Alexander Irvine, author and lecturer, speaking before the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, said in part:
Speaking for the mass of the laborers, the men and women of the underworld, men and women not knowing or appreciating beauty in any form, men who know only the whip and spur, I speak feelingly, for I was one of them. I began work caring for the horses of a rich man and I wondered then why a horse was of more value than a man. I had then the ambition to have as good a life as the horse. I quit and went to a coalpit and worked for a shilling a day in merry England, and I saw there the same disparity. I was a miner’s mucker, and the mules were better and far more considered than the men. There was at the time a labor leader trying to organize the men to work for better wages and better hours. I tried to teach them the way to heaven. He was doing the better work, as those workmen in the mines could not have appreciated heaven.
In a lumber-camp I saw peonage at its worst. I was a peon myself, under the whip and lash and the butt-end of the whip was held in Wall Street, and the lash cut the backs of Anglo-Saxon men. Could I find a magazine to print my story of what I saw? I could not. The stocks of the magazine company were owned by the capitalists.—Brooklyn Standard Union.
(1981)
MASTER HAND, LACKING THE
Some years ago I was chairman of a church committee to purchase a new pipe-organ. We were an ambitious congregation, and nothing but the biggest and the best would suffice. We purchased a magnificent instrument—three manuals, tracker, pneumatic action, 1,944 pipes, and all the necessary swells and stops; cost $5,000. It was a “thing of beauty,” and we expected it to be a “joy forever.” The congregation was pleased; the committee was delighted.
But somehow things did not go well. Sister Jones, the old organist, would not touch the new-fangled thing. “Too much machinery and too much show,” she said. Of course, we were adverse to going outside of the congregation for an organist. So we tried Minnie Wright, the deacon’s daughter; but Minnie could not manipulate the stops and swells. We next tried Josie Grayson, an orphan girl, who really needed the place. Now, Josie could play with her hands, but when it came to playing with her feet also she could not do it. We next tried Seth McGraw, who had been to college and who, in addition to his musical ability, was able-bodied and strong. Seth put all the power on the motor, pulled out all the stops, and kicked and pawed with might and main. The organ shrieked and bellowed and roared. As for noise, the bulls of Bashan were outclassed. But as for music—well, it requires more than a big organ and a big man to produce that. The congregation was disappointed, disgusted, and fast becoming desperate. They said that the organ was too big, too complicated, and that it had at least nineteen hundred pipes too many. There were charges of mismanagement and even fraud against the committee, and hints that “something might be doing.” Now, Indiana lies in the north central portion of the lynching belt of the United States, so the committee felt a trifle uncomfortable.
To my way of thinking, there is a marked similarity between the musical experience of this congregation and the educational experience of many communities in this country. We have built great schoolhouses and prepared elaborate courses of study, with more manuals, stops, and swells than characterized the great organ of Newtown. The old course of study, which was so simple that even Sister Jones could play it by ear, has given place to a new, elaborate, and highly organized course which is difficult—entirely too difficult—for the Minnie Wrights and Josie Graysons, no difference if the one is a relative of some member of the school-board and the other is the daughter of a poor widow. It requires more, too, than an able-bodied man to get proper results from the course of study, even if he has been to college and played fullback on the football team. He may make a great ado about it, but the results will be very similar to Seth McGraw’s music on the pipe-organ—calculated to incite a riot.—J. W. Carr.
(1982)
MASTER MIND, THE