A LESSON FOR "LABOUR."
["The overwhelming vote of the Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Lancashire miners against accepting any reduction, or even submitting the wages question to arbitration, does not encourage any very sanguine hopes of the Nottingham Conference."—Westminster Gazette.]
"My sentence is for open war!" Thus spake
Fierce Moloch, when within the marly lake
"The Stygian Council" in dark conference met!
"The scepter'd king's" advice prevaileth yet,
And Mammon's self, who in his pristine might
Stooped to the avowal that "all things invite
To peaceful counsels," now in stubborn mood
Urges resistance—at the cost of blood!
Yes, Mammon, musing on "the settled state
Of order," at that dim chaotic date,
Speaks, in the mighty-voiced Miltonic way,
"Of Peace," and "how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are and were." Mammon's award
Is now more martial: Mammon, swoln and proud
With domination o'er the moiling crowd,
Lifts a most arrogant head, and coldly curls
An insolent lip against the clod-soul'd churls
Whose destiny and duty 'tis to slave
'Twixt cradle comfortless and cheerless grave,
To glut his maw insatiate!
Proud is Pelf;
But might not Legend lesson Labour's self?
"Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms!"
Comes not the echo loud of wild alarms
To Labour's Conference? Violence and wreck,
Incendiary hate that sense should check,
Mad mob-intimidation, brutal wrath,—
These are strange warders for the pleasant path
Of human progress! While they crowd and clash
In headlong stubbornness and anger rash,
Whilst factories burn, and workmen fall in blood,
And women mourn, and children moan for food,
Unnumbered multitudes the misery feel
Who share not in its making!
Mars' red steel
Is sheathed to-day at Arbitration's nod;
Hath this no lesson for the milder god?
Vulcan, the smithy-toiler, and his crowd
Of sooty Cyclops, raging fierce and loud,
Impetuous, implacable, whilst Mars,
That savage god of sanguinary wars,
Awaits the award of Arbiters of Peace!
Strange contrast!
"Cease, great hammer-wielder, cease!"
Says the Sword-bearer. "Cease this frenzied fray.
Try Arbitration—'tis the gentler way,
And wiser. I have tried it—shall not you?
Call back your Cyclops, let not them imbrue
Swart hands in Battle's sanguinary hue.
Shall War, now partly driven from the field,
Find refuge in the factory, nor there yield
To the sage suasion of mild Equity,
At whose just Arbitration even I
Suspend or drop the sword?"
So Mars, and so
All friends of Labour. Raise no stubborn "No!"
At Arbitration's offering, seeing that there
Lies fairest hope of an adjustment fair
'Twixt clashing claims, which if they "fight it out"
In war's wild way may put to utter rout
Humanity's fairest hopes. Oh, time enough
When Arbitration fails to essay the rough
And ruddy road of Mars. Stay, Vulcan stay!
Or blameless hosts long-menaced by your fray
May have a stern effective word to say!
And you, as once of old, though stout and tall,
Kicked out of heaven may have a maiming fall!