, and long lean arms were stretched out towards the

flames and the redness. Seldom may a man have the chance to

look on hands like those of my mates. Fingers were missing from

many, scraggy scars seaming along the wrists or across the

palms of others told of accidents which had taken place on many

precarious shifts. The faces near me were those of ghouls worn

out in some unholy midnight revel. Sunken eyes glared balefully

in the dim unearthly light of the fire, and as I looked at them

a moment's terror settled on my soul. For a second I lived in

an early age, and my mates were the cave-dwellers of an older

world than mine. In the darkness, near the door, a pipe glowed

brightly for a moment, then the light went suddenly out and the

gloom settled again.

The Song of the Wage Slave

(_From "The Spell of the Yukon"_)

BY ROBERT W. SERVICE

(Canadian poet, born 1876. His poems of Alaska and the great

Northwest have attained wide popularity)

When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay,

I hope that it won't be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say.

And I hope that it won't be heaven, with some of the parsons I've met--

All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget.

Look at my face, toil-furrowed; look at my calloused hands;

Master, I've done Thy bidding, wrought in Thy many lands--

Wrought for the little masters, big-bellied they be, and rich;

I've done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog

in a ditch....

I, the primitive toiler, half naked and grimed to the eyes,

Sweating it deep in their ditches, swining it stark in their styes;

Hurling down forests before me, spanning tumultuous streams;

Down in the ditch building o'er me palaces fairer than dreams;

Boring the rock to the ore-bed, driving the road through the fen,

Resolute, dumb, uncomplaining, a man in a world of men.

Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands;

Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands.

Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west,

And the long, long shift is over.... Master, I've earned it--Rest.

Manhattan

BY CHARLES HANSON TOWNE

(American poet, born 1877)

Here in the furnace City, in the humid air they faint,

God's pallid poor, His people, with scarcely space for breath;

So foul their teeming houses, so full of shame and taint,

They cannot crowd within them for the frightful fear of Death.

Yet somewhere, Lord, Thine open seas are singing with the rain,

And somewhere underneath Thy stars the cool waves crash and beat;

Why is it here, and only here, are huddled Death and Pain,

And here the form of Horror stalks, a menace in the street!

The burning flagstones gleam like glass at morning and at noon,

The giant walls shut out the breeze--if any breeze should blow;

And high above the smothering town at midnight hangs the moon,

A red medallion in the sky, a monster cameo.

Yet somewhere, God, drenched roses bloom by fountains draped with mist

In old, lost gardens of the earth made lyrical with rain;

Why is it here a million brows by hungry Death are kissed,

And here is packed, one Summer night, a whole world's fiery pain!

A Department-Store Clerk

(_From "The House of Bondage"_)

BY REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN

(American novelist, born 1877)

Katie Flanagan arrived at the Lennox department store every

morning at a quarter to eight o'clock. She passed through the

employees' dark entrance, a unit in a horde of other workers,

and registered the instant of her arrival on a time-machine

that could in no wise be suborned to perjury. She hung up

her wraps in a subterranean cloak-room, and, hurrying to the

counter to which she was assigned, first helped in "laying

out the stock," and then stood behind her wares, exhibiting,

cajoling, selling, until an hour before noon. At that time

she was permitted to run away for exactly forty-five minutes

for the glass of milk and two pieces of bread and jam that

composed her luncheon. This repast disposed of, she returned to

the counter and remained behind it, standing like a war-worn

watcher on the ramparts of a beleaguered city, till the store

closed at six, when there remained to her at least fifteen

minutes more of work before her sales-book was balanced and

the wares covered up for the night. There were times, indeed,

when she did not leave the store until seven o'clock, but those

times were caused rather by customers than by the management of

the store, which could prevent new shoppers from entering the

doors after six, but could hardly turn out those already inside.

The automatic time-machine and a score of more annoying, and

equally automatic, human beings kept watch upon all that she

did. The former, in addition to the floor-walker in her section

of the store, recorded her every going and coming, the latter

reported every movement not prescribed by the regulations

of the establishment; and the result upon Katie and her

fellow-workers was much the result observable upon condemned

assassins under the unwinking surveillance of the Death Watch.

If Katie was late, she was fined ten cents for each offense.

She was reprimanded if her portion of the counter was

disordered after a mauling by careless customers. She was

fined for all mistakes she made in the matter of prices and

the additions on her salesbook; and she was fined if, having

asked the floor-walker for three or five minutes to leave the

floor in order to tidy her hair and hands, in constant need of

attention through the rapidity of her work and the handling of

her dyed wares, she exceeded her time limit by so much as a few

seconds.

