At midnight their fuel became exhausted, and the snow drift was so deep that they could not get more. Little Jake complained of being sleepy, and his older brother sang an Indian song to keep him awake. The little fellow began to repeat the prayer his teacher taught him, and fell asleep with the words still on his lips. The others soon followed him into dreamland, and all night long the merciless snow drifted over the tall rock and buried them under many feet of spotless robes. The winds howled, the storm shrieked and groaned and higher the snow drift grew upon them.
Late in July a prospecting party found them, the elder brother holding little Jake in his stiffened arms.
A PLEA FOR CHILDHOOD
In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, and in the name of Him who died for men, I would make a plea for the little children who are born into the world to be landless and homeless through life. Does it seem possible to the thickest headed thinker that a just God would send children into a world already privately owned by previous generations? Are God’s laws similar to the European laws of primogeniture, giving the best of all to the first born—to the first generations, and to be handed down from father to son, to hold and own forever?
I can’t believe that there is any priority handed down to a special few from the God of All. Every sense of common justice rebels at such an idea. If it is our God, and our heaven, and our eternity, it must then surely be our earth, our land, and our oceans, and our mountains, and our air. Will a higher civilization recognize this picture of simple justice? And will we reach a higher state of civilization without giving all an equal share in God and the earth?
I do not know. It might create serious complications to remove the priority claim of the selected few who now claim the natural wealth of the world. The present state and condition of the social world and the industrial world may be exactly as God wishes it to be. Every one must answer this question for himself; for while it is true that God created man, every individual creature has a peculiar way of forming the character and attributes of his God. Men still quote scripture to prove that God believed in human slavery. If this is true, then God surely allowed little innocent babes to be born into slavery, and to be driven by the lash from the cradle to the grave.
If this is true, then child labor in our mills and factories for wages, is not nearly so horrible as chattel slavery, and God must look with approbation at the little consumptive boy or girl dying by inches while watching the shuttles fly back and forth in the loom, of which they are part of the machinery.
These questions each one must settle for himself; but doesn’t it seem more natural and human to decide in favor of the children? When you look into the innocent eyes of the child sitting in its mother’s arms, can you consign that child to the slavery of the factories and mills, and then wash your conscience clean with the wet sponge of tearful prayer? Sit right up straight in your chair at this very minute and decide the case between yourself and the children and your God—did God, or did he not send these helpless and dependent children into the world to become mere slaves, and to live landless and homeless until he calls them hence? Yes?
Within the eyes of each trusting child