LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
THE 
 
 BATTLE FOR BREAD 
 
 SERIES OF SERMONS 
 
 RELATING TO 
 
 LABOR AND CAPITAL, 
 
 Rev. T. DeWITT TALMAGE, D.D. 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 Jul 16 1886. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 J. S. OGILVIE AND COMPANY, 
 
 31 Rose Street, 
 
|T»B UBHAftt 1 
 
 iOf CONGRESS 
 
 iWAfHI»GT22. 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■ i ■ e 
 
 <*?£&> 
 
 POPULAR SERMONS. 
 
 Uniform in style and price with this volume. 
 The Wedding Ring. 
 
 By Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, D.D. 
 
 Good News. 
 
 By Sam Jones and Sam Small. 
 
 Joyful Tidings. 
 
 By Sam Jones and Sam Small. 
 
 Ten Days with D. L. Moody. 
 
 Mailed on receipt of price. 
 
 Copyright, 1886, by J. S. Ogilvie and Company. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION. 
 
 "The earth was without form and void ; and dark- 
 ness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit 
 of God moved upon the face of the waters." — Gene- 
 sis 1:2. 
 
 Out in space there hung a great chunk of 
 rock and mud and water and shell. Thousands 
 of miles in diameter, more thousands of miles 
 in circumference. A great mass of ugliness, 
 confusion, and distortion, uselessness, ghastli- 
 ness, and horror. It seemed like a great com- 
 mons on which smashed-up worlds were 
 dumped. It was what poetry and prose, scien- 
 tist and Christian agree in calling chaos. Out 
 of that black, rough, shapeless egg our beauti- 
 ful world was hatched. God stood over that 
 original 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD, 
 
 ANARCHY OF ELEMENTS 
 
 and said : " Atlantic Ocean, you go right away 
 and lie down there ! Pacific Ocean, you sleep 
 there ! Caucasian range of mountains, you 
 stand there ! Mount Washington, you be sen- 
 tinel there ! Mont Blanc, you put on your cor- 
 onet of crystal there ! Mississippi, you march 
 there, and Missouri you marry it there !" And 
 He gathered in His Almighty hands the sand 
 and mud and rock, and rolled and heaved and 
 moulded and dented and compressed them into 
 shape, and then dropped them in four places ; 
 and the one was Asia, and another was Europe, 
 and another Africa, and another America, 
 North and South. 
 
 SOCIAL CHAOS THREATENED. 
 
 That original chaos was like the confusion 
 and anarchy into which the human race ever 
 and anon has a tendency to plunge. God has 
 said : " Let there be light of law, light of jus- 
 tice, light of peace, light of love !" " No ! 
 No !" say anarchic voices, " let there be dark- 
 ness, let there be cut-throatery, let there be 
 eternal imbroglio, let there be chaos." 
 
 Such a social condition many are expecting 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 5 
 
 because of the overshadowing contest between 
 Labor and Capital ; there has not been an intel- 
 ligent man or woman during the last two 
 months who has not asked the question, 
 " Shall we have bloody revolution in this 
 country ?" I have heard many answer the 
 question in the affirmative ; I answer it in the 
 negative. 
 
 THE CHURCH AS PEACEMAKER. 
 
 There may be and there have been terrific 
 outbursts of popular frenzy, but there will be no 
 anarchy, for the Church of Christ, the mightiest 
 and grandest institution of the planet, shall, lay- 
 ing hold of the strength of the eternal God, 
 come out, and putting one hand on the shoul- 
 der of Labor, and the other on the shoulder of 
 Capital, say, " I come in the name of the God 
 who turned chaos into magnificent order, to 
 settle this dispute by the principles of eternal 
 justice and kindness ; and now I command you, 
 take your hands off of each other's throats.'' 
 The only impartial institution on this subject is 
 the Church, for it is made up of both capitalists 
 and laborers, and was founded by Christ, who 
 was a carpenter, and so has a right to speak for 
 all laborers, and who owns the earth and the 
 
6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 solar system and the universe, and so can speak 
 for the capitalists. 
 
 As for myself, as an individual I have a right 
 to be heard. My father was a farmer and my 
 grandfather, and they had to work for a living ; 
 and every dollar I own I earned by the sweat of 
 my own brow, and I owe no man anything, and 
 if any obligation has escaped my memory, come 
 and present your bill when I descend from this 
 pulpit, and I will pay you on the spot. I am 
 going. to say all that I think and feel on this 
 subject, and without any reservation, asking 
 your prayers that I may be divinely directed in 
 this important series of Sabbath morning dis- 
 courses. 
 
 That Labor has grievances I will show you 
 plainly before I get through this course of ser- 
 mons. That Capital has had outrages com- 
 mitted upon it I will make evident beyond dis- 
 pute. But there are right and wrong ways of 
 attempting a reformation. 
 
 When I say there will be no return to social 
 chaos, I do not underrate the awful 
 
 PERIL OF THESE TIMES. 
 
 We must admit that the tendency is toward rev- 
 olution. Great throngs gather at some points 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 7 
 
 of disturbance in almost all our cities. Rail- 
 trains hurled over the rocks. Workmen beaten 
 to death within sight of their wives and chil- 
 dren. Factories assailed by mobs. The faith- 
 ful police of our cities exhausted by vigilance 
 night and day. In some cases the military 
 called out. The whole country asking the 
 question, " What next ?" A part of Belgium 
 one great riot. Germany and Austria keeping 
 their workmen quiet only by standing armies 
 so vast that they are eating out the life of those 
 nations. The only reason that Ireland is in 
 peace is because she is hoping for Home Rule 
 and the triumphs of Gladstonism. The labor 
 quarrel is hemispheric, aye, a world-wide quar- 
 rel, and the whole tendency is toward anarchy. 
 But one way in which we may avoid anarchy 
 is by letting the people know 
 
 WHAT ANARCHY IS. 
 
 We must have the wreck pointed out in order 
 to steer clear of it. Anarchy is abolition of 
 right of property. It makes your store and 
 your house and your money and your family 
 mine, and mine yours. It is wholesale robbery. 
 It is every man's hand against every other man. 
 It is arson and murder and rapine and lust and 
 
8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 death triumphant. It means no law, no church, 
 no defence, no rights, no happiness, no God. 
 It means hell let loose on earth, and society a 
 combination of devils incarnate. It means ex- 
 termination of everything good and the corona- 
 tion of everything infamous. Do you want it ? 
 Will you have it ? Before you let it get a good 
 foothold in America take a good look at the 
 dragon. 
 
 Look at Paris, where for a few days it held 
 sway, the gutters red with blood and the walks 
 down the street a stepping between corpses, the 
 Archbishop shot as he tries to quell the mob, 
 and every man and woman armed with knife or 
 pistol or bludgeon. Let this country take one 
 good, clear, scrutinizing look at anarchy before 
 it is admitted, and it will never be allowed to 
 set up its reign in our borders. No ; there is 
 too much good sense dominant in this country 
 to permit anarchy. All good people will, to- 
 gether with the officers of civil government, 
 cry " Peace !" and it will be re-established. 
 Meanwhile, my brotherly counsel is to 
 
 THREE CLASSES OF LABORERS. 
 
 First, to those who are at work. Stick to it. 
 Do not amid the excitement of these times drop 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 9 
 
 your employment, hoping that something bet- 
 ter will turn up. He who gives up work now, 
 whether he be railroad man, mechanic, farmer, 
 clerk, or any other kind of employee, will prob- 
 ably give it up for starvation. You may not 
 like the line of steamers that you are sailing in, 
 but do not jump overboard in the middle of the 
 Atlantic. Be a little earlier than usual at your 
 post of work while this turmoil lasts, and attend 
 to your occupation with a little more assiduity 
 than has ever characterized you. 
 
 My brotherly counsel, in the second place, is 
 to those who have resigned work. It is best 
 for you and best for everybody to go back im- 
 mediately. Do not wait to see what others do. 
 Get on board the train of national prosperity 
 before it starts again, for start it will, start soon 
 and start mightily. Last year in the city of 
 New York there were 45 general strikes and 
 177 shop strikes. Successful strikes, 97; strikes 
 lost, 34; strikes pending at the time the statist- 
 ics were made, 59; strikes compromised, 32. 
 Would you like me to tell you who will make 
 the most out of the present almost universal 
 strike ? I can and will. Those will make the 
 most out of it who go first to work. 
 
 My third word of brotherly advice is to the 
 
10 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 nearly two million people who could not get 
 work before this trouble began, and who have 
 themselves and their families to support, to go 
 now and take the vacated places. Go in and 
 take those places a million and a half strong. 
 Green hands you may be now, but you will 
 not be green hands long. My sentiment is full 
 liberty for all who want to strike to do so, and 
 full liberty for all who want to take the vacated 
 places. Other industries will open for those 
 who are now taking vacation, for we have only 
 opened the outside door of this continent, and 
 there is room in this country for eight hundred 
 million people, and for each one of them a 
 home and a livelihood and a God ! 
 
 PLENTY OF ROOM. 
 
 So, however others may feel about this excite- 
 ment, as wide as the continent, I am not scared 
 a bit. The storm will hush. Christ will put 
 His foot upon it as upon agitated Galilee. As 
 at the beginning, chaos will give place to order 
 as the Spirit of God moves upon the waters. 
 But hear it, workingmen of America! Your 
 first step toward light and betterment of condi- 
 tion will be an assertion of your individual in- 
 dependence from the dictation of your fellow- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. II 
 
 workmen. You are a free man, and let no 
 organization come between you and your best 
 interests. Do not let any man, or any body of 
 men, tell you where you shall work, or where 
 you shall not work, when you shall work, or 
 when you shall not work. If a man wants to 
 belong to a labor organization, let him belong. 
 If he does not want to belong to a labor organ- 
 ization, let him have perfect liberty to stay out. 
 You own yourself. Let no man put a manacle 
 on your hand or foot or head or heart. 
 
 I belong to a ministerial association that 
 meets once a week. I love all the members 
 very much. We may help each other in a hun- 
 dred ways, but when that association shall tell 
 me to quit my work and go somewhere else ; 
 that I must stop right away because a brother 
 minister has been badly treated down in Texas, 
 I will say to that ministerial association, "Get 
 thee behind me, Satan !" Furthermore, I have 
 a right to resign my pastorate of this church 
 and say to the people, " I decline to work for 
 you any longer. I am going. Good-by." But 
 I have no right, after I have quit this pulpit, to 
 linger around the doors on Sunday mornings 
 and evenings with a shot-gun to intimidate or 
 hinder the minister who comes to take my 
 
12 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 place. I may quit my place and continue to be 
 a gentleman, but when I interfere with my suc- 
 cessor in this pulpit I become a criminal, and 
 deserve nothing better than thin soup in a tin 
 bowl in Sing Sing Prison. Your first duty, 
 oh laboring man, is to your family ! Let no one 
 but Almighty God dictate to you how you 
 shall support them. Work when you please, 
 where you please, at what you please, and allow 
 no one for a hundred millionth part of a second 
 to interfere with your right. When we emerge 
 from the present unhappiness, as we soon will, 
 we shall find many tyrannies broken, and Labor 
 and Capital will march shoulder to shoulder. 
 
 MUTUAL DEPENDENCE. 
 
 This day I declare the mutual dependence of 
 Labor and Capital. An old tentmaker put it 
 just right — I mean Paul — when he declared : 
 "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no 
 need of thee." You have examined some elab- 
 orate machinery — a thousand wheels, a thousand 
 bands, a thousand levers, a thousand pulleys, 
 but all controlled by one great water-wheel, all 
 the parts adjoined so that if you jarred one part 
 you jarred all the parts. Well, society is a great 
 piece of mechanism, a thousand wheels, a thou- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 3 
 
 sand pulleys, a thousand levers, but all con- 
 trolled by one great and ever-revolving force — 
 the wheel of God's providence. The profes- 
 sions interdependent, all the trades interde- 
 pendent. Capital and Labor interdependent, 
 so that the man who lives in a mansion on the 
 hill, and the man who breaks cobble-stones at 
 the foot of the hill, affect each other s misfor- 
 tune or prosperity. Dives cannot kick Laza- 
 rus without hurting his own foot. They who 
 throw Shadrach into the furnace, get their own 
 faces scorched and blackened. No such thing 
 as independence. Smite society at any one 
 point and you smite the entire community. 
 
 IDENTICAL INTERESTS. 
 
 Relief will come to the working-classes of this 
 country through a better understanding between 
 Capital and Labor. Before the contest goes 
 much further it will be found that their interests 
 are identical ; what helps one helps both ; what 
 injures one injures both. Until the crack of 
 doom there will be no relief for the working- 
 classes until there is a better understanding be- 
 tween Labor and Capital and this war ends. 
 Every speech that Capital makes against Labor 
 is an adjournment of our national prosperity. 
 
14 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 Every speech that Labor makes against Capital 
 is an adjournment of our national prosperity. 
 The capitalists of the country, so far as I know 
 them, are successful laborers. If the capitalists 
 in this house to-day would draw their gloves, 
 you would see the broken finger-nail, the scar 
 of an old blister, here and there a stiffened 
 finger-joint. The great publishers of New 
 York and Philadelphia, so far as I know them, 
 were book-binders or printers on small pay. 
 The carriage manufacturers of the country used 
 to sandpaper the wagon-bodies in the wheel- 
 wright's shop. 
 
 PHILANTHROPIC CAPITALISTS. 
 
