THE LATER ARISTOCRACY.
“Times were bad in London when I was a child there. Gangs of workmen used to parade the streets, singing mournfully, ‘We have no work to do!’ This condition led my father to immigrate to this country, in 1863, when I was thirteen. I continued my trade of cigarmaker in New York, and joined the ‘Cigarmakers’ International Union’ when it was organized, in 1864. It now has thirty thousand members, but mine is the longest continued membership; my due card is No. 1. This was the first labor organization I belonged to. I attended its meetings and got into the habit of studying and thinking about labor matters and the many changes in the workingman’s condition that would be beneficial to himself and to the commonwealth.
“I began to realize that, in the struggles of the ages, lords and nobles have lost their gold lace and velvet, but that they survive as the economic lords of the means of life, and that their aggressions must be opposed by combinations of labor—by trade unions. I began to appreciate the true dignity of labor and the importance to the state of fair conditions for workingmen. The older I grew, the more essential seemed the strong organization of labor. I felt what Wendell Phillips expressed in these words: ‘I rejoice at every effort workingmen make to organize. I hail the labor movement. It is my only hope for democracy. Organize and stand together. Let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice.’