The Negro Laborer: A Word to HimCouncill, W. H. (William Hooper)
History
The Negro Laborer: A Word to Him
Councill, W. H. (William Hooper)
African Americans -- Employment; Work ethic
to introduce here the following extract from an address bearing upon
this subject. It is so excellent that I will be pardoned for clipping
at length and endorsing it _in toto_:
"The twenty-fourth annual Grand International Convention of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was held in Chicago on the 19th
October, with delegates present from all parts of the Union. The Grand
Chief Engineer, P. M. Arthur, with his usual rare good sense, said in
the course of his annual address: We are enemies only to wrong in its
various devices and garbs, and can assuredly say that political schemes
and aspirations have no place nor part in our association. A mighty
army of men, representing 365 divisions, has gathered about a nucleus
of 12 men who, 24 years ago, assembled in the city of Detroit and
started an organization destined to be more than they knew or dreamed.
To-day we number 25,000 men, and while our numbers are great, we would
not have you consider only the quantity, but the quality as well. To
be a Brotherhood man, four things are requisite, namely: Sobriety,
truth, justice, and morality. This is our motto, and upon this precept
have we based our practice. Taking all things into consideration, our
relations, both to ourselves and with various railroads, employing
Brotherhood men, are amicable. When we consider the dissatisfaction
which is everywhere manifest about us, our few troubles pale in
insignificance. There have been times and incidents when the 'strike'
was the only court of appeals for the workingman, and the evil lay in
the abuse of them and not in the use of them. The methods used to bring
about a successful termination of strikes, the abuse of property and
even of persons, have brought the very name into disrepute, while the
troubles of the laboring man are receiving mere cant, and sympathy for
him is dying out. More and more clearly defined is the line becoming
which divides the honest man, satisfied with a just remuneration which
he has truly earned, until by his own effort he can rise to a higher
position in life, and the loud-voiced 'bomb thrower,' who scarcely able
to speak the English language, seeks to win his own comfortable living
from those who have worked for it, presuming upon the imagination
and arousing false hopes in the hearts of those who are still more
ignorant than himself. Among sensible men the day for all this is past.
Let 'mercy season justice, and justice be tempered with moderation.'
A wise arbitration looks to a long result rather than to immediate
satisfaction, and accomplishes more than intimidation ever can hope to
do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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