There were no seats behind the counters, and Katie, whatever

her physical condition, remained on her feet all day long,

unless she could arrange for relief by a fellow-worker during

that worker's luncheon time. There was no place for rest

save a damp, ill-lighted "Recreation Room" in the basement,

furnished with a piano that nobody had time to play, magazines

that nobody had time to read, and wicker chairs in which

nobody had time to sit. All that one might do was to serve the

whims and accept the scoldings of women customers who knew too

ill, or too well, what they wanted to buy; keep a tight rein

upon one's indignation at strolling men who did not intend to

buy anything that the shop advertised; be servilely smiling

under the innuendoes of the high-collared floor-walkers, in

order to escape their wrath; maintain a sharp outlook for the

"spotters," or paid spies of the establishment; thwart, if

possible, those pretending customers who were scouts sent from

other stores, and watch for shop-lifters on the one hand and

the firm's detectives on the other.

"It ain't a cinch, by no means"--thus ran the departing Cora

Costigan's advice to her successor--"but it ain't nothin'

now to what it will be in the holidays. I'd rather be dead

than work in the toy-department in December--I wonder if the

kids guess how we that sells 'em hates the sight of their

playthings?--and I'd rather be dead _an'_ damned than work in

the accounting department. A girl friend of mine worked there

last year,--only it was over to Malcare's store--an' didn't get

through her Christmas Eve work till two on Christmas morning,

an' she lived over on Staten Island. She overslept on the

twenty-sixth, an' they docked her a half-week's pay.

"An' don't never," concluded Cora, "don't never let 'em

transfer you to the exchange department. The people that

exchange things all belong in the psychopathic ward at

Bellevue--them that don't belong in Sing Sing. Half the goods

they bring back have been used for days, an' when the store

ties a tag on a sent-on-approval opera cloak, the women wriggle

the tag inside, an' wear it to the theatre with a scarf draped

over the string. Thank God, I'm goin' to be married!"

A Cry from the Ghetto

(_From the Yiddish of Morris Rosenfeld_)

(The poet of the East Side Jews of New York City, born 1861. His poems

appeared in Yiddish newspapers and leaflets, and are the genuine voice

of the sweat-shop workers. The following translation is by Charles

Weber Linn)

The roaring of the wheels has filled my ears,

The clashing and the clamor shut me in;

Myself, my soul, in chaos disappears,

I cannot think or feel amid the din.

Toiling and toiling and toiling--endless toil.

For whom? For what? Why should the work be done?

I do not ask, or know. I only toil.

I work until the day and night are one.

The clock above me ticks away the day,

Its hands are spinning, spinning, like the wheels.

It cannot sleep or for a moment stay,

It is a thing like me, and does not feel.

It throbs as tho' my heart were beating there--

A heart? My heart? I know not what it means.

The clock ticks, and below I strive and stare.

And so we lose the hour. We are machines.

Noon calls a truce, an ending to the sound,

As if a battle had one moment stayed--

A bloody field! The dead lie all around;

Their wounds cry out until I grow afraid.

It comes--the signal! See, the dead men rise,

They fight again, amid the roar they fight.

Blindly, and knowing not for whom, or why,

They fight, they fall, they sink into the night.

Trousers[A]

[A] By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

(_From "A Motley"_)

BY JOHN GALSWORTHY

(English novelist and dramatist, born 1867)

She held in one hand a threaded needle, in the other a pair

of trousers, to which she had been adding the accessories

demanded by our civilization. One had never seen her without a

pair of trousers in her hand, because she could only manage to

supply them with decency at the rate of seven or eight pairs

a day, working twelve hours. For each pair she received seven

farthings, and used nearly one farthing's worth of cotton;

and this gave her an income, in good times, of six to seven

shillings a week. But some weeks there were no trousers to be

had and then it was necessary to live on the memory of those

which had been, together with a little sum put by from weeks

when trousers were more plentiful. Deducting two shillings

and threepence for rent of the little back room, there was

therefore, on an average, about two shillings and ninepence

left for the sustenance of herself and husband, who was

fortunately a cripple, and somewhat indifferent whether he

ate or not. And looking at her face, so furrowed, and at her

figure, of which there was not much, one could well understand

that she, too, had long established within her such internal

economy as was suitable to one who had been "in trousers"

twenty-seven years, and, since her husband's accident fifteen

years before, in trousers only, finding her own cotton.... He

was a man with a round, white face, a little grey mustache

curving down like a parrot's beak, and round whitish eyes. In

his aged and unbuttoned suit of grey, with his head held rather

to one side, he looked like a parrot--a bird clinging to its

perch, with one grey leg shortened and crumpled against the

other. He talked, too, in a toneless, equable voice, looking

sideways at the fire, above the rims of dim spectacles, and now

and then smiling with a peculiar disenchanted patience.