 Peter Cooper was a glue-maker. No one 
 begrudged him his millions of dollars, for he 
 built Cooper Institute and swung open its 
 doors for every poor man's ^on, and said to the 
 day laborer : " Send your boy up to my In- 
 stitute if you want him to have a splendid edu- 
 cation. " And a young man of this church was 
 the other day walking in Greenwood Cemetery, 
 and he saw two young men putting flowers on 
 the grave of Peter Cooper. My friend sup- 
 posed the young men were relatives of Peter 
 Cooper, and decorated his grave for that reason. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 5 
 
 " No," they said, "we put these flowers on his 
 grave because it was through him we got our 
 education. " Abraham Van Nest was a harness- 
 maker in New York. Through economy and 
 industry and skill he got a great fortune. He 
 gave away to help others hundreds of thousands 
 of dollars. I shall never forget the scene when 
 I, a green country lad, stopped at his house, 
 and after passing the evening with him he came 
 to the door and came outside and said : " Here, 
 De Witt, is fifty dollars to get books with. 
 Don't say anything about it." And I never 
 did till the good old man was gone. Henry 
 Clay was "the Mill-boy of the Slashes." Hugh 
 Miller, a stone-mason ; Columbus, a weaver ; 
 H alley, a soap-boiler ; Arkwright, a barber ; 
 the learned Bloomfield, a shoemaker ; Ho- 
 garth, an engraver of pewter plate, and 
 Horace Greeley started life in New York 
 with ten dollars and seventy-five cents in his 
 pocket. 
 
 The distance between Capital and Labor is 
 not a great gulf over which is swung a Niagara 
 suspension bridge ; it is only a step, and the 
 laborers here will cross over and become capi- 
 talists, and the capitalists will cross over and 
 become laborers. Would to God they would 
 
1 6 THE BATTLE FOE 
 
 shake hands while they are crossing, these from 
 one side, and those from the other side. 
 
 WHO THE COMBATANTS ARE. 
 
 The combatants in this great conflict be- 
 tween Capital and Labor are chiefly, on the 
 one side, the men of fortune, and, on the other 
 hand, men who could get labor, but will not 
 have it, will not stick to it. It is the hand curs- 
 ing the eye, or the eye cursing the hand. I 
 want it understood that the laborers are the 
 highest style of capitalists. Where is their in- 
 vestment? In the bank? No. In railroad 
 stock ? No. Their muscles, their nerves, their 
 bones, their mechanical skill, their physical 
 health, are the highest kind of capital. The 
 man who has two feet, and two ears, and two 
 eyes, and ten fingers, owns a machinery that 
 puts into nothingness Corliss's engine and all 
 the railroad rolling stock, and all the carpet 
 and screw and cotton factories on the planet. 
 I wave the flag of truce this morning between 
 these contestants. I demand a cessation of 
 hostilities between Labor and Capital. What 
 is good for one is good for both. What is bad 
 for one is bad for both. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 7 
 
 CO-OPERATION. 
 
 Again, relief will come to the working- 
 classes of this country through co-operative 
 association. I am not now referring to trades- 
 unions. We may hereafter discuss that ques- 
 tion. But I refer to that plan by which laborers 
 become their own capitalists, taking their sur- 
 pluses and putting them together and carrying 
 on great enterprises. In England and Wales 
 there are seven hundred and sixty-five co-opera- 
 tive associations, with three hundred thousand 
 members, with a capital of fourteen millions of 
 dollars, doing business in one year to the 
 amount of fifty-seven millions dollars. In Troy, 
 N. Y., there was a co-operative iron foundry 
 association. It worked well long enough to 
 give an idea of what could be accomplished 
 when the experiment is fully developed. 
 
 You say that there have been great failures in 
 that direction. I admit it. Every great move- 
 ment at the start is a failure. The application 
 of steam power a failure, electro-telegraphy a 
 failure, railroading a failure, but after awhile the 
 world's chief successes. I hear some say, 
 " Why, it is absurd to talk of a surplus to be 
 put into this co-operative association, when men 
 
1 8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 can hardly get enough to eat and wear and take 
 care of their families." I reply, Put into my 
 hand the money spent in the last five years in 
 this country by the laboring classes for rum and 
 tobacco, and I will start a co-operative institu- 
 tion of monetary power that will surpass any 
 financial institution in the United States. 
 
 TAKEN INTO CONFIDENCE. 
 
 Again, I remark, that relief will come to the 
 working-classes through more thorough dis- 
 covery on the part of employers that it is best 
 for them to let their employes know just how 
 matters stand. The most of the capitalists of 
 to-day are making less than six per cent, less 
 than five per cent., less than four per cent, on 
 their investments. Here and there is an ana- 
 conda swallowing down everything, but such are 
 the exceptions. It is often the case that em- 
 ployes blame their employer because they sup- 
 pose he is getting along grandly, when he is 
 oppressed to the last point of oppression. I 
 knew a manufacturer who employed more than 
 a thousand hands. I said to him : " Do you 
 ever have any trouble with your workmen ? do 
 you have any strikes ?" "No," he said. 
 " What ! in this time of angry discussion be- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 9 
 
 tween Capital and Labor, no trouble ?" " None 
 at all — none." I said: u How is that?" 
 "Well,"' he said, "I have a way of my own. 
 Every little while I call my employes together 
 and I say, — ' Now, boys, I want to show you 
 how matters stand. What you turned out this 
 year brought so much. You see it isn't as much 
 as we got last year. I can't afford to pay you as 
 much as I did. Now, you know I put all my 
 means in this business. What do you think 
 ought to be my percentage, and what wages 
 ought I to pay you ? Come, let us settle this. 
 And," said that manufacturer, "we are always 
 unanimous. When we suffer, we all suffer 
 together. When we advance, we advance to- 
 gether, and my men would die for me." But 
 when a man goes among his employes with 
 a supercilious air, and drives up to his factory 
 as though he were the autocrat of the universe, 
 with the sun and the moon in his vest-pockets, 
 moving amid the wheels of the factory, chiefly 
 anxious lest a greased or smirched hand should 
 touch his immaculate broadcloth, he will see at 
 the end he has made an awful mistake. I 
 think that employers will find out after awhile 
 that it is to their interest, as far as possible, to 
 explain matters to their employes. You be 
 
20 THE BATTLE FOR BRFATV 
 
 frank with them, and they will be frank with 
 you. 
 
 Again, I remark, relief will come to the 
 laboring classes through the religious rectifica- 
 tion of the country. Labor is appreciated and 
 rewarded just in proportion as a country is 
 Christianized. Show me a community that is 
 thoroughly infidel, and I will show you a com- 
 munity where wages are small. Show me a 
 community that is thoroughly Christianized, 
 and I will show you a community where wages 
 are comparatively large. How do I account 
 for it ? The philosophy is easy. Our religion 
 is a democratic religion. It makes the owner 
 of the mill understand he is a brother to all the 
 operatives in that mill. Born of the same 
 heavenly Father, to lie down in the same dust, 
 to be saved by the same supreme mercy. No 
 putting on of airs in the sepulchre or in the 
 judgment. 
 
 An engineer in a New England factory gets 
 sleepy, and he does not watch the steam-gauge, 
 and there is a wild thunder of explosion, and 
 the owner of the mill and one of the workmen 
 are slain. The two slain men come up toward 
 the gate of heaven. The owner of the mill 
 knocks at the gate. The celestial gate-keeper 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 21 
 
 cries, " Who is there ?" The reply comes, " I 
 was the owner of a factory at Fall River, where 
 there was an explosion just now, and I lost my 
 life, and I want to come in." " Why do you 
 want to come in, and by what right do you 
 come in ?" asks the celestial gate-keeper. 
 " Oh," says the man, " I employed two or three 
 hundred hands ! I was a great man at Fall 
 River." "You employed two or three hundred 
 men," says the gate-keeper, " but how much 
 Christian grace did you employ ?" "None at 
 all," says the owner of the mill. " Step back," 
 says the celestial gate-keeper ; " no admittance 
 here for you." Right after comes up the poor 
 workman. He knocks at the gate. The shining 
 gate-keeper says, "Who is there?" He says, 
 " I am a poor workman ; I come up from the 
 explosion at Fall River ; I would like to enter." 
 " What is your right to come in here ?" asks the 
 shining gate-keeper. The workman says, " I 
 heard that a shining Messenger came forth from 
 your world to our world to redeem it ; I have 
 been a bad man ; I used to swear when I hurt 
 my hand with the wheel ; I used to be angry ; I 
 have done a great many wrong things, but I 
 confessed it all to the Messenger that came 
 from your country, and after I confessed it He 
 
22 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 told me to come up here ; and that you may 
 know I have a right to come, there is His name 
 on the palm of my hand ; here is his name 
 on my forehead." Then there is a sound of 
 working pulleys, and the gates lift, and the 
 workingman goes in. There was a vast differ- 
 ence between the funerals at Fall River. The 
 owner of the mill had a great funeral. The 
 poor workingman had a small funeral. The 
 man who came up on his own pompous re- 
 sources was shut out of heaven. The poor 
 man, trusting to the grace of Jesus Christ, en- 
 tered. So, you see, it is 
 
 A DEMOCRATIC RELIGION. 
 
 I do not care how much money you have, you 
 have not enough money to buy your way 
 through the gate. My friends, you need to 
 saturate our populations with the religion of 
 Christ, and wages will be larger, employers will 
 be more considerate, all the tides of thrift will 
 set in. I have the highest authority for saying 
 that godliness is profitable for the life that now 
 is. It pays for the employer. It pays for the 
 employe. The hard hand of the wheel and 
 the soft hand of the counting-room will clasp 
 each other yet. They will clasp eaoh other in 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 23 
 
 congratulation. They will clasp each other on 
 the glorious morning of the Millennium, The 
 hard hand will say, " I ploughed the desert into 
 a garden ;" the soft hand will reply, "I fur- 
 nished the seed." The one hand will say, "I 
 thrashed the mountains ;" the other hand will 
 say, " I paid for the flail." The one hand will 
 say, "I hammered the spear into a pruning- 
 hook ;" and the other hand will answer, " I 
 signed the treaty of peace that made that pos- 
 sible." Then Capital and Labor will lie down 
 together, and the lion and the lamb, and the 
 leopard and the kid, and there will be nothing 
 to hurt or destroy in all God's holy mount, for 
 the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. 
 
24 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 THE TREATMENT. OF EMPLOYES. 
 
 " If ye bite and devour one another, take heed 
 that ye be not consumed one of another/' — Gal. 5:15. 
 
 " Look not every man on his own things, but every 
 man also on the things of others. — Phil. 2:4. 
 
 The labor agitation will soon quiet. The 
 mills will again open, the railroads resume their 
 traffic, our national prosperities again start. Of 
 course, the damage done by the strikes cannot 
 immediately be repaired. Wages will not be 
 so high as they were. Spasmodically they may 
 be higher, but they will drop lower. Strikes, 
 whether right or wrong, always injure laborers 
 more than the capitalists. You will see this in 
 the starvation of next winter. Boycotting and 
 violence and murder never pay. They are dif- 
 ferent 
 
 STAGES OF ANARCHY. 
 
 God never blessed murder. The worst use 
 you can put a man to is to kill him. Blow up 
 to-morrow all the country seats on the banks 
 of the Hudson, and all the fine houses on 
 Madison Square, and Brooklyn Heights, and 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 2$ 
 
 Brooklyn Hill, and Rittenhouse Square, and 
 Beacon Street, and all the bricks and timber 
 and stones will just fall back on the bare head 
 of American labor. 
 
 The worst enemies of the working classes in 
 the United States and Ireland are their 
 demented coadjutors. Assassination — the 
 assassinations of Lord Frederick Cavendish 
 and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ire- 
 lond, in the attempt to avenge the wrongs of 
 Ireland, only turned away from that afflicted 
 people millions of sympathizers. The attempts 
 to blow up the House of Commons, in Lon- 
 don, had only this effect — to throw out of em- 
 ployment tens of thousands of innocent Irish 
 people in England. In this country the torch 
 put to the factories that have discharged hands 
 for good or bad reasons ; obstructions on the 
 rail-tracks, in front of midnight express trains, 
 because the offenders do not like the president 
 of the company ; strikes on shipboard the hour 
 they were going to sail, or in printing offices 
 the hour the paper was to go to press, or in the 
 mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or 
 on house scaffoldings so the builder fails in 
 keeping his contract — all these are only a hard 
 blow on the head of American labor, and crip- 
 
26 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 pie its arms, and lame its feet, and pierce its 
 heart Traps sprung suddenly upon employers 
 and violence never took one knot out of the 
 knuckles of toil, or put one farthing of wages 
 into a callous palm. Barbarism will never 
 cure the wrongs of civilization. Mark that ! 
 
 A KING THREATENED BY A MILLER. 
 
 Frederick the Great admired some land near 
 his palace at Potsdam, and he resolved to get 
 it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the 
 miller three times the value of the property. 
 The miller would not take it because it was the 
 old homstead, and he felt much as Naboth 
 felt about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. 
 Frederick the Great was a rough and terrible 
 man, and he ordered the miller into his 
 presence, and the king with a stick in his hand 
 — a stick with which he sometimes struck the 
 officers of State — said to the miller : " Now, I 
 have offered you three times the value of that 
 property, and if you won't sell it I'll take it any- 
 how." The miller said : "Your Majesty, you 
 won't." " Yes," said the king, " I will take it." 
 " Then," said the miller, " if your Majesty coes 
 take it I will sue you in the Chancery Court." 
 At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 2J 
 
 infamous demand. And the most imperious 
 outrage against the working classes will yet 
 cower before the law. Violence and opposition 
 to the law will never accomplish anything, but 
 righteousness and according to the law will ac- 
 complish it. 
 
 THE WIDENING CHASM. 
 
 But gradually the damages done the laborer 
 by the strikes will be repaired, and some im- 
 portant things ought now to be said. The 
 whole tendency of our times, as you have 
 noticed, is to make the chasm betweeu em- 
 ployer and emyloye wider and wider. In olden 
 time the head man of the factory, the master 
 builder, the capitalist, the head man of the 
 firm, worked side by side with their employes, 
 working sometimes at the same bench, dining 
 at the same table ; and there are those here 
 who can remember the time when the clerks of 
 large commercial establishments were accus- 
 tomed to board with the head men of the firm. 
 
