I say regarding it. The
practice of fathers is already adopted or soon will be adopted by their
children, and by this means the little substance they may gain through
hard toil, for you well know their gain is small if your profit is what
you desire, falls through the grated bars of drunkenness and waste, into
the waiting pit of penury and pauperism. Bear with me, gentlemen, if I
speak thus plainly, and believe me it is for your own comfort as well as
for the cultivation of the untouched soil in the minds of your workmen,
that I feel called upon to address you earnestly.

"You do not ask, neither would you permit, your wives and children to
work in the mill beside these people, and only the line of gold draws
the distinction between you. There are sweet faces in your mill, there
are tender hearts and there is intellect which might grow to be a power
in our midst. But the sweet faces have weary eyes, the tender hearts
beat without pity, and the strength which might exalt these men and us
as their brothers, becomes the power of a consuming fire, which as time
flies, and our population increases, will burn out all the true and
loyal life that might have developed among us. When our village becomes
a city, we, like other denizens of cities, must see prison houses rise
before us, and to-day we are educating inmates for these walls. Remember
also, that the laces our wives shall wear in those days of so-called
prosperity, will be bought with human life. I will not stand amenable
before God for crime like this.

"If you will drop your present schemes, if you will be content to share
with these men and children a portion of your profits, to let them toil
eight hours instead of twelve per day, and if on every Saturday you will
give to them one full long day in God's dear sunlight, I will invest the
amount of capital necessary to cover all which you as a body have
invested, and I will stand beside you in your mill. I would to God,
gentlemen, you were ready to accept this offer, for it comes from my
heart, but I can anticipate your reply. You will say I am speaking ahead
of my time, that the world is not ready for these theories, much less
for the practice I desire. And in return I would ask, when will it ever
be? Has any new and valuable dispensation sought us through time, when
hands were not raised in holy horror, and the voice of the majority has
not sounded against it. You are to-day enjoying, in the machinery you
use, the b