No--he said--it was no use to complain; did no good! Things

had been like this for years, and so, he had no doubt, they

always would be. There had never been much in trousers; not

this common sort that anybody'd wear, as you might say. Though

he'd never seen anybody wearing such things; and where they

went to he didn't know--out of England, he should think. Yes,

he had been a carman; ran over by a dray. Oh! yes, they had

given him something--four bob a week; but the old man had died

and the four bob had died too. Still, there he was, sixty years

old--not so very bad for his age....

They were talking, he had heard said, about doing something for

trousers. But what could you do for things like these, at half

a crown a pair? People must have 'em, so you'd got to make 'em.

There you were, and there you would be! _She_ went and heard

them talk. They talked very well, she said. It was intellectual

for her to go. He couldn't go himself owing to his leg. He'd

like to hear them talk. Oh, yes! and he was silent, staring

sideways at the fire as though in the thin crackle of the

flames attacking the fresh piece of wood, he were hearing the

echo of that talk from which he was cut off. "Lor' bless you!"

he said suddenly. "They'll do nothing! Can't!" And, stretching

out his dirty hand he took from his wife's lap a pair of

trousers, and held it up. "Look at 'em! Why you can see right

throu' 'em, linings and all. Who's goin' to pay more than 'alf

a crown for that? Where they go to I can't think. Who wears

'em? Some institution I should say. They talk, but dear me,

they'll never do anything so long as there's thousands like us,

glad to work for what we can get. Best not to think about it, I

says."

And laying the trousers back on his wife's lap he resumed his

sidelong stare into the fire.

The Song of the Shirt

BY THOMAS HOOD

(Popular English poet and humorist; 1799-1845)

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread,--

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt;

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch

She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

"Work! work! work!

While the cock is crowing aloof!

And work--work--work

Till the stars shine through the roof!

It's O! to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk,

Where woman has never a soul to save,

If this is Christian work!

"Work--work--work

Till the brain begins to swim!

Work--work--work

Till the eyes are heavy and dim!

Seam, and gusset, and band,

Band, and gusset, and seam,--

Till over the buttons I fall asleep,

And sew them on in a dream!

"O Men, with sisters dear!

O Men, with mothers and wives!

It is not linen you're wearing out,

But human creatures' lives!

Stitch--stitch--stitch

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,--

Sewing at once, with a double thread,

A shroud as well as a Shirt!

"But why do I talk of Death--

That phantom of grisly bone?

I hardly fear his terrible shape,

It seems so like my own--

It seems so like my own

Because of the fasts I keep;

O God! that bread should be so dear,

And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work--work--work!

My labor never flags;

And what are its wages? A bed of straw,

A crust of bread--and rags.

That shattered roof--and this naked floor--

A table--a broken chair--

And a wall so blank my shadow I thank

For something falling there!

"Work--work--work!

From weary chime to chime!

Work--work--work

As prisoners work for crime!

Band, and gusset, and seam,

Seam, and gusset, and band,

Till the heart is sick and the brain benumbed,

As well as the weary hand.

"Work--work--work

In the dull December light!

And work--work--work

When the weather is warm and bright!

While underneath the eaves

The brooding swallows cling,

As if to show me their sunny backs

And twit me with the Spring.

"O! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet--

With the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet!

For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want,

And the walk that costs a meal!

"O! but for one short hour--

A respite however brief!

No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,

But only time for Grief!

A little weeping would ease my heart;

But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop

Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread--

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt;

And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,

Would that its tone could reach the rich!--

She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

A London Sweating Den[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "The People of the Abyss"_)

BY JACK LONDON

(California novelist and Socialist; born 1876. The story of his

life will be found on p. 732. For the work here quoted London

lived among the people whose misery he describes)

A spawn of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for all the

world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry

pond. In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce we stepped

over her, sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at breasts

grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of motherhood.