 All that is changed, and the tendency is to 
 make the distance between employer and em- 
 ploye wider and wider. The tendency is to 
 make the employe feel that he is wronged by 
 the success of the capitalist, and to make the 
 
28 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 capitalist feel : " Now, my laborers are only 
 beasts of burden ; I must give so much money 
 for so much drudgery, just so many pieces of 
 silver for so many beads of sweat." In other 
 words, the bridge of sympathy is broken down 
 at both ends. That feeling was well described 
 by Thomas Carlyle when he said : " Plugson, 
 of St. Dolly Undershot, buccaneer-like, says to 
 his men : 'Noble spinners, this is the hun- 
 dredth thousand we have gained, wherein I 
 mean to dwell and plant my vineyards. The 
 hundred thousand pound is mine, the daily 
 wage was yours. Adieu, noble spinners ; drink 
 my health with this groat each, which I give 
 you over and above." 
 
 Now, what we want is to rebuild that bridge 
 of sympathy, and I put the trowel to one of the 
 abutments to-day, and I preach more especially 
 this morning to employers as such, although 
 what I have to say will be appropriate to all 
 who are in the house. 
 
 THREE BRUTAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 The outrageous behavoir of a multitude of 
 laborers toward their employers during the last 
 three months — behavior infamous and worthy 
 of most condign punishment — may have in- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 29 
 
 duced some employers to neglect the real 
 Christian duties that they owe to those whom 
 they employ. Therefore I want to say to you 
 whom I confront face to face, and those to 
 whom these words may come, that all ship- 
 owners, all capitalists, all commercial firms, all 
 master builders, all housewives, are bound to be 
 interested in the entire welfare of their subor- 
 dinates. Years ago some one gave three pre- 
 scriptions for becoming a millionaire : First, 
 spend your life in getting and keeping the earn- 
 ings of other people ; secondly, have no anxiety 
 about the worriments, the losses, the disappoint- 
 ments of others ; thirdly, do not mind the fact 
 that your vast wealth implies the poverty of a 
 great many people. Now, there is not a man 
 in my audience who would consent to go out 
 into life with those three principles to earn a 
 fortune. It is your desire to do your whole 
 duty to the men and women in your service. 
 
 THE RATE OF PAY. 
 
 First of all, then, pay as large wages as are 
 reasonable and as your business will afford. 
 Not necessarily what others pay, certainly not 
 what your hired help say you must pay, for 
 that is tyranny on the part of labor unbearable. 
 
30 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 The right of a laborer to tell his employer 
 what he must pay implies the right of an em- 
 ployer to compel a man into a service whether 
 he will or not, and either of those ideas is 
 despicable. When an employer allows a labor- 
 er to say what he must do or have his business 
 ruined, and the employer submits to it, he does 
 every business man in the United States a 
 wrong, and yields to a principle which, carried 
 out, would dissolve society. Look over your 
 affairs, and put yourselves in imagination in 
 your laborer's place, and then pay him what be- 
 fore God and your own conscience you think 
 you ought to pay him. 
 
 " God bless yous " are well in their place, 
 but they do not buy coal nor pay house rent 
 nor get shoes for the children. At the same 
 time you, the employer, ought to remember 
 through what straits and strains you got the 
 fortune by which you built your store or run 
 the factory. You are to remember that you 
 take all the risks and the employe takes none, 
 or scarcely any. You are to remember that 
 there may be reverses in fortune, and that some 
 new style of machinery may make your machin- 
 ery valueless, or some new style of tariff set 
 your business back hopelessly and forever. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 3 1 
 
 You must take all that into consideration, and 
 then pay what is reasonable. 
 
 BIBLE INJUNCTIONS. 
 
 Do not be too ready to cut down wages. As 
 far as possible pay all, and pay promptly. 
 There is a great deal of Bible teaching on this 
 subject. Malachi : " I will be a swift witness 
 against all sorcerers, and against all adulterers, 
 and against those who oppress the hireling in 
 his wages." Leviticus : " Thou shalt not keep 
 the wages of the hireling all night unto the 
 morning." Colossians : " Masters, give unto 
 your servants that which is just and equal ; 
 knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." 
 
 So you see it is not a question between you 
 and your employe so much as it is a question 
 between you and God. 
 
 Do not say to your employes : " Now, if 
 you don't like this place get another," when 
 you know they cannot get another. As far as 
 possible once a year visit at their homes your 
 clerks and your workmen. That is the only 
 way you can become acquainted with their 
 wants. You will by such process find out that 
 there is a blind parent or a sick sister being 
 supported. You will find some of your young 
 
32 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 men in rooms without any fire in winter, and in 
 summer sweltering in ill-ventilated apartments. 
 You will find how much depends on the wages 
 you pay or withhold. 
 
 BENEFICENT EMPLOYERS. 
 
 Moreover, it is your duty as employer, as far 
 as possible, to mould the welfare of the em- 
 ploye. You ought to advise him about invest- 
 ments, about life insurance, about savings 
 banks. You ought to give him the benefit of 
 your experience. There are hundreds and 
 thousands of employers in this country and 
 England, I am glad to say, who are settling in 
 the very best possible way the destiny of their 
 employes. Such men as Marshall, of Leeds ; 
 Lister, of Bradford ; Akroyd, of Halifax ; and 
 men so near at home it might offend their 
 modesty, if I mentioned their names. These 
 men have built reading-rooms, libraries, concert 
 halls, afforded croquet lawns, cricket grounds, 
 gymnasiums, choral societies for their employes, 
 and they have not merely paid the wages on 
 ^Saturday night, but through the contentment 
 and the thrift and the good morals of their 
 employes, they are paying wages from genera- 
 tion to generation forever. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 33 
 
 Again, I counsel all employers to look well 
 after the physical health of their subordinates. 
 Do not put on them any unnecessary fatigue. 
 I never could understand why the drivers on 
 our city cars must stand all day when they 
 might just as well sit down and drive. It seems 
 to me most unrighteous that so many of the 
 female clerks in our stores should be compelled 
 to stand all day, and through those hours when 
 there are but few or no customers. These peo- 
 ple have aches and annoyance and weariness 
 enough without putting upon them additional 
 fatigue. Unless those female clerks must go 
 up and down on the business of the store, let 
 them sit down. 
 
 Then, I would have you carry out this sani- 
 tary idea, and put into as few hours as possible 
 the work of the day. Some time ago — whether 
 it has been changed I know not — there were 
 one thousand grocer clerks in Brooklyn who 
 went to business at five o'clock in the morning 
 and continued until ten o'clock at night. Now, 
 that is inhuman. It seems to me all the mer- 
 chants in all departments ought, by simultane- 
 ous movement, to come out in behalf of the 
 early closing theory. These young men ought 
 to have an opportunity of going to the Mercan- 
 
34 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 tile Library, to the reading-rooms, to the con- 
 cert hall, to the gymnasium, to the church. 
 They have nerves, they have brains, they have 
 intellectual aspirations, they have immortal 
 spirits. If they can do a good round day's 
 work in the ten or eleven hours, you have no 
 right to keep them harnessed for seventeen. 
 
 But, above all, I charge you, O employers ! 
 that you look after the moral and spiritual wel- 
 fare of your employes. First, know where 
 they spend their evenings. That decides every- 
 thing. You do not want around your money 
 drawer a young man who went last night to 
 see Jack Sheppard / A man that comes into 
 the store in the morning ghastly with mid- 
 night revelry is not the man for your store. 
 The young man who spends his evenings in the 
 society of refined women, or in musical or ar- 
 tistic circles, or in literary improvement, is the 
 young man for your store. 
 
 THE GUARDIAN OF EMPLOYES. 
 
 Do not say of these young men : " If they 
 do their work in the business hours, that is all 
 I have to ask." God has made you that man's 
 guardian. I want you to understand that 
 many of these young men are orphans, or worse 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 35 
 
 than orphans, flung out into society to strug- 
 gle for themselves. A young man is pitched 
 into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and a 
 plank is pitched after him, and then he is told 
 to take that and swim ashore. Treat that 
 young man as you would like to have your son 
 treated if you were dead. Do not tread on 
 him. Do not swear at him. Do not send 
 him on a useless errand. Say " Good-morn- 
 ing" and " Good-night" and "Good-by." You 
 are deciding that man's destiny for two worlds. 
 One of my earliest remembrances is of 
 
 OLD ARTHUR TAPPAN. 
 
 There were many differences of opinion 
 about his politics, but no one who ever knew 
 Arthur Tappan, and knew him well, doubted 
 his being an earnest Christian. In his store in 
 New York he had a room where every morn- 
 ing he called his employes together, and he 
 prayed with them, read the Scriptures to them, 
 sang with them, and then they entered on the 
 duties of the day. On Monday morning the 
 exercises differed, and he gathered the young 
 men together and asked them where they had 
 attended church, what had been their Sabbath 
 experiences, and what had been the sermon. 
 
36 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 Samuel Budget* had the largest business in 
 the west of England. He had in a room of his 
 warehouse a place pleasantly furnished with 
 comfortable seats and " Fletchers Family De- 
 votions" and Wesleyan Hymn-books, and he 
 gathered his employes together every morn- 
 ing, and having sung, they knelt down and 
 prayed side by side — the employer and the em- 
 ployes. Do you wonder at that man's suc- 
 cess, and that though thirty years before he 
 had been a partner in a small retail shop in a 
 small village, at his death he bequeathed many 
 millions. God can trust such a man as that 
 with plenty of money. 
 
 SIR TITUS SALT 
 
 had wealth which was beyond computation, 
 and at Saltaire, England, he had a church and 
 a chapel built and supported by himself — the 
 church for those who preferred the Episcopal 
 service, and the chapel for those who preferred 
 the Methodist service. At the opening of one 
 of his factories he gave a great dinner, and there 
 were thirty-five hundred people present, and in 
 his after-dinner speech he said to these people 
 gathered : " I cannot look around me and see 
 this vast assemblage of friends and work-people 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 37 
 
 without being moved. I feel greatly honored 
 by the presence of the nobleman at my side, 
 and I am especially delighted at the presence 
 of my work-people. I hope to draw around 
 me a population that will enjoy the beauties of 
 this neighborhood — a population of well-paid, 
 contented, happy operatives. I have given in- 
 structions to my architects that nothing is to 
 be spared to render the dwellings of the opera- 
 tives a pattern to the country, and if my life is 
 spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see 
 contentment, satisfaction, and happiness around 
 me." 
 
 That is Christian character demonstrated; 
 There are others in this country and in other 
 lands on a smaller scale doing their best for 
 their employes. They have not forgotten 
 their own early struggles. They remember 
 how they were discouraged, how hungry they 
 were, and how cold and how tired they were, 
 and though they may be sixty or seventy years 
 of age, they know just how a boy feels between 
 ten and twenty, and how a young man feels 
 between twenty and thirty. They have not 
 forgotten it. Those wealthy employers were 
 not originally let down out of heaven with pul- 
 leys of silk in a wicker basket, satin-lined, 
 
38 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 fanned by cherubic wings. They started in 
 roughest cradle, on whose rocker misfortune 
 put her violent foot, and tipped them into the 
 cold world. Those old men are sympathetic 
 with boys. 
 
 LOOK AFTER THE FOREMAN. 
 
 But you are not only to be kind to those 
 who are under you — Christianly kind — but you 
 are also to see that your boss workman, and 
 your head clerks, and your agents, and your 
 overseers in stores are kind to those under 
 them. Sometimes a man will get a little brief 
 authority in a store or in a factory, and while 
 they are very courteous to you, the capitalist, 
 or to you, the head man of the firm, they are 
 most brutal in their treatment of those under 
 them. God only knows what some of the 
 lads suffer in the cellars and in the lofts of 
 some of our great establishments. They have 
 no one to appeal to. The time will come when 
 their arm will be strong, and they can defend 
 themselves, but not now. Alas ! for some of 
 the cash boys and the messenger boys and the 
 boys that sweep the store. Alas ! for some 
 of them. Now, you capitalist, you, the head 
 man of the firm, must look, supervise, see 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 39 
 
 those all around you, investigate all beneath 
 you. 
 
 BE MERCIFUL. 
 
 And, then, I charge you not to put unneces- 
 sary temptation in the way of your young men. 
 Do not keep large sums of money lying around 
 unguarded. Know how much money there is 
 in the till. Do not have the account books 
 loosely kept. There are temptations inevit- 
 able to young men, and enough of them, with- 
 out your putting any unnecessary temptations 
 in their way. Men in Wall Street, having 
 thirty years of reputation for honesty, have 
 dropped into Sing Sing and perdition, and you 
 must be careful how you try a lad of fifteen. 
 And if he do wrong, do not pounce on him 
 like a hyena. If he prove himself unworthy of 
 your confidence, do not call in the police, but 
 take him home, tell why you dismissed him to 
 those who will give him another chance. 
 Many a young man has done wrong once who 
 will never do wrong again. Ah ! my friends, I 
 think we can afford to give everybody another 
 chance, when God knows we should all have 
 been in perdition if He had not given us ten 
 thousand chances. 
 
 Then, if in moving around your factory, or 
 
40 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 mill, or barn, or store you are inexorable with 
 young men, God will remember it. Some 
 day the wheel of fortune will turn, and you 
 will be a pauper, and your daughter will go to 
 the workhouse, and your son will die on the 
 scaffold. If in moving among your young 
 men you see one with an ominous pallor of 
 cheek, or you hear him coughing behind the 
 counter, say to him : " Stay home a day or two 
 and rest, or go out and breathe the breath of 
 the hills. " If his mother die, do not demand 
 that on the day after the funeral he be in the 
 store. Give him, at least, a week to get over 
 that which he will never get over. 
 
 A BRAVE GENERAL. 
 
