help or hurt the government, no measure ever had been
proposed for their benefit although they were ground under the heel of
the capitalist to a condition of abject slavery. But the moment this
power is placed in their hands, before they have used it even once, this
bitterest enemy to their possessing it is the first man to spring to his
feet and make this motion for the most beneficent measure possible in
their behalf--public schools for the education of themselves and their
children.

From that day to this, there never has been a session of the British
Parliament that has not had before it some measure for the benefit of
the working classes. Parliament has enacted laws compelling employers
to cut down the number of hours for a day's work, to pay better wages,
to build decent houses for their employes, and has prohibited the
employment of very young children in the mines and factories. The
history of those olden times records that not infrequently children were
born in the mines and passed their lives there, scarcely seeing the
sunlight from the day of their birth to the day of their death.

Sad as is the condition of the workingmen of England today, it is
infinitely better than it was twenty years ago. At first the votes of
the workingmen were given to the Liberal party, because it was the
leaders of that party who secured their enfranchisement; but soon the
leaders of the Conservative party, seeing the power the workingmen had,
began to vie with the Liberals by going into their meetings and pledging
that if they would vote the Tory ticket and bring that party into
control, it would give them more and better laws even than the Liberals.
In 1874 enough workingmen did go over to bring that party to the front,
with Disraeli at its head, where it stood till 1880 when the rank and
file of the workingmen of England, dissatisfied with Disraeli's policy,
both domestic and foreign, turned and again voted the Liberal ticket,
putting that party in power with Gladstone as its leader. This is the
way in which the ballot in the hands of the masses of wage-earners, even
under a monarchial form of government, makes of them a tremendous
balance of power whose wants and wishes the instinct of self-interest
compels the political leaders to study and obey.

The great distinctive advantage possessed by the workingmen of this
republic is that the son of the humblest citizen, black or white, has
equal chances with the son of the richest i