In the black and narrow hall behind her we waded through a

mess of young life, and essayed an even narrower and fouler

stairway. Up we went, three flights, each landing two feet by

three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.

There were seven rooms in this abomination called a house.

In six of the rooms, twenty-odd people, of both sexes and

all ages, cooked, ate, slept, and worked. In size the rooms

averaged eight feet by eight, or possibly nine. The seventh

room we entered. It was the den in which five men sweated. It

was seven feet wide by eight long, and the table at which the

work was performed took up the major portion of the space.

On this table were five lasts, and there was barely room for

the men to stand to their work, for the rest of the space was

heaped with cardboard, leather, bundles of shoe uppers, and a

miscellaneous assortment of materials used in attaching the

uppers of shoes to their soles.

In the adjoining room lived a woman and six children. In

another vile hole lived a widow, with an only son of sixteen

who was dying of consumption. The woman hawked sweetmeats on

the street, I was told, and more often failed than not to

supply her son with the three quarts of milk he daily required.

Further, this son, weak and dying, did not taste meat oftener

than once a week; and the kind and quality of this meat cannot

possibly be imagined by people who have never watched human

swine eat.

"The w'y 'e coughs is somethin' terrible," volunteered my

sweated friend, referring to the dying boy. "We 'ear 'im 'ere,

w'ile we're workin', an' it's terrible, I say, terrible!"

And, what of the coughing and the sweetmeats, I found another

menace added to the hostile environment of the children of the

slums.

My sweated friend, when work was to be had, toiled with

four other men in his eight-by-seven room. In the winter a

lamp burned nearly all the day and added its fumes to the

over-loaded air, which was breathed, and breathed, and breathed

again.

In good times, when there was a rush of work, this man told

me that he could earn as high as "thirty bob a week."--"Thirty

shillings! Seven dollars and a half!

"But it's only the best of us can do it," he qualified. "An'

then we work twelve, thirteen, and fourteen hours a day, just

as fast as we can. An' you should see us sweat! Just runnin'

from us! If you could see us, it'd dazzle your eyes--tacks

flyin' out of mouth like from a machine. Look at my mouth."

I looked. The teeth were worn down by the constant friction of

the metallic brads, while they were coal-black and rotten.

"I clean my teeth," he added, "else they'd be worse."

After he had told me that the workers had to furnish their own

tools, brads, "grindery," cardboard, rent, light, and what not,

it was plain that his thirty bob was a diminishing quantity.

"But how long does the rush season last, in which you receive

this high wage of thirty bob?" I asked.

"Four months," was the answer; and for the rest of the year,

he informed me, they average from "half a quid" to a "quid,"

a week, which is equivalent to from two dollars and a half to

five dollars. The present week was half gone, and he had earned

four bob, or one dollar. And yet I was given to understand that

this was one of the better grades of sweating.

_The Hop-pickers_

So far has the divorcement of the worker from the soil

proceeded, that the farming districts, the civilized world

over, are dependent upon the cities for the gathering of the

harvests. Then it is, when the land is spilling its ripe wealth

to waste, that the street folk, who have been driven away from

the soil, are called back to it again. But in England they

return, not as prodigals, but as outcasts still, as vagrants

and pariahs, to be doubted and flouted by their country

brethren, to sleep in jails or casual wards, or under the

hedges, and to live the Lord knows how.

It is estimated that Kent alone requires eighty thousand of the

street people to pick her hops. And out they come, obedient

to the call, which is the call of their bellies and of the

lingering dregs of adventure-lust still in them. Slums, stews,

and ghetto pour them forth, and the festering contents of

slums, stews, and ghetto are undiminished. Yet they overrun

the country like an army of ghouls, and the country does not

want them. They are out of place. As they drag their squat,

misshapen bodies along the highways and byways, they resemble

some vile spawn from underground. Their very presence, the fact

of their existence, is an outrage to the fresh, bright sun

and the green and growing things. The clean, upstanding trees

cry shame upon them and their withered crookedness, and their

rottenness is a slimy desecration of the sweetness and purity

of nature.

Is the picture overdrawn? It all depends. For one who sees and

thinks life in terms of shares and coupons, it is certainly

overdrawn. But for one who sees and thinks life in terms of

manhood and womanhood, it cannot be overdrawn. Such hordes

of beastly wretchedness and inarticulate misery are no

compensation for a millionaire brewer who lives in a West End

palace, sates himself with the sensuous delights of London's

golden theatres, hobnobs with lordlings and princelings, and is

knighted by the king. Wins his spurs--God forbid! In old time

the great blonde beasts rode in the battle's van and won their

spurs by cleaving men from pate to chin. And, after all, it is

finer to kill a strong man with a clean-slicing blow of singing

steel than to make a beast of him, and of his seed through the

generations, by the artful and spidery manipulation of industry

and politics.