 Employers, urge upon your employes, above 
 all, a religious life. So far from that, how is 
 it, young men ? Instead of being cheered on 
 the road to heaven, some of you are caricatured, 
 and it is a hard thing for you to keep your 
 Christian integrity in that store or factory 
 where there are so many hostile to religion. 
 Ziethen, a brave general under Frederick the 
 Great, was a Christian. Frederick the Great 
 was an infidel. One day Ziethen, the vener- 
 able, white-haired general, asked to be excused 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 41 
 
 from military duty that he might attend the 
 holy sacrament. He was excused. A few 
 days after Ziethen was dining with the king and 
 with many notables of Prussia, when Freder- 
 ick the Great, in a jocose way, said: "Well, 
 Ziethen, how did the sacrament of last Friday 
 digest ?" The venerable old warrior arose, and 
 said : " For your Majesty I have risked my 
 life many a time on the battle-field, and for 
 your Majesty I would be willing any time to 
 die ; but you do wrong when you insult the 
 Christian religion. You will forgive me if I, 
 your old military servant, cannot bear in silence 
 any insult to my Lord and my Saviour." 
 Frederick the Great leaped to his feet, and he 
 put out his hand, and he said : " Happy Zie- 
 then, forgive me, forgive me !" 
 
 Oh, there are many being scoffed at for their 
 religion ! and I thank God there are many 
 men as brave as Ziethen. Go to heaven your- 
 self, O employer ! Take all your people with 
 you. Soon you will be through buying and 
 selling, and through with manufacturing and 
 building, and God will ask you : "Where are 
 all those people over whom you had so great 
 influence ? Are they here ? Will they be 
 here ?" O shipowners ! into what harbor will 
 
42 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 your crew sail ? Oh, you merchant grocers ! 
 are those young men that under your care are 
 providing food for the bodies and families of 
 men, to go starved forever ? Oh, you manu- 
 facturers of this United States ! with so many 
 wheels flying, and so many bands pulling, and 
 so many new patterns turned out, and so many 
 goods shipped, are the spinners, are the carmen, 
 are the draymen, are the salesmen, are the 
 watchers of your establishments working out 
 everything but their own salvation ? Can it be 
 that, having those people under your care five, 
 ten, twenty years, you have made no everlasting 
 impression for good on their immortal souls ? 
 God turn us all back from such selfishness, and 
 teach us to live for others and not for our- 
 selves. Christ sets us the example of sacrifice, 
 and so do many of His disciples. 
 
 A SELF-SACRIFICING PHYSICIAN. 
 
 One summer in California a gentleman who 
 had just removed from the Sandwich Islands 
 told me this incident. He said one of the 
 Sandwich Islands, is devoted to lepers. People 
 getting sick of the leprosy on the other islands 
 are sent to that isle of lepers. They never 
 come off. They are in different stages of dis- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 43 
 
 ease, but all who die on that island die of 
 leprosy. 
 
 On one of the islands there was a physician 
 who always wore his hand gloved, and it was 
 often discussed why he always had a glove on 
 that hand under all circumstances. One day 
 he came to the authorities, and he withdrew 
 his glove, and he said to the officers of the law: 
 "You see on that hand a spot of the leprosy, 
 and that I am doomed to die. I might hide 
 this for a little while and keep away from the 
 isle of lepers ; but I am a physician, and I can 
 go on that island and administer to the suffer- 
 ings of those who are farther gone in the dis- 
 ease, and I should like to go now. It would 
 be selfish in me to stay amid these luxurious 
 surroundings when I might be of so much help 
 to the wretched. Send me to the isle of the 
 lepers." They, seeing the spot of leprosy, of 
 course took the man into custody. He bade 
 farewell to his family and his friends. It was 
 an agonizing farewell. He could never see 
 them again. He was taken to the isle of the 
 lepers, and there wrought among the sick until 
 prostrated by his own death, which at last came. 
 Oh, that was magnificent self-denial, magnifi- 
 cent sacrifice, only surpassed by that of Him 
 
44 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 who exiled Himself from his home in heaven 
 to this leprous island of a world, that He might 
 physician our wounds, and weep our griefs, and 
 die our deaths, turning the isle of a leprous 
 world into a great blooming, paradisical gar- 
 den ! Whether employer or employe, let us 
 catch that spirit. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 45 
 
 HARDSHIPS OF WORKINGMEN. 
 
 "So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and 
 he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth 
 the anvil." — Isa. 41:7. 
 
 You have seen in factories a piece of mech- 
 anism passing from hand to hand, and from 
 room to room, and one mechanic will smite it, 
 and another will flatten it, and another will 
 chisel it, and another will polish it, until the 
 work be done. And so the prophet describes 
 the idols of olden times as being made, part of 
 them by one hand, part of them by another 
 hand. Carpentry comes in, gold-beating comes 
 in, smithery comes in, and three or four styles 
 of mechanism are employed. "So the carpen- 
 ter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that 
 smootheth with the hammer him that smote 
 the anvil." When they met, they talked over 
 their work, and they helped each other on with 
 it It was a very bad kind of business ; it was 
 making idols which were an insult to the Lord 
 of heaven. I have thought if men in bad work 
 can 
 
46 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER, 
 
 ought not men engaged in honest artisanship 
 and mechanism speak words of good cheer ? 
 
 Men see in their own work hardships and 
 trials, while they recognize no hardships or 
 trials in anybody else's occupation. Every 
 man's burden is the heaviest, and every wo- 
 man's task is the hardest. We find people 
 wanting to get other occupations and profes- 
 sions. I suppose, when the merchant comes 
 home at night, his brain hot with the anxieties 
 of commercial toil, disappointed and vexed, 
 agitated about the excitements in the money 
 markets, he says, " Oh, I wish I were a me- 
 chanic ! When his day's work is done, the 
 mechanic lies down ; he is healthy in body, 
 healthy in mind, and healthy in soul, but I 
 can't sleep ;" while, at that very moment, the 
 mechanic is wishing he was a banker or a mer- 
 chant. He says, "Then I could always have 
 on beautiful apparel ; then I could move in 
 the choicest circles ; then I could bring up my 
 children in a very different sphere from that 
 in which I am compelled to bring them up." 
 Now, the beauty of our holy religion is that 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 47 
 
 GOD LOOKS DOWN UPON ALL 
 
 the occupations and professions, and while I 
 cannot understand your annoyances and you 
 cannot understand mine, God understands 
 them all. He knows all about the troubles 
 of these men mentioned in my text — the car- 
 penter who encouraged the goldsmith, and he 
 that smootheth with the hammer, and the 
 gold-beaters. 
 
 I will speak this morning of the general 
 hardships of the working-classes. You may 
 not belong to this class, but you are bound as 
 Christian men and women to know their sor- 
 rows and sympathize with them, and as politi- 
 cal economists to come to their rescue. There 
 is great danger that the prosperous classes, 
 because of the bad things that have been said 
 by the false friends of labor, shall conclude 
 that all this labor trouble is a " hullabaloo'' 
 about nothing. Do not go off on that tan- 
 gent. You would not, neither would I, sub- 
 mit without protest to the oppressions to 
 which many of our laborers are subjected. 
 
 ANARCHISTS REPUDIATED. 
 
 You do a great wrong to the laboring classes 
 if you hold them responsible for the work of 
 
48 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 the scoundrelly Anarchists. You cannot hate 
 their deeds more thoroughly than do all the 
 industrial classes. At the head of the chief 
 organ of the Knights of Labor, in big letters, 
 I find the following vigorous disclaimer : 
 
 " Let it be understood by all the world that 
 the Knights of Labor have no affiliation, asso- 
 ciation, sympathy or respect for the band of 
 cowardly murderers, cut-throats, and robbers, 
 known as Anarchists, who sneak through the 
 country like midnight assassins, stirring up the 
 passions of ignorant foreigners, unfurling the 
 red flag of anarchy and causing riot and blood- 
 shed. Parsons, Spies, Fielding, Most, and all 
 their followers, sympathizers, aiders, and abet- 
 tors, should be summarily dealt with. They 
 are entitled to no more consideration than wild 
 beasts. The leaders are cowards and their fol- 
 lowers are fools." 
 
 You may do your duty toward your em- 
 ployes, but many do not, and the biggest 
 business firm in America to-day is Grip, 
 Gouge, 
 
 GRIND AND COMPANY. 
 
 Look, for instance, at the woes of the wo- 
 manly toilers, who have not made any strike and 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 49 
 
 who are dying by the thousands, and dying 
 by inches. I read a few lines from the last 
 Labor Report, just out, as specimens of 
 what female employes endure : " Poisoned 
 hands and cannot work. Had to sue the 
 man for fifty cents !" Another: "About 
 four months of the year can, by hard work, 
 earn a little more than three dollars per week'' 
 Another : " She now makes wrappers at one 
 dollar per dozen ; can make eight wrappers per 
 day." Another: "We girls in our establish- 
 ment have the following fines imposed : for 
 washing your hands, twenty-five cents ; eating 
 a piece of bread at your loom, one dollar ; also 
 sitting on a stool, taking a drink of water, and 
 many trifling things too numerous to men- 
 tion." " Some of the worst villains of our cities 
 are the employers of these women. They beat 
 them down to the last penny, and try to cheat 
 them out of that. The woman must deposit a 
 dollar or two before she gets the garments to 
 work on. When the work is done it is sharply 
 inspected, the most insignificant flaw is picked 
 out, and the wages refused and sometimes the 
 dollar deposited not given back. The Wo- 
 man's Protective Union reports a case where 
 one of the poor souls, finding a place where 
 
50 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 she could get more wages, resolved to change 
 employers, and went to get her pay for work 
 done. The employer says, ' I hear you are go- 
 ing to leave me ?' ' Yes/ she said, 'and I have 
 come to get what you owe me,' He made no 
 answer. She said : i Are you not going to pay 
 me?' 'Yes/ he said, 'I will pay you/ and he 
 kicked her down stairs." I never swore a word 
 in all my life, but I confess that when I read 
 that I felt a stirring within me that was not at 
 all devotional. 
 
 UNDERPAID WOMEN. 
 
 By what principle of justice is it that wo- 
 men in many of our cities get only two thirds 
 as much as men, and in many cases only half ? 
 Here is the gigantic injustice, that for work 
 equally well, if not better done, woman re- 
 ceives far less compensation than man. Start 
 with the National Government. Women 
 clerks in Washington get nine hundred dollars 
 for doing that for which men receive eighteen 
 hundred dollars. The wheel of oppression is 
 rolling over the necks of thousands of women 
 who are at this moment in despair about what 
 they are to do. Many of the largest mercan- 
 tile establishments of our cities are accessory 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 5 1 
 
 to these abominations, and from their large 
 establishments there are scores of souls being 
 pitched off into death, and their employers 
 know it. Is there a God ? Will there be a 
 judgment ? I tell you, if God rises up to re- 
 dress woman's wrongs, many of our large estab- 
 lisments will be swallowed up quicker than a 
 South American earthquake ever took down a 
 city. God will catch these oppressors between 
 the mill-stones of His wrath, and grind them 
 to powder. 
 
 Why is it that a female principal in a 
 school gets only eight hundred and twenty-five 
 dollars for doing work for which a male princi- 
 pal gets sixteen hundred and fifty dollars ? I 
 hear from all this land the wail of womanhood. 
 Man has nothing to answer to that wail but 
 flatteries. He says she is an angel. She is 
 not. She knows she is not. She is a human 
 being who gets hungry when she has no food, 
 and cold when she has no fire. Give her no 
 more flatteries ; give her justice ! There are 
 sixty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York 
 and Brooklyn. Across the sunlight comes 
 their death groan. It is not such a cry as 
 comes from those who are suddenly hurled out 
 of life, but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting 
 
52 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 away. At a large meeting of these women 
 held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches 
 were delivered, but a needlewoman took the 
 stand, threw aside her faded shawl, and with 
 her shrivelled arm hurled a very thunderbolt 
 of eloquence, speaking out the horrors of her 
 own experience. Stand at the corner of a 
 street at six or seven o'clock in the morning, 
 as the women go to work. Many of them 
 had no breakfast except the crumbs that were 
 left over from the night before, or the crumbs 
 they chew on their way through the street. 
 Here they come ! 
 
 THE WORKING-GIRLS OF NEW YORK 
 
 and Brooklyn. These engaged in head work, 
 these in flower-making, in millinery, paper-box 
 making ; but, most overworked of all and least 
 compensated, the sewing-women. Why do 
 they not take the city cars on their way up ? 
 They cannot afford the five cents. If, conclud- 
 ing to deny herself something else, she gets 
 into the car, give her a seat. You want to see 
 how Latimer and Ridley appeared in the fire. 
 Look at that woman and behold a more horri- 
 ble martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing 
 death. Ask that woman how much she gets 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 53 
 
 for her work, and she will tell you six cents for 
 making coarse shirts and finds her own thread. 
 I speak more fitly of woman's wrongs be- 
 cause she has not been heard in the present 
 agitation. You know more of what men have 
 suffered. I said to a colored man who, in 
 Missouri, last March, came into my room in 
 the morning to build my fire : " Sam, how 
 much wages do you people get around here ?" 
 He replied: " Ten dollars a month, sir !" I 
 asked : " Have you a family ?" " Yes," said he, 
 ''wife and children." Think of it — a hundred 
 and twenty dollars a year to support a family 
 on ! My friends, there is in this world 
 
 SOMETHING AWFULLY ATWIST. 
 
 When I think of these things, I am not bothered 
 as some of my brethren with the abstract ques- 
 tions as to why God let sin come into the 
 world. The only wonder with me is that God 
 don't smash this world up and start another in 
 place of it. 
 
 One great trial that the working-classes feel 
 is 
 
 PHYSICAL EXHAUSTION. 
 
 There are athletes who go out to their work at 
 six or seven o'clock in the morning, and come 
 
54 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 back at night as fresh as when they started. 
 They turn their back upon the shuttle or the 
 forge or the rising wall, and they come away 
 elastic and whistling. That is the exception. 
 I have noticed that when the factory bell taps 
 for six o'clock, the hard-working man wearily 
 puts his arm into his coat-sleeve and starts for 
 home. He sits down in the family circle, re- 
 solved to make himself agreeable, to be the 
 means of culture and education to his children, 
 but in five minutes he is sound asleep. He is 
 fagged out — strength of body, mind, and soul 
 utterly exhausted. He rises in the morning 
 only half rested from the toil. Indeed, he will 
 never have any perfect rest in this world until 
 he gets into one narrow spot which is the only 
 perfect rest for the human body in this world. 
 I think they call it a grave ! 
 
