The Glad Day of Universal BrotherhoodBy Frances E. Willard(Great temperance worker; the only woman whose statue is in the Hall of Fame. From an address at the National W. C. T. U. Convention at Buffalo, in 1897.)
By Frances E. Willard
(Great temperance worker; the only woman whose statue is in the Hall of Fame. From an address at the National W. C. T. U. Convention at Buffalo, in 1897.)
Look about you; the products of labor are on every hand; you could not maintain for a moment a well-ordered life without them; every object in your room has in it, for discerning eyes, the mark of ingenious tools and the pressure of labor’s hands.But is it not the cruelest injustice for the wealthy, whose lives are surrounded and embellished by labor’s work, to have a superabundance of the money which represents the aggregate of labor in any country, while the laborer himself is kept so steadily at work that he has no time to acquire the education and refinements of life that would make him and his family agreeable companions to the rich and cultured?...
I believe that competition is doomed. The trust, whose single object is to abolish competition, has proved that we are better without it, than with it, and the moment corporations control the supply of any product, they combine. What the Socialist desires is that the corporation of humanity should control all production. Beloved comrades, this is the frictionless way; it is the higher way; it eliminates the motives for a selfish life; it enacts into our every-day living the ethics of Christ’s gospel. Nothing else will do it; nothing else can bring the glad day of universal brotherhood.