CHAPTER VII
A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
"Those who work neither with their brains nor their hands are a menace to the public safety."—Roosevelt.
Well and good! In the great mobs and riots of history, what class is it which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot, the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is the labourer's head upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the vortex of the crowd.
That those who labour with their hands may have no cause to menace society, those who labour with their brains shall strive to encompass.
Evils in any system American progress is sure to cure. Shops such as the Plant shoe factory in Boston, with its eight-hour labour, ample provision for escape in case of fire, its model ventilating, lavish employment of new machinery—tells on the great manufacturing world.
Reason, human sympathy, throughout history have been enemies to slavery or its likeness: reason and sympathy suggest that time and place be given for the operative man and woman to rest, to benefit by physical culture, that the bowed figures might uplift the flabby muscles. Time is securely past when the manufacturers' greed may sweat the labourers' souls through the bodies' pores in order that more stuff may be turned out at cheaper cost.
The people through social corporations, through labour unions, have made their demands for shorter hours and better pay.
LYNN