 Has toil frosted the color of your cheeks? 
 Has it taken all spontaneity from your laugh- 
 ter? Has it subtracted the spring from your 
 step and the lustre from your eye until it has 
 left you only half the man you were when you 
 first put your hand on the hammer and your 
 foot on the wheel ? To-morrow, in your place 
 of toil, listen, and you will hear a voice above 
 the hiss of the furnace and the groan of the 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 55 
 
 1 
 
 foundry and the clatter of the shuttle-— a voice 
 not of machinery, nor of the task-master, but 
 the voice of an all-sympathetic God, as He 
 says, "Come unto Me, all you who labor and 
 are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Let 
 all men and women of toil remember that this 
 work will soon be over. Have they not heard 
 that there is a great holiday coming ? Oh, 
 that home, and no long walk to get to it ! Oh, 
 that bread, and no sweating toil necessary to 
 earn it ! Oh, these deep wells of eternal rap- 
 ture, and no heavy buckets to draw up ! I 
 wish they would put their head on this pillow 
 stuffed with the down from the wing of all 
 God's promises: "There remaineth a rest for 
 the people of God." 
 
 Do you say, " We have sewing-machines 
 now in our great cities, and the trouble is 
 gone ?" No ; it is not. I see a great many 
 women wearing themselves out amid the hard- 
 ships of the sewing-machine. A Christian man 
 went into a house of a good deal of destitution 
 in New York, and he saw a poor woman there 
 with a sick child, and he was telling the woman 
 how good a Christian she ought to be, and how 
 she ought to put her trust in God. " Oh," she 
 said, " I have no God ; I work from Monday 
 
56 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 morning until Saturday night and I get no 
 rest, and I never hear anything that does my 
 soul any good ; and when Sunday comes, I 
 haven't aiay bonnet that I can wear to church, 
 and I have sometimes got down to pray and 
 then I got up, saying to my husband, ' My 
 dear, there's no use of my praying; I am so 
 distracted I can't pray ; it don't do any good ! ' 
 Oh, sir, it is very hard to work on as we peo- 
 ple do from year to year, and to see nothing 
 bright ahead, and to see the poor little child 
 getting thinner and thinner, and my man al- 
 most broken down, and to be getting no nearer 
 to God, but to be getting farther away from 
 him ! Oh, if I were only ready to die !" May 
 God comfort all who toil with the needle and 
 the sewing-machine, and have compassion on 
 those borne down under the fatigues of life. 
 Another great trial is 
 
 PRIVATION OF TASTE 
 
 and sentiment. I do not know of anything 
 much more painful than to have a fine taste for 
 painting and sculpture and music and glorious 
 sunsets and the expanse of the blue sky, and 
 yet not to be able to get the dollar for the ora- 
 torio, or to get a picture, or to buy one's way 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 57 
 
 into the country to look at the setting sun and 
 at the bright heavens. While there are men in 
 great affluence, who have around them all kinds 
 of luxuries in art, themselves entirely unable to 
 appreciate these luxuries — buying their books 
 by the square foot, their pictures sent to them 
 by some artist who is glad to get the miserable 
 daubs out of the studio — there are multitudes 
 of refined, delicate women, who are born art- 
 ists, and shall reign in the kingdom of heaven 
 as artists, who are denied every picture and 
 every sweet song and every musical instrument. 
 Oh, let me cheer such persons by telling them 
 to look up and behold the inheritance that God 
 has reserved for them ! 
 
 A HEART-BREAKING PICTURE. 
 
 Then there are a great many who suffer not 
 only in the privation of their taste, but in the 
 apprehensions and the oppressive surroundings 
 of life that were well described by an English 
 writer. He said : " To be a poor man's child, 
 and look through the rails of the playground, 
 and envy richer boys for the sake of their many 
 books, and yet to be doomed to ignorance. To 
 be apprenticed to some harsh stranger, and feel 
 forever banished from a mother's tenderness 
 
58 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 and a sister's love. To work when very weary, 
 and work when the heart is sick and the head 
 is sore. To see a wife or a darling child wast- 
 ing away, and not to be able to get the best 
 advice. To think that the better food or purer 
 air might set her up again, but that food you 
 cannot buy, that air you must never hope to 
 breathe. To be obliged to let her die. To 
 come home from the daily task some evening, 
 and see her sinking. To sit up all night in 
 hope to catch again those precious words you 
 might have heard could you have afforded to 
 stay at home all day, but never hear them. To 
 have no mourners at the funeral, and even to 
 have to carry on your own shoulder through 
 the merry streets the light deal coffin. To see 
 huddled into a promiscuous hole the dust which 
 is so dear to you, and not venture to mark the 
 spot by planted flower or lowliest stone." 
 
 But I have no time this morning longer to 
 dwell upon the hardships and the trials of those 
 who toil with hand and foot, for I must go on 
 to offer some grand and 
 
 GLORIOUS ENCOURAGEMENTS 
 
 for such ; and the first encouragement is, that 
 one of the greatest safeguards against evil is 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 59 
 
 plenty to do. When men sin against the law 
 of their country, where do the police detectives 
 go to find them ? Not amid the dust of fac- 
 tories, not among those who have on their 
 " overalls,'' but among those who stand with 
 their hands in their pockets around the doors 
 of saloons and restaurants and taverns. Active 
 employment is one of the greatest sureties for 
 a pure and upright life. There are but very 
 few men with character stalwart enough to en- 
 dure consecutive idleness. 
 
 I see a pool' of water in the country, and I 
 say, "Thou slimy, fetid thing, what does all 
 this mean ? Didn't I see you playing with 
 those shuttles and turning that grist-mill ?" 
 "Oh, yes," says the water, " I used to earn my 
 living." I say again, " Then what makes you 
 look so sick ? Why are you covered with this 
 green scum ? Why is your breath so vile ?" 
 "Oh," says the water, " I have nothing to do. 
 I am disgusted with shuttles and wheels. I am 
 going to spend my whole lifetime here, and 
 while yonder stream sings on its way down the 
 mountain side, here I am left to fester and die 
 accursed of God because I have nothing to 
 do !" Sin is 
 
6o THE BATTLE FOR BREAD, 
 
 AN OLD PIRATE 
 
 that bears down on vessels whose sails are flap- 
 ping idly in the wind. The arrow of sin has 
 hard work to puncture the leather of an old 
 working-apron. Be encouraged by the fact 
 that your shops, your rising walls, your anvils 
 are fortresses in which you may hide, and from 
 which you may fight against the temptations of 
 your life. Morning, noon, and night, Sundays 
 and week-days, thank God for plenty to do. 
 
 Another encouragement is the fact that their 
 families are going to have the very best oppor- 
 tunity for development and usefulness. That 
 may sound strange to you, but 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF FORTUNE 
 
 are very apt to turn out poorly. In nine cases 
 out of ten the lad finds out if a fortune is com- 
 ing, by twelve years of age ; he finds out there 
 is no necessity of toil, and he makes no struggle, 
 and a life without struggle goes into dissipation 
 or stupidity. You see the sons of wealthy pa- 
 rents going out into the world, inane, nerveless, 
 dyspeptic, or they are incorrigible and reckless, 
 while the son of the porter that kept the gate 
 learns his trade, gets a robust physical consti- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 6l 
 
 tution, achieves high moral culture, and stands 
 in the front rank of Church and State. 
 
 Who are the men mightiest in our Legisla- 
 tures and Congress and Cabinets ? Did they 
 walk up the steep of life in silver slippers ? Oh, 
 no. The mother put him down under the tree 
 in the shade, while she spread the hay. Many 
 of these mighty men ate out of an iron spoon 
 and drank out of the roughest earthenware — 
 their whole life a forced march. They never 
 had any luxuries until, after awhile, God gave 
 them affluence and usefulness and renown as a 
 reward for their persistence. Remember, then, 
 that though you may have poor surroundings 
 and small means for the education of your chil- 
 dren, they are actually starting under better 
 advantages than though you had a fortune to 
 give them. Hardship and privation are not a 
 damage to them, but an advantage. Akenside 
 rose to his eminent sphere from his fathers 
 butcher-shop. Robert Burns started as a shep- 
 herd. Prideau used to sweep Exeter College. 
 Gifford was a shoemaker, and the son of every 
 man of toil may rise to heights of intellectual 
 and moral power if he will only trust God and 
 keep busy. 
 
 Again, I offer as encouragement that you 
 
62 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 V 
 have so many opportunities of gaining infor- 
 mation. Plato gave thirteen hundred dollars 
 for two books. The Countess of Anjou gave 
 two hundred sheep for one volume. Jerome 
 ruined himself financially by buying one copy 
 of Origen. Oh, the contrast ! Now there are 
 tens of thousands of pens gathering up infor- 
 mation. Typesetters are calling for "copy." 
 All our cities quake with the rolling cylinders 
 of the Harpers and the Appletons and the Lip- 
 pincotts and the Petersons and the Ticknors, 
 and you now buy more than Benjamin Frank- 
 lin ever knew for fifty cents ! There are peo- 
 ple who toil from seven o'clock in the morning 
 until six o'clock at night who know more about 
 anatomy than the old physiologists, and who 
 know more cbout astronomy than the old phi- 
 losophers. If you should take the learned men 
 of two hundred years ago and put them on one 
 bench, and take twenty children from the com- 
 mon schools in Brooklyn and put them down 
 on the other bench, the children could examine 
 the philosophers, and the philosophers could 
 not examine the children. "Ah!" says Isaac 
 Newton, coming up and talking to some intel- 
 ligent lad of seven years, " What is that ?" " Oh, 
 that is a rail-train !" " What is that ?" " That 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 63 
 
 is a telegraph." "What, is that?" " It is a 
 telephone." " Dear me ! I think I shall go 
 back to my bed in the dust, for I am bewil- 
 dered and my head turns." Oh, rejoice that 
 you have all these opportunities of information 
 spread out before you, and that, seated in your 
 chair at home, by the evening light, you can 
 look over all nations and see the ascending 
 morn of a universal day. 
 
 TOIL A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 One more encouragement : Your toils in this 
 world are only intended to be a discipline by 
 which you shall be prepared for heaven. " Be- 
 hold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy," 
 and tell you that Christ, the carpenter of Naz- 
 areth, is the workingman's Christ. You get 
 His love once in your heart, O workingman ! 
 and you can sing on the wall in the midst of 
 the storm, and in the shop amid the shoving of 
 the plane, and down in the mine amid the 
 plunge of the crowbar, and on shipboard while 
 climbing ratlines. If you belong to the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, He will count the drops of sweat 
 on your brow. He knows every ache and every 
 pain you have ever suffered in your worldly 
 occupation. Are you weary ? He will give 
 
64 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 you rest. Are you sick ? He will give you 
 health. Are you cold ? He will wrap around 
 you the warm mantle of His eternal love. 
 
 And besides that, my friends, you must re- 
 member, that all this is 
 
 ONLY PREPARATORY 
 
 a prefatory and introductory. I see a great 
 multitude before the throne of God. Who are 
 they? "Oh," you say, "those are princes; 
 they must have always been in a royal family ; 
 they dress like princes, they walk like princes, 
 they are princes ; there are none of the com- 
 mon people there ; none of the people that 
 ever toiled with hand and foot !" Ah ! you are 
 mistaken. Who is that bright spirit before the 
 throne ? Why, that was a sewing-girl who, 
 work as she could, could make but two shil- 
 lings the day. What are those kings and 
 queens before the throne ? Many of them 
 went up from Birmingham mills and from 
 Lowell carpet factories. 
 
 THE SONG OF THE REDEEMED. 
 
 And now I hear a sound like the rustling of 
 robes, and now I see a taking up of harps as 
 though they were going to strike a thanksgiving 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 65 
 
 anthem, and all the children of the saw, and the 
 disciples of the shuttle are in glorious array, 
 and they lift a song so clear and sweet I wish 
 you could hear it. It would make the pilgrim's 
 burden very light, and the pilgrim's journey 
 very short. Not one weak voice or hoarse 
 throat in that great assemblage. The accord 
 is as perfect as though they had been all eter- 
 nity practising, and I ask them what is the 
 name of that song they sing before the throne, 
 and they tell me it is the song of the redeemed 
 working-people. And the angel cries out : 
 11 Who are these so near the throne ?" and the 
 answer comes back : "These are they who 
 came out of great tribulation, and had their 
 robes washed and made white in the blood of 
 the Lamb." 
 
66 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 MONOPOLY AND COMMUNISM. 
 
 "Thy land shall be married. " — Isa. 62:4. 
 
 As the greater includes the less, so does the 
 circle of future joy around our entire world in- 
 clude the epicycle of our own republic. Bold, 
 exhilarant, unique, divine imagery of the text ! 
 So many are depressed by the labor agitation, 
 and think everything in this country is going to 
 pieces, I preach this morning a sermon of good 
 cheer, and anticipate the time when the Prince 
 of Peace and the Heir of Universal Dominion 
 shall take possession of this nation and " Thy 
 land shall be married." 
 
 In discussing the final destiny of this nation, 
 it makes all the difference in the world whether 
 we are on the way to a funeral or a wedding. 
 The Bible leaves no doubt on this subject. In 
 pulpits, and on platforms, and in places of pub- 
 lic concourse I hear so many of the muffled 
 drums of evil prophecy sounded, as though we 
 were on the way to national interment, and be- 
 side Thebes, and Babylon, and Tyre in the cem- 
 etery of dead nations our republic was to be en- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 67 
 
 tombed, that I wish you to understand it is not 
 to be obsequies, but nuptials ; not mausoleum, 
 but carpeted altar ; not cypress, but orange 
 blossoms ; not requiem, but wedding march, for 
 "Thy land shall be married." I propose to 
 name some of 
 
 THE SUITORS 
 
 who are claiming the hand of this republic. 
 This land is so fair, so beautiful, so affluent, that 
 it has many suitors, and it will depend much 
 upon your advice whether this or that shall be 
 accepted or rejected. 
 