Environment

(_From "Merrie England"_)

BY ROBERT BLATCHFORD

(This book is probably the most widely-circulated of Socialist books

in English. Over two million copies have been sold in Great Britain,

and probably a million in America. The author is the editor of the

London _Clarion_; born 1851)

Some years ago a certain writer, much esteemed for his graceful

style of saying silly things, informed us that the poor remain

poor because they show no efficient desire to be anything else.

Is that true? Are only the idle poor? Come with me and I will

show you where men and women work from morning till night,

from week to week, from year to year, at the full stretch of

their powers, in dim and fetid dens, and yet are poor--aye,

destitute--have for their wages a crust of bread and rags.

I will show you where men work in dirt and heat, using the

strength of brutes, for a dozen hours a day, and sleep at

night in styes, until brain and muscle are exhausted, and

fresh slaves are yoked to the golden car of commerce, and the

broken drudges filter through the poor-house or the prison to

a felon's or a pauper's grave! I will show you how men and

women thus work and suffer and faint and die, generation after

generation; and I will show you how the longer and the harder

these wretches toil the worse their lot becomes; and I will

show you the graves, and find witnesses to the histories of

brave and noble and industrious poor men whose lives were lives

of toil, _and_ poverty, and whose deaths were tragedies.

And all these things are due to sin--but it is to the sin of

the smug hypocrites who grow rich upon the robbery and the ruin

of their fellow-creatures.

Work and Pray

BY GEORG HERWEGH

(German poet, 1817-1875; took part in the attempt at revolution

in Baden in 1848)

Pray and work! proclaims the world;

Briefly pray, for Time is gold.

On the door there knocketh dread--

Briefly pray, for Time is bread.

And ye plow and plant to grow.

And ye rivet and ye sow.

And ye hammer and ye spin--

Say, my people, what ye win.

Weave at loom both day and night,

Mine the coal to mountain height;

Fill right full the harvest horn--

Full to brim with wine and corn.

Yet where is thy meal prepared?

Yet where is thy rest-hour shared?

Yet where is thy warm hearth-fire?

Where is thy sharp sword of ire?

Conventional Lies of Our Civilization

BY MAX NORDAU

(A Hungarian Jewish physician, born 1849, whose work,

"Degeneration," won an international audience)

The modern day laborer is more wretched than the slave of

former times, for he is fed by no master nor any one else, and

if his position is one of more liberty than the slave, it is

principally the liberty of dying of hunger. He is by no means

so well off as the outlaw of the Middle Ages, for he has none

of the gay independence of the free-lance. He seldom rebels

against society, and has neither means nor opportunity to take

by violence or treachery what is denied him by the existing

conditions of life. The rich is thus richer, the poor poorer

than ever before since the beginnings of history.

The Failure of Civilization

BY FREDERIC HARRISON

(English essayist and philosopher, born 1831; President of the

Positivist Society)

I cannot myself understand how any one who knows what the

present manner is can think that it is satisfactory. To me, at

least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly

an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition

of industry were to be that which we behold; that ninety per

cent of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they

can call their own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of

soil, or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing

of value of any kind, except as much old furniture as will go

in a cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages, which

barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed for the

most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are

separated by so narrow a margin from destitution that a month

of bad trade, sickness or unexpected loss brings them face

to face with hunger and pauperism. In cities, the increasing

organization of factory work makes life more and more crowded,

and work more and more a monotonous routine; in the country,

the increasing pressure makes rural life continually less

free, healthful and cheerful; whilst the prizes and hopes of

betterment are now reduced to a minimum. This is the normal

state of the average workman in town or country, to which we

must add the record of preventable disease, accident, suffering

and social oppression with its immense yearly roll of death

and misery. But below this normal state of the average workman

there is found the great band of the destitute outcasts--the

camp-followers of the army of industry, at least one-tenth of

the whole proletarian population, whose normal condition is

one of sickening wretchedness. If this is to be the permanent

arrangement of modern society, civilization must be held to

bring a curse on the great majority of mankind.

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years · 第 1 / 17 章