Labor Day
In cased you missed it today in Projo. Who would have thought Projo? It's even more applicable today than when it was spoken 115 years ago.
‘Rights of the masses’
What does labor want? It wants the earth and the fullness thereof. There is nothing too precious, there is nothing too beautiful, too lofty, too ennobling, that is not within the scope and aspirations and wants. We want more schoolhouses and fewer jails, more books and fewer arsenals, more learning and less vice, more constant work and less crime, more leisure and less greed, more justice and less revenge — in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood nobler, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood brighter and happier. The labor movement of our country and of all countries stands for progress, for protection of the interests and rights of the masses. There can be no real freedom where labor is enslaved. It is our mission to see to it that the heritage handed down to us by our forefathers of this and other countries, who have borne scars of battle, is accepted, and that we take up the struggle where they were compelled to lay it down, be true to them, be true to ourselves and to the people of our time, and, more important than all, to hand down the heritage of freedom to those who shall come after us to bear the burden of their day, to make life and toil better — better worth the living and the doing.
— Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, 1886-1924, in a speech on Aug. 28, 1893.
‘Rights of the masses’
What does labor want? It wants the earth and the fullness thereof. There is nothing too precious, there is nothing too beautiful, too lofty, too ennobling, that is not within the scope and aspirations and wants. We want more schoolhouses and fewer jails, more books and fewer arsenals, more learning and less vice, more constant work and less crime, more leisure and less greed, more justice and less revenge — in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood nobler, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood brighter and happier. The labor movement of our country and of all countries stands for progress, for protection of the interests and rights of the masses. There can be no real freedom where labor is enslaved. It is our mission to see to it that the heritage handed down to us by our forefathers of this and other countries, who have borne scars of battle, is accepted, and that we take up the struggle where they were compelled to lay it down, be true to them, be true to ourselves and to the people of our time, and, more important than all, to hand down the heritage of freedom to those who shall come after us to bear the burden of their day, to make life and toil better — better worth the living and the doing.
— Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, 1886-1924, in a speech on Aug. 28, 1893.
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