 I. In the first place, I remark: There is a 
 greedy, all-grasping monster who comes in as 
 suitor seeking the hand of this republic, and 
 that monster is known by the name of 
 
 MONOPOLY. 
 
 His sceptre is made out of the iron of the rail- 
 track and the wire of telegraphy. He does 
 everything for his own advantage and for the 
 robbery of the people. Things have gone on 
 from bad to worse, until in the three Legislatures 
 of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyvania, 
 for the most part, monopoly decides everything. 
 If monopoly favor a law, it passes. If monopoly 
 
68 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 oppose a law, it is rejected. Monopoly stands 
 in this railroad depot, putting into his pockets 
 in one year two hundred millions of dollars in 
 excess of all reasonable charges for service. 
 Monopoly holds in his one hand the steam- 
 power of locomotives, and in the other the 
 electricity of swift communication. Monopoly 
 decides nominations and elections — city elec- 
 tions, State elections, national elections. With 
 bribes he secures the votes of legislators — giv- 
 ing them free passes, giving appointments to 
 needy relatives to lucrative positions, employ- 
 ing them as attorneys, if they are lawyers ; carry- 
 ing their goods fifteen per cent less if they are 
 merchants ; and if he finds a case very stubborn, 
 as well as very important, puts down before him 
 the hard cash of bribery. 
 
 But Monopoly is not so easily caught now as 
 when, during the term of Mr. Buchanan, in one 
 of our States a certain railway compay procured 
 a donation of public land. It was found out that 
 thirteen of the Senators of that State received 
 one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars 
 among them ; sixty members of the Lower 
 House of that State received five thousand and 
 ten thousand dollars each ; the Governor of the 
 State received fifty thousand dollars; his clerk 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 69 
 
 received five thousand dollars ; the Lieutenant- 
 Governor received ten thousand dollars ; all the 
 clerks of the Legislature received five thousand 
 dollars each, while fifty thousand dollars were 
 divided amid the lobby agents. 
 
 That thing on a larger or smaller scale, is all 
 the time going on in some of the States of the 
 Union, but it is not so blundering as it used to 
 be, and therefore not as easily exposed or ar- 
 rested. I tell you that 
 
 THE SHADOWING CURSE 
 
 of the United States to-day is monopoly. He 
 puts his hand upon every bushel of wheat ; upon 
 every sack of salt ; upon every ton of coal ; and 
 every man, woman, and child in the United 
 States feels the touch of that moneyed despot- 
 ism. I rejoice that in twenty-four States of the 
 Union already anti-monopoly leagues have been 
 established, God speed them in their work of 
 liberation! I wish that this question might be 
 the qeestion of our Presidential elections, and 
 that we compel the political parties to recognize 
 it on their platforms. 
 
 I have nothing to say against capitalists. A 
 man has a right to all the money he can make 
 honestly. There is not a laborer in the land 
 
/O THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 that would not be worth a million dollars if he 
 could. I have nothing to say against corpora- 
 tions as such — without them no great enterprise 
 would be possible ; but what I do say is that the 
 same principles are to be applied to capitalists 
 and to corporations that are applied to the poor- 
 est man and the plainest laborer. What is 
 wrong for me is wrong for great corporations. 
 If I take from you your property without ade- 
 quate compensation I am a thief, and if a rail- 
 way damage the property of the people without 
 any adequate compensation that is a gigantic 
 theft. What is wrong on a small scale is wrong 
 on a large scale. Monopoly in England has 
 ground hundreds and thousands of her best 
 people into semi-starvation, and in Ireland has 
 driven multitudinous tenants almost to madness. 
 
 EUROPEAN LAND SHARKS. 
 
 Five hundred acres in this country make an 
 immense farm. When you read that in Dakota 
 Territory Mr. Cass has a farm of 15,000 acres, 
 and Mr. Grandon, 25,000 acres, and Mr. Dal- 
 rymple, 40,000 acres, your eyes dilate, even 
 though these farms are in great regions thinly 
 inhabited. But what do you think of this which 
 I take from the Doomsday Book, showing what 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 7 1 
 
 monopoly is on the other side the sea ? I give 
 it as a warning of what it would do on this side 
 the sea, if in some lawful way the tendency is 
 not resisted. In Scotland, J. G. M. Heddle 
 owns 50,400 acres; Earl of Wemyss, 52,000 
 acres ; Duke of Montrose, 68,000 acres ; Cam- 
 eron of Lochiel, 109,500 acres ; Sir C. W.Ross, 
 1 10,400 acres ; Earl of Fife, 1 13,000 acres ; the 
 Mackintosh, 124,000 acres ; Lord MacDonald, 
 130,000 acres ; Earl of Dalhousie, 136,000 acres ; 
 Macleodof Macleod, 141,700 acres ; Sir K.Mac- 
 kenzie, of Gairlock, 164,680 acres; Duke of 
 Argyle, 1 75,000 acres ; Duke of Hamilton, 183- 
 000 acres ; Duke of Athole, 194,000 acres ; Duke 
 of Richmond, 255,000 acres ; Earl of Stair, 270- 
 000 acres ; Mr. Evan Baillie, 300,000 acres ; Earl 
 of Seafield, 306,000 acres ; Duke of Buccleugh, 
 432,183 acres; Earl of Breadalbane, 437,696 
 acres; Mr. A. Matheson, 220,433 a cres ; and Sir 
 J. Matheson, 406,070 acres ; Duchess of Suther- 
 land, 149,879 acres; and Duke of Sutherland, 
 1,176,343 acres. 
 
 THE RESULT. 
 
 Such monpolies imply an infinite acreage of 
 wretchedness. There is no poverty in the 
 United States like that in England, Ireland, and 
 
*]2 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 Scotland, for the simple reason that in those 
 lands monopoly has had longer and larger sway. 
 Last summer in Edinburgh, Scotland, after 
 preaching in Synod Hall, I preached in the Grass 
 Market and to the wretched inhabitants of the 
 Cowgate and the Canongate, the audience ex- 
 hibiting the squalor, and sickliness, and despair 
 that remains in one's mind like one of the 
 visions of Dante's Inferno. 
 
 Great monopolies in any land imply great pri- 
 vation. The time will come when our Govern- 
 ment will have to limit the amount of accumula- 
 tion of property. Unconstitutional, do you say ? 
 Then constitutions will have to be changed un- 
 til they allow such limitation. Otherwise the 
 work of absorption will go on, and the large 
 fishes will eat up the small fishes, and the shad 
 will swallow up the minnows, and the porpoise 
 swallow the shad, and the whales swallow the 
 porpoises, and a thousand greedy men will own 
 all the world. 
 
 But would a law of limitation of wealth be 
 unrighteous? If I dig so near my neighbors 
 foundations, in order to build my house, that I 
 endanger his, the law grabs me. If I have a 
 tannery or a chemical factory, the malodors of 
 which injure residents in the neighborhood, the 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 73 
 
 law says: " Stop that !" If I drain off a river 
 from its bed, and divert it to turn my mill 
 wheel, leaving the bed of the river a breeding 
 place for malaria, the laws says 
 
 "QUIT THAT OUTRAGE^ 
 
 And has not a good Government a right to say 
 that a few men shall not gorge themselves on 
 the comfort, and health, and life of generations ? 
 Your rights end where my rights begin. 
 
 Monopoly, brazen-faced, and iron-fingered, 
 vulture-hearted monopoly, offers his hand to this 
 republic. He stretches it out over the lakes, 
 and up the Pennsylvania, and the Erie, and the 
 New York Central railroads, and over the tele- 
 graph poles of the continent, and says : " Here 
 is my heart and hand ; be mine forever." Let 
 the millions of the people, North, South, East, 
 and West, forbid the banns of that marriage — 
 forbid them at the ballot-box, forbid them on 
 the platform, forbid them by great organiza- 
 tions, forbid them by the overwhelming senti- 
 ments of an outraged nation, forbid them by the 
 protest of the Church of God, forbid them by 
 prayer to high heaven. That Herod shall not 
 have this Abigail. It shall not be to all devour- 
 ing monopoly that this land is to be married. 
 
74 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 II. Another suitor claiming the hand of this 
 republic is 
 
 NIHILISM. 
 
 He owns nothing but a knife for universal 
 blood-letting and a nitro-glycerine bomb for 
 universal explosion, He believes in no God, 
 no government, no heaven, and no hell, except 
 what he can make on earth. He slew the Czar 
 of Russia, keeps Emperor William, of Germany, 
 practically imprisoned, killed Abraham Lincoln, 
 would put to death every king and president on 
 earth, and if he had the power would climb up 
 until he could drive the God of Heaven from 
 His throne and take it himself — the universal 
 butcher. In France it is called communism ; 
 in the United States it is called Socialism ; in 
 Russia it is called Nihilism. That last is the 
 most graphic and descriptive term. It means 
 complete and eternal smash-up. 
 
 Where does this monster live ? In St. Louis, 
 in Chicago, in Brooklyn, in New York, and in 
 all the villages and cities of this land. The 
 devil of destruction is an old devil, and he is to 
 be seen at every great fire where there is any- 
 thing to steal, and at every shipwreck where 
 there is anything valuable floating ashore, and 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 75 
 
 at every railroad accident where there are over- 
 coats and watches to be purloined. On a small 
 scale I saw it in my college days, when, in our 
 literary society in New York University, we had 
 an exquisite and costly bust of Shakespeare, 
 and one morning we found a hole bored into 
 the lips of the marble and a cigar inserted. 
 There has not for the last century been a fine 
 picture in your art gallery, or a graceful statue 
 in your parks, or a fine frescoe on your wall, or 
 a richly bound volume in your library, but 
 would have been despoiled if the hand of ruf- 
 fianism could have got at it without peril of in- 
 carceration. 
 
 The philosophy of the whole business is, that 
 there is a large number of people who either 
 through their laziness or their crime own noth- 
 ing, and are mad at those who through industry 
 and wit of their own, or of their ancestors, are 
 in possession. of large resources. The honest 
 laboring-classes never had anything to do with 
 such murderous enterprises. It is the villain- 
 ous classes who would not work if they had 
 plenty of work offered them at large wages. 
 Many of these suppose that by the demolition 
 of law and order they would be advantaged, 
 and the parting of the ship of State would allow 
 
j6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 them as wreckers to carry off the cargo. It 
 offers its hand to this fair republic. It proposes 
 to tear to pieces the ballot-box, the legislative 
 hall, the Congressional assembly. It would 
 take this land and divide it up, or rather 
 
 DIVIDE IT DOWN. 
 
 It would give as much to the idler as to the 
 worker, to the bad as to the good. Nihilism ! 
 This panther, having prowled across other lands, 
 has set its paws on our soil, and it is only wait- 
 ing for the time in which to spring upon its 
 prey. It was Nihilism that massacred the he- 
 roic policemen of Chicago and St. Louis a few 
 days ago and that burned the railroad property 
 at Pittsburgh during the great riots ; it was 
 Nihilism that slew black people in our North- 
 ern cities during the war ; it was Nihilism that 
 again and again in San Francisco and in New 
 York mauled to death the Chinese; it is Nihil- 
 ism that glares out of the windows of the 
 drunkeries upon sober people as they go by. 
 Ah ! its power has never yet been tested. It 
 would, if it had the power, leave every church, 
 chapel, cathedral, schoolhouse, college, and 
 home in ashes. 
 Let me say, it is 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 77 
 
 THE WORST ENEMY 
 
 of the laboring-classes in any country. The 
 honest cry for reform lifted by oppressed labor- 
 ing men is drowned out by the vociferations 
 for anarchy. The criminals and the vagabonds 
 who range through our cities talking about their 
 rights, when their first right is the penitentiary 
 — if they could be hushed up, and the down- 
 trodden laboring men of this country could be 
 heard, there would be more bread for hungry 
 children. Let not our oppressed laboring men 
 be beguiled to coming under the bloody banner 
 of Nihilism. It will make your taxes heavier, 
 your wages smaller, your table scantier, your 
 children hungrier, your suffering greater. 
 
 Yet this Nihilism, with feet red of slaughter, 
 comes forth and offers its hand for the republic. 
 Shall the banns be proclaimed ? If so, where 
 shall the marriage altar be ? and who will be the 
 officiating priest ? And what will be the music ? 
 That altar will have to be white with bleached 
 skulls, the officiating priest must be a dripping 
 assassin, the music must be the smothered groan 
 of multitudinous victims, the garlands must be 
 twisted of nightshade, the fruit must be apples 
 of Sodom, the wine must be the blood of St. 
 
7 8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 Bartholomew's massacre. No ! It is not to 
 Nihilism, the sanguinital monster, that this land 
 is to be married. 
 
 III. Another suitor for the hand of this na- 
 tion is 
 
 INFIDELITY. 
 
 Mark you that all anarchists are infidels. Not 
 one of them believes in the Bible, and very 
 rarely any of them believe in a God. Their 
 most conspicuous leader was the other day 
 pulled by the leg from under a bed in a house 
 of infamy, cursing and blaspheming. The po- 
 lice of Chicago, exploring the dens of the an- 
 archists, found dynamite, and vitriol, and Tom 
 Paine's "Age of Reason," and obscene pictures, 
 and complimentary biographies of thugs and 
 assassins, but not one Testament, not one of 
 Wesley's hymn-books, not one Roman Catholic 
 breviary. There are two wings to infidelity : 
 the one calls itself Liberalism, and appears in 
 highly literary magazines, and is for the edu- 
 cated and refined ; the other wing is in the form 
 of Anarchy, and is for the vulgar. But both 
 wings belong to the same old filthy vulture — 
 infidelity ! Elegant infidelity proposes to con- 
 quer this land to itself by the pen ; Anarchy 
 proposes to conquer it by bludgeon and torch. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 79 
 
 When the midnight ruffians despoiled the 
 grave of A. T. Stewart, in St. Mark's church- 
 yard, everybody was shocked ; but infidelity 
 proposes something worse than that — the rob- 
 bing of all the graves of Christendom of the 
 hope of a resurrection. It proposes to chisel 
 out from the tombstones of your Christian 
 dead the words, "Asleep in Jesus," and to sub- 
 stitute the words, "Obliteration — annihilation/' 
 Infidelity proposes to take away from this 
 country the book that makes the difference be- 
 tween the United States and the United King- 
 dom of Dahomey, between American civiliza- 
 tion and Bornesian cannibalism. 
 
