Moses, the Strike LeaderBy Frances Squire Potter(American contemporary. Professor of English in the University of Minnesota. Writer and speaker on labor and political problems. Corresponding Secretary of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, author “The Ballingtons,” etc. Died March, 1914. In “Life and Labor.”)
By Frances Squire Potter
(American contemporary. Professor of English in the University of Minnesota. Writer and speaker on labor and political problems. Corresponding Secretary of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, author “The Ballingtons,” etc. Died March, 1914. In “Life and Labor.”)
Out of the waters of the Nile, Pharaoh’s daughter drew a Hebrew babe, condemned to die. As her adopted son, he was taught at court all the wisdom of the Egyptians. As an Egyptian prince he might have lived and died in splendor, and his gold-cased mummy might have been on some museum shelf today, a dead curiosity. An aristocrat, a lawyer, a capitalist—these are what he was brought up to be.
Egypt was in the full afternoon of her grandeur. A Pharoah was on the throne whose soul was filled with the ambition to build palaces and temples and cities such as the world had never seen. His heavy hand fell upon the free Hebrews in his kingdom, and sent them to the quarries and the brick-yards to toil with slaves under the lash of merciless foreman. And as his cities and monuments grew, he became drunk with his own glory, and the slaves were flogged to ever more inhuman exertions in the quarries.
“And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out to his brethren, and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew. And he looked this way, and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he smote the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”
I do not believe this was the first time he hadwalked abroad to view his brother slaves toiling. His wrath had been long smouldering in him. You notice he did not attack the Egyptian with blind rage. “He looked this way and that”, and when he saw he was unobserved he deliberately slew the oppressor and buried the body in the desert sands.
Thus the greatest law-giver in history began his career by committing the greatest crime known to the law. He was not young. He was forty years of age. He became a law-breaker only because the laws of Egypt no longer protected the man who worked from the tyrant who confiscated his labor. His soul was in rebellion against “the system”.
How did the workers take this “direct action”? Just as the workers of today would. When he went back the next day, instead of being greeted as a deliverer, he was repudiated by the Hebrews. They were justly suspicious of a member of the system who eased his conscience for a living in the royal family by killing a brutal foreman. “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?” was a very pertinent question. Who, indeed, but Pharoah himself?
But Pharoah on his part was deeply incensed at this rebel in his own family and Moses fled for his life into the deserts of Arabia, carrying with him the consciousness of having made his brethren’s lot worse by his blundering attempt to mend it....
At last, amid the frowning precipices and lonely crags of Mount Sinai, the cry of his race became too strong for him to resist.... And so Moses turns his face once more toward the Nile country, and the great moment of his life is upon him.... From nowon the magnificent story represents the struggle of the enslaved Hebrews for freedom as a duel between two men—Pharoah on the throne, and Moses, the desert wanderer. The one stands for entrenched tyranny, the other is a strike leader. Behind Pharoah is all the power of Egypt, upheld by the armies of the empire. Behind Moses is the mysterious pillar of cloud and of fire—the destiny of the race. Between these two colossi cower the race of slaves whose destiny is at hand....
Just as the Pharoahs of the Colorado coal fields are doing today, Pharoah of Egypt hardened his heart, until the climax of the struggle came in his cry of rage, “Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more: for in the day thou seest my face, thou shalt die!” And Moses said, “Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face no more.” ...
So Moses leads his people out into the wilderness of freedom....
Years passed, and the wilderness was whitened with the bones of the slaves, whose free-born children grew up to higher manhood under their aged leader’s constant counsels and warnings. At last the time came when they were fit to take a place among the nations of the earth, and the pillar of fire and of cloud turns and drifts toward Canaan.
With what longing the old man’s heart looked toward the land of promise, the first fixed abiding place life seemed to offer, we can gather from his own confession. But it was not to be. His course was run. He was a strike leader, a nation-molder, a law-giver, not a military conqueror. When thetribes reach the desert and look down into the green valley of the Jordan, they are called together to hear his parting words. On the slopes of Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, after the antiphonal chanting of the blessings and curses, and the sounding of the trumpets of the Levites, the dying leader stands for the last time before his people, delivers the matchless farewell address recorded in Deuteronomy, blesses them, and passes from their sight forever, up into the solitude of the mountain peaks....
“And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses....”
Dear God! The desert wandering is done,A fixed abode has come to all—but one!Command the muses of the sacred wellSay paeans for the sons of Israel!But turn, oh, turn their silent lips away,While he ascends the solitudes to pray!Deep valley murmurings rise into peace,At that still height his mission wins surcease,And God in mercy lets his eyes undim,Gaze long on glories that are not for him.
Dear God! The desert wandering is done,A fixed abode has come to all—but one!Command the muses of the sacred wellSay paeans for the sons of Israel!But turn, oh, turn their silent lips away,While he ascends the solitudes to pray!Deep valley murmurings rise into peace,At that still height his mission wins surcease,And God in mercy lets his eyes undim,Gaze long on glories that are not for him.
Dear God! The desert wandering is done,A fixed abode has come to all—but one!Command the muses of the sacred wellSay paeans for the sons of Israel!But turn, oh, turn their silent lips away,While he ascends the solitudes to pray!
Dear God! The desert wandering is done,
A fixed abode has come to all—but one!
Command the muses of the sacred well
Say paeans for the sons of Israel!
But turn, oh, turn their silent lips away,
While he ascends the solitudes to pray!
Deep valley murmurings rise into peace,At that still height his mission wins surcease,And God in mercy lets his eyes undim,Gaze long on glories that are not for him.
Deep valley murmurings rise into peace,
At that still height his mission wins surcease,
And God in mercy lets his eyes undim,
Gaze long on glories that are not for him.