A History of the Durham Miner's Association 1870-1904Wilson, John
History
A History of the Durham Miner's Association 1870-1904
Wilson, John
Coal miners -- Labor unions -- Great Britain -- History; Durham Miners' Association -- History
This was the leading feature of those who made our present possible.
No one would dare charge them with lack of true heroism. Let me urge
upon you the same spirit. The road may seem longer, and the processes
more painful and slow, but these need not damp your spirits. They
should brace you for the struggle, strengthen your purpose, fix more
firmly your hopes, give you larger faith in the future, induce you to
realise your place in life and not be drifters with the current. There
are too many who are satisfied to merely exist. They have no
aspiration nor ideal nor hope. No man has a right to pass through life
indifferent to the wrongs around him. Two things we must avoid:
impetuosity in associated work and stagnation in the individual life.
Each life should be a clear current, invigorating, not a mere moral
miasmatic pool, but cleansing, elevating, ennobling. There are three
voices calling upon this generation: the past with the work done for
us; the present with its demands upon our help for rectification; and
the future with its possibilities of a better and purer life. There
are many powers opened out to you, but there are three which stand out
prominently: sobriety, education, association. These used, the
darkness will disperse, the downtrodden be raised, and England made
truly a home for her people. The continuous sunshine in which some
dwell and the dark poverty in which thousands exist will be blended,
every soul-enslaving fetter be bruised and broken and cast away, and
the world be brighter for our living in it; and we, when called to our
account, will feel cheered that we have done what we could to cast out
the old and cruel conditions and ring in the Christ that is to be,
when want and hunger shall be no more and that state which the rich
provision in nature and the wonderful production around us provides
for shall be realised.
APPENDIX I
THE GALAS, WITH THE DAY AND DATE UPON WHICH THEY WERE HELD
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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