 The only impulse in the right direction that 
 this world has ever had has come from the Bible. 
 It was the mother of Roman law and of 
 healthful jurisprudence. That book has been 
 the mother of all reforms and all charities — 
 mother of English Magna Charta and Ameri- 
 can Declaration of Independence. I tell you 
 that 
 
 THE WORST ATTEMPTED CRIME 
 
 of the century is the attempt to destroy this 
 book ; yet infidelity, loathsome, stenchful, lep- 
 rous, pestiferous, rotten monster, stretches out 
 
80 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 its hand, ichorous with the second death, to 
 take the hand of this republic. 
 
 And this suitor presses his case appallingly. 
 Shall the banns of that marriage be proclaimed ? 
 " No !" say the home missionaries of the West 
 — a martyr band, of whom the world is not 
 worthy, toiling amid fatigues, and malaria, and 
 starvation. " No ! not if we can help it. By 
 what we and our children have suffered we for- 
 bid the banns of that marriage !" " No !" say 
 all patriotic voices; "our institutions were 
 bought at too dear a price, and were defended 
 at too great a sacrifice, to be so cheaply surren- 
 dered/' " No !" says the God of Bunker Hill, 
 and Independence Hall, and Gettysburg ; " I 
 did not start this nation for such a farce." 
 "No," cry ten thousand voices; "to infidelity 
 this land shall not be married !" 
 
 IV. But there is 
 
 ANOTHER SUITOR 
 
 that presents his hand for the hand of this re- 
 public. He is mentioned in the verse following 
 my text, where it says: "As the bridegroom 
 rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God re- 
 joice over thee." It is not my figure, it is the 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 8 1 
 
 figure of the Bible. As often princesses at their 
 birth are 
 
 PLEDGED IN TREATY 
 
 of marriage to princes or kings of earth, so this 
 nation at its birth was pledged to Christ for 
 Divine marriage. Before Columbus and his 
 hundred and twenty men embarked on the 
 Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, for their 
 wonderful voyage, what was the last thing they 
 did ? They kneeled down and took the holy 
 sacrament of the Lord Jesus Christ. After they 
 caught the first glimpse of this country, and the 
 gun of one ship had announced it to the other 
 vessels that land had been discovered, what was 
 the song that went up from all the three decks ? 
 u Gloria in Excelsis." After Columbus and his 
 hundred and twenty men had stepped from the 
 ships' decks to the solid ground, what did they 
 do ? They all knelt and consecrated the New 
 World to God. 
 
 What did the Huguenots do after they landed 
 in the Carolinas ? What did the Holland ref- 
 ugees do after they had landed in New York ? 
 What did the Pilgrim Fathers do after they 
 landed in New England ? With bended knee, 
 and uplifted face, and heaven-besieging prayer 
 
82 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 they took possession of this country for God. 
 How was the first American Congress opened ? 
 By prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. From 
 its birth this nation was pledged for holy mar- 
 riage with Christ. 
 
 And, then, see how good God has been to us ! 
 Just open the map of the continent and see 
 how it is shaped for immeasurable prosperities. 
 Navigable rivers, more in number and greater 
 than of any other land, rolling down on all 
 sides into the sea, prophesying large manufac- 
 tures and easy commerce. Look at the great 
 ranges of mountains timbered with wealth on 
 the top and sides, metalled with wealth under- 
 neath. One hundred and eighty thousand 
 square miles of coal, four hundred and eighty 
 thousand square miles of iron. All fruits, all 
 minerals, all harvests. Scenery displaying an 
 autumnal pageantry that no land on earth pre- 
 tends to rival. No South American earth- 
 quakes. No Scotch mists. No London fogs. 
 No Egyptian plagues. No Germanic divisions. 
 The people of the United States are happier 
 than any people on earth. It is the testimony 
 of every man that has travelled abroad. For 
 the poor, more sympathy ; for the industrious 
 more opportunity. Oh, how good God was to 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 83 
 
 our fathers, and how good He has been to us 
 and our children ! 
 
 We have during the past six or seven years 
 
 TURNED A NEW LEAF 
 
 in our national history by the sudden addition 
 of millions of foreigners. At Kansas City I 
 was told by a gentleman who had opportunity 
 for large investigation, that a great multitude 
 had gone through there, averaging in worldly 
 estate eight hundred dollars. I was told in the 
 city of Washington by an officer of the Gov- 
 ernment, who had opportunity for authentic 
 investigation, that thousands and thousands had 
 gone, averaging one thousand dollars in pos- 
 session each. I was told by the Commissioner 
 of Emigration that twenty families that had ar- 
 rived at Castle Garden brought eighty-five thou- 
 sand dollars with them. Mark you, families, 
 not tramps — additions to the national wealth, 
 not subtractions therefrom. I saw some of 
 them reading their Bibles and their hymn-books, 
 thanking God for His kindness in helping 
 them cross the sea. They will turn your Ter- 
 ritories into States, and your wildernesses into 
 gardens, if you will build for them churches, 
 
84 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 and establish for them schools, and send Chris- 
 tian missionaries. 
 
 Are you afraid this continent is going to be 
 overcrowded with this population ? Ah ! that 
 shows you have not been to Oregon, that shows 
 that you have not been to Texas. A fishing- 
 smack to-day on Lake Ontario might as well 
 be afraid of being crowded by other shipping 
 before night as for any one of the next ten gen- 
 erations of Americans to be afraid of being- 
 overcrowded by foreign populations in this 
 country. The one State of Texas is far larger 
 than all the Austrian Empire, yet the Austrian 
 Empire supports thirty-five million people. The 
 one State of Texas is larger than all France, 
 and France supports thirty-six million people. 
 The one State of Texas far surpasses in size the 
 Germanic Empire, yet the Germanic Empire 
 supports forty-one million people. I tell you 
 the great want of the Territories and of the 
 Western States is more population. 
 
 While some may stand at the gates of the 
 city, saying : " Stand back !" to foreign popula- 
 tions, I press out as far beyond those gates as 
 I can press out beyond them, and beckon to 
 foreign nations, saying : "Come, come !" "But," 
 say you, " I am so afraid that they will bring 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 85 
 
 their prejudices for foreign Governments, and 
 plant them here." Absurd. They are sick of 
 the Governments that have oppressed them, 
 and they want free America. Give them the 
 great gospel of welcome. Throw around them 
 all Christian hospitalities. They will add their 
 industry and hard-earned wages to this country, 
 and then we will dedicate all to Christ, " and 
 thy land shall be married." 
 
 THE SITE FOR THE NUPTIALS. 
 
 But where shall the marriage altar be ? Let 
 it be the Rocky Mountains, when through arti- 
 ficial and mighty irrigation, all their tops shall 
 be covered, as they will be, with vineyards, and 
 orchards, and grain fields. Then let the Bos- 
 tons, and the New Yorks, and the Charlestons 
 of the Pacific Coast come to the marriage altar 
 on the one side, and then let the Bostons, and 
 the New Yorks, and the Charlestons of the 
 Atlantic Coast come to the marriage altar on 
 the other side, and there between them let this 
 bride of nations kneel ; and then if the organ 
 of the loudest thunders that ever shook the 
 Sierra Nevadas on the one side, or moved the 
 foundations of the Alleghanies on the other 
 side, should open full diapason of wedding 
 
86 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 march, that organ of thunders could not drown 
 the voice of Him who should take the hand of 
 the bride of nations, saying : "As a bridegroom 
 rejoiceth over a bride, so thy God rejoiceth 
 over thee." "And so thy land shall be mar- 
 ried." 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 87 
 
 THE WORST FOE OF LABOR. 
 
 " He that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it 
 into a bag with holes." — Haggai i: 6. 
 
 In Persia, under the reign of Darius Hystas- 
 pes, the people did not prosper. They made 
 money, but did not keep it. They were like peo- 
 ple who have a sack in which they put money, 
 not knowing that the sack is torn, or eaten of 
 moths, or in some way made incapable of 
 holding valuables. As fast as the coin was put 
 in one end of the sack it dropped out of the 
 other. It made no difference how much wages 
 they got, for they lost them. " He that earneth 
 wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with 
 holes." 
 
 WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE BILLIONS 
 
 and billions of dollars in this country paid to 
 the working classes ? Some of these moneys 
 have gone for house rent, or the purchase of 
 homesteads, or wardrobe, or family expenses, or 
 the necessities of life, or to provide comforts in 
 old age. What has become of other billions ? 
 
88 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 Wasted in foolish outlay. Wasted at the gam- 
 ing-table. Wasted in intoxicants. Put into a 
 bag with a hundred holes. 
 
 Gather up the money that the working classes 
 have spent for rum during the last thirty years, 
 and I will build for every workingman a house, 
 and lay out for him a garden, and clothe his 
 sons in broadcloth and his daughters in silks, 
 and stand at his front door a prancing span of 
 sorrels or bays, and secure him a policy of life- 
 insurance, so that the present home may be 
 well maintained after he is dead. The most 
 persistent, most overpowering enemy of the 
 working classes is intoxicating liquor. It is 
 the anarchist of the centuries, and has boy- 
 cotted and is now boycotting the body and 
 mind and soul of American labor. It is to it 
 a worse foe than monopoly, and worse than as- 
 sociated capital. 
 
 It annually swindles industry out of a large 
 percentage of its earnings. It holds out its 
 blasting solicitations to the mechanic or opera- 
 tive on his way to work, and at the noon-spell, 
 and on his way home at eventide ; on Saturday, 
 when the wages are paid, it snatches a large part 
 of the money that might come to the family, 
 and sacrifices it among the saloon-keepers. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 89 
 
 Within eight hundred yards of Sands Street 
 Methodist Church, Brooklyn, it has fifty-four 
 saloons, and is plotting now for another. Stand 
 the saloons of this country side by side, and it is 
 carefully estimated they would reach from New 
 York to Chicago. Forward, march, says the 
 rum power, and take possession of the American 
 nation ! 
 
 The rum business is pouring its vitriolic and 
 damnable liquids down the throats of hundreds 
 of thousands of laborers, and while the ordinary 
 strikes are ruinous both to employers and em- 
 ployees, 
 
 I PROCLAIM A STRIKE 
 
 universal against strong drink, which, if kept 
 up, will be the relief of the working classes and 
 the salvation of the nation. I will undertake 
 to say that there is not a healthy laborer in the 
 United States who, within the next ten years, 
 if he will refuse all intoxicating beverage and 
 be saving, may not become a capitalist on a 
 small scale. Our country in a year spends one 
 billion five hundred million and fifty thousand 
 dollars for rum. Of course the working classes 
 do a great deal of this expenditure. Careful 
 statistics show that the wage-earning classes of 
 
90 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 Great Britain expend in liquors one hundred 
 million pounds, or five hundred million dollars 
 a year. Sit down and think, O workingman ! 
 how much you have expended in these direc- 
 tions. Add it all up. Add up what your 
 neighbors have expended, and realize that in- 
 stead of answering the beck of other people you 
 might have been your own capitalist. When 
 you deplete a workingman's physical energy 
 you deplete his capital. 
 
 THE STIMULATED WORKMAN 
 
 gives out before the unstimulated workman. 
 My father said : " I became a temperance man 
 in early life, because I noticed in the harvest- 
 field that, though I was physically weaker than 
 other workmen, I could hold out longer than 
 they. They took stimulants, I took none." A 
 brickmaker in England gives his experience in 
 regard to this matter among men in his employ. 
 He says, after investigation : "The beer-drinker 
 who made the fewest bricks made six hundred 
 and fifty nine thousand ; the abstainer who 
 made the fewest bricks, seven hundred and 
 forty-six thousand. The difference in behalf of 
 the abstainer over the indulger, eighty-seven 
 thousand." There came a very exhausting time 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 91 
 
 in the British Parliament. The session was pro- 
 longed until nearly all the members got sick or 
 worn out. Out of six hundred and fifty-two 
 members only two went through undamaged ; 
 they were teetotalers. 
 
 When an army goes out to the battle the 
 soldier who has water or coffee in his canteen 
 marches easier and fights better than the soldier 
 who has whiskey in his canteen. Rum helps a 
 man to fight when he has only one contestant, 
 and that at the street corner. But when he goes 
 forth to maintain some great battle for God and 
 his country, he wants no rum about him. When 
 the Russians go to war a corporal passes along 
 the line and smells the breath of every soldier. 
 If there be in his breath a taint of intoxicating 
 liquor, the man is sent back to the barracks. 
 Why ? He cannot endure fatigue. All our 
 young men know this. When they are prepar- 
 ing for a regatta, or for a ball club, or for an 
 athletic wrestling, they abstain. Our working 
 people will be wiser after a while, and the money 
 they fling away on hurtful indulgences they will 
 put into co-operative associations, and so become 
 capitalists. If the vvorkingman put down his 
 wages and then take his expenses and spread 
 them out, so they will just equal, he is not wise. 
 
52 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 I know workingmen who are in a perfect fidget 
 until they get rid of their last dollar. 
 
 . A COSTLY SACQUE. 
 
 The following circumstances came under our 
 observation : A young man worked hard to earn 
 his six or seven hundred dollars yearly. Mar- 
 riage day came. The bride had inherited five 
 hundred dollars from her grandfather. She 
 spent every dollar of it on the wedding dress. 
 Then they rented two rooms in a third story. 
 Then the young man took extra evening em- 
 ployment ; almost exhausted with the day's 
 work, yet took evening employment. It almost 
 extinguished his eyesight. Why did he add 
 evening employment to the day employment ? 
 To get money. Why did he want to get 
 money ? To lay up something for a rainy day ? 
 No. To get his life insured, so that in case of 
 his death his wife would not be a beggar ? No. 
 He put the extra evening work to the day work 
 that he might get a hundred and fifty dollars to 
 get his wife a sealskin coat. The sister of the 
 bride heard of this achievement, and was not to 
 be eclipsed. She was very poor, and she sat up 
 w r orking nearly all the nights for a great while 
 until she bought a sealskin coat. I have not 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 93 
 
 heard of the result on that street. The street 
 was full of those who are on small incomes, but 
 I suppose the contagion spread, and that every- 
 body had a sealskin coat, and that the people 
 came out and cried, practically, not literally : 
 " Though the heavens fall, we must have a seal- 
 skin coat !" 
 
 I was out West, and a minister of the Gospel 
 told me, in Iowa, that his church and the neigh- 
 borhood had been impoverished by the fact that 
 they put mortgages on their farms in order to 
 send their families to the Philadelphia Centen- 
 nial. It was not respectable not to go to the 
 Centennial. Between such evils and pauperism 
 there is a very short step. The vast majority of 
 children in your almshouses are there because 
 their parents are drunken, or lazy, or recklessly 
 improvident. 
 
 I have no sympathy for skinflint saving, but 
 I plead for 
 
 CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 
 
 You say it is impossible now to lay up anything 
 for a rainy day. I know it, but we are at the 
 daybreak of national prosperity. Some people 
 think it is mean to turn the gas low when they 
 go out of the parlor. They feel embarrassed if 
 
94 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 the door-bell rings before they have the hall 
 lighted. They apologize for the plain meal, if 
 you surprise them at the table. Well, it is mean 
 if it is only to pile up a miserly hoard. But if 
 it be to educate your children, if it be to give 
 more help to your wife when she does not feel 
 strong, if it be to keep your funeral day from 
 being horrible beyond all endurance, because it 
 is to be the disruption and annihilation of the 
 domestic circle — if it be for that, then it is mag- 
 nificent. 
 
 There are those who are kept in poverty be- 
 cause of their own fault. They might have been 
 well off, but they smoked or chewed up their 
 earnings, or they lived beyond their means, 
 while others on the same wages and on the 
 same salaries went onto competency. I know 
 a man who was all the time complaining of his 
 poverty and crying out against rich men, while 
 he himself keeps two dogs, and chews and 
 smokes, and is full to the chin with whiskey and 
 beer. Wilkins Micawber said to David Cop- 
 perfield, " Copperfield, my boy, one pound in- 
 come, expenses twenty shillings and sixpence ; 
 result, misery. But, Copperfield, my boy, one 
 pound income, expenses nineteen shillings and 
 six pence; result, happiness. ,, But, O work- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 95 
 
 ingman of America, take your morning dram, 
 and your noon dram, and your evening dram, 
 and spend everything you have over for to- 
 bacco and excursions, and you insure poverty 
 for yourself and your children forever ! 
 
 If by some generous fiat of the capitalists of 
 this country, or by a new law of the Govern- 
 ment of the United States, twenty-five per 
 cent, or fifty per cent, or one hundred per 
 cent were added to the wages of the working 
 classes of America, it would be no advantage 
 to hundreds of thousands of them unless they 
 stopped strong drink. Aye, until they quit 
 that evil habit, the more money, the more ruin, 
 the more wages, the more holes in the bag. 
 
 My plea this morning is to those working 
 people who are in a 
 
 DISCIPLESHIP TO WHISKEY 
 
 bottle, the beer-mug, and the wine-flask. And 
 what I say to them will not be more appropri- 
 ate to the working classes than to the business 
 classes, and the literary classes, and the profes- 
 sional classes, and all classes, and not with the 
 people of one age more than of all ages. Take 
 one good square look at the suffering of the 
 man whom strong drink has enthralled, and re- 
 
g6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 member that toward that goal multitudes are 
 running. The disciple of alcoholism suffers the 
 
 LOSS OF SELF-RESPECT. 
 
 Just as soon as a man wakes up and finds 
 that he is the captive of strong drink, he feels 
 demeaned. I do not care how reckless he acts. 
 He may say, " I don't care ;" he does care. He 
 cannot look a pure man in the eye unless it is 
 with positive force of resolution. Three-fourths 
 of his nature is destroyed ; his self-respect is 
 gone ; he says things he would not otherwise 
 say ; he does thing he would not otherwise do. 
 When a man is nine-tenths gone with strong 
 drink, the first thing he wants to do is to per- 
 suade you that he can stop any time he wants to. 
 He cannot. The Philistines have bound him 
 hand and foot, and shorn his locks, and put out 
 his eyes, and are making him grind in the mill 
 of a great horror. He cannot stop. I will 
 prove it. He knows that his course is bringing 
 ruin upon himself. He loves himself. If he 
 could stop he would. He knows 'his course is 
 bringing ruin upon his family. He loves them. 
 He would stop if he could. He cannot. Per- 
 haps he could three months or a year ago, not 
 now. Just ask him to stop for a month. He 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 97 
 
 cannot ; he knows he cannot, so he does not 
 try. 
 
 I had a friend who was for 
 
 FIFTEEN YEARS GOING DOWN 
 
 under this evil habit He had large means. 
 He had given thousands of dollars to Bible 
 societies and reformatory institutions of all 
 sorts. He was very genial, very generous, and 
 very lovable, and whenever he talked about 
 this evil habit he would say, " I can stop any 
 time." But he kept going on, going on, down, 
 down, down. His family would say, " I wish 
 you would stop." " Why," he would reply, " I 
 can stop any time if I want to." After a while 
 he had delirium tremens ; he had it twice ; and 
 yet, after that, he said, " I could stop at any 
 time if I wanted to." He is dead now. What 
 killed him ? Rum ! Rum ! And yet among 
 his last utterances was, " I can stop at any 
 time." He did not stop it, because he could 
 not stop it. ' Oh, there is a point in inebriation 
 beyond which if a man goes he cannot stop ! 
 
 One of these victims said to a Christian man, 
 " Sir, if I were told that I couldn't get a drink 
 until to-morrow night unless I had all my 
 
98 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 fingers cut off, I would say, ' Bring the hatchet 
 and cut them off now.' " I have a dear friend 
 in Philadelphia whose nephew came to him one 
 day, and, when he was exhorted about his evil 
 habit, said, " Uncle, I can't give it up. If there 
 stood a cannon, and it was loaded, and a glass 
 of wine were set on the mouth of that cannon, 
 and I knew that you would fire it off just as I 
 came up and took the glass, I would start, for 
 
 I MUST HAVE IT." 
 
 Oh, it is a sad thing for a man to wake up in 
 this life and feel that he is a captive ! He says, 
 " I could have got rid of this once, but I can't 
 now. I might have lived an honorable life and 
 died a Christian death ; but there is no hope for 
 me now ; there is no escape for me. Dead, but 
 not buried. I am a walking corpse, I am an 
 apparition of what I once was. I am a caged 
 immortal beating against the wires of my cage 
 in this direction ; beating against the cage un- 
 til there is blood on the wires and blood upon 
 my soul, yet not able to get out. Destroyed 
 without remedy !" 
 
 I go on, and say that the disciple of rum 
 suffers from the 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 99 
 
 LOSS OF HEALTH. 
 
 The older men in the congregation may re- 
 member that some years ago Dr. Sewell went 
 through this country and electrified the people 
 by his lectures, in which he showed the effects 
 of alcoholism on the human stomach. He had 
 seven or eight diagrams by which he showed 
 the devastation of strong drink upon the physi- 
 cal system. There were thousands of people 
 that turned back from that ulcerous sketch, 
 swearing eternal abstinence from everything 
 that could intoxicate. 
 
 God only knows what the drunkard suffers. 
 Pain files on every nerve, and travels every 
 muscle, and gnaws every bone, and burns with 
 every flame, and stings with every poison, and 
 pulls at him with every torture. What reptiles 
 crawl over his creeping limbs ! What fiends 
 stand by his midnight pillow ! What groans 
 tear his ear ! What horrors shiver through his 
 soul ! Talk of the rack, talk of the Inquisi- 
 tion, talk of the funeral pyre, talk of the crush- 
 ing Juggernaut — he feels them all at once. 
 Have you ever been in the ward of 
 
 THE HOSPITAL 
 
 where these inebriates are dying, the stench of 
 
IOO THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 their wounds driving back the attendants, their 
 voices sounding through the night ? The 
 keeper comes up and says, " Hush, now, be 
 still ! Stop making all this noise !" But it is 
 effectual only for a moment, for as soon as the 
 keeper is gone they begin again, " Oh, God ! 
 Oh, God ! Help ! Help ! Rum ! Give me 
 rum ! Help ! Take them off me ! Take them 
 off me ! Oh, God !" And then they shriek, 
 and they rave, and they pluck out their hair by 
 handfuls, and bite their nails into the quick, and 
 then they groan, and they shriek, and they 
 blaspheme, and they ask the keepers to kill 
 them — "Stab me! Smother me! Strangle 
 me ! Take the devils off me !" Oh, it is no 
 fancy sketch ! That thing is going on now all 
 up and down the land, and I tell you further 
 that this is going to be the death that some of 
 you will die. I know it. I see it coming. 
 Again, the inebriate suffers through the 
 
 LOSS OF HOME. 
 
 I do not care how much he loves his wife and 
 children, if this passion for strong drink has 
 mastered him, he will do the most outrageous 
 things; and if he could not get drink in any 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. IOI 
 
 other way, he would sell his family into eter- 
 nal bondage. How many homes have been 
 broken up in that way no one but God knows. 
 Oh, is there anything that will so destroy a man 
 for this life and damn him for the life that is to 
 come ? I hate that strong drink. With all 
 the concentrated energies of my soul I hate it. 
 Do not tell me that a man can be happy when 
 he knows that he is breaking his wife's heart and 
 clothing his children with rags. Why, there 
 are on the roads and streets of this land to-day 
 little children, barefooted, unwashed, and un- 
 kempt — want on every patch of their faded 
 dress and on every wrinkle of their premature- 
 ly old countenances, who would have been in 
 churches to-day, and as well clad as you are, 
 but for the fact that rum destroyed their 
 parents and drove them into the grave. O 
 rum, thou foe of God, thou despoiler of homes, 
 thou recruiting officer of the pit, I hate thee ! 
 
 But my subject takes a deeper tone, and 
 that is, that the unfortunate of whom I speak 
 suffers from the 
 
 LOSS OF THE SOUL. 
 
 The Bible intimates that in the future world, 
 
102 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 if we are unforgiven here, our bad passions and 
 appetites, unrestrained, will go along with us 
 and make our torment there. So that, I sup- 
 pose, when an inebriate wakes up in the last 
 world, he will feel an infinite thirst clawing on 
 him. Now, down in the world, although he 
 may have been very poor, he could beg or he 
 could steal five cents with which to get that 
 which would slake his thirst for a little while ; 
 but in eternity where is the rum to come from ? 
 Oh, the deep, exhausting, exasperating, ever- 
 lasting thirst of the drunkard in hell ! Why, if 
 a fiend came up to earth for some infernal work 
 in a grog-shop, and should go back taking on 
 its wing just one drop of that for which the 
 inebriate in the lost world longs, what excite- 
 ment would it make there ! Put that one drop 
 from off the fiend's wing on the tip of the 
 tongue of the destroyed inebriate ; let the 
 liquid brightness just touch it ; let the drop be 
 very small, if it only have in it the smack of 
 alcoholic drink ; let that drop just touch the 
 lost inebriate in the lost world, and he would 
 spring to his feet and cry, " That is rum, aha ! 
 That is rum !" And it would wake up the 
 echoes of the damned — " Give me rum ! Give 
 me rum ! Give me rum !" In the future world 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 103 
 
 I do not believe that it will be the absence of 
 God that will make the drunkard's sorrow. I 
 do not believe that it will be the absence of 
 light. I do not believe that it will be the ab- 
 sence of holiness. I think it will be the absence 
 of rum. Oh, " look not upon the wine when 
 it is red, when it moveth itself aright in the 
 cup, for at the last it biteth like a serpent, and 
 it stingeth like an adder." 
 It is about time that we have 
 
 ANOTHER WOMAN'S CRUSADE 
 
 like that which swept through Ohio ten or 
 twelve years ago. With prayer and song the 
 women went into the groggeries, and whole 
 neighborhoods, towns, and cities were redeemed 
 by their Christian heroics. Thirty women 
 cleared out the rum traffic from a village of one 
 thousand inhabitants. If thirty women, sur- 
 charged of the Holy Ghost, could renovate a 
 town of a thousand, three thousand consecrated 
 women, resolved to give themselves no peace 
 until this crime was extirpated from this city, 
 could in six months clear out three fourths of 
 the grog-shops of Brooklyn. If there be three 
 thousand women now in this city who will put 
 
104 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 their hands and their hearts to the work, I will 
 take the contract for driving out all these moral 
 nuisances from the city — at any rate, three 
 fourths of them — in three months. If, when 
 that host of three thousand consecrated women 
 is marshalled, there be no one to lead them, 
 then, as a minister of the Most High God, I 
 will offer to take my position at the front of 
 the host, and I will cry to them, "Come on, 
 ye women of Christ, with your songs and your 
 prayers ! Some of you take the enemy's right 
 wing and some the left wing. Forward ! The 
 Lord of Hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is 
 our refuge ! Down with the dram-shops !" 
 
 But not waiting for those mouths of hell to 
 close, let me advise the working and the busi- 
 ness classes, and all classes, to stop strong drink. 
 While I declared some time ago that there was 
 a point beyond which a man could not stop, I 
 want to tell you that while a man cannot stop 
 in his own strength, the Lord God by His 
 grace can help him to stop at any time. I was 
 in a room in New York where there were 
 many men who had been reclaimed from 
 drunkenness. I heard their testimony, and for 
 the first time in my life there flashed out a 
 truth I never understood. They said, "We 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 105 
 
 were victims of strong drink. We tried to give 
 it up, but always failed ; but somehow since we 
 gave our hearts to Christ, He has taken care of 
 us." I believe that the time will soon come 
 when the grace of God will show its power not 
 only to save man's soul, but his body, and re- 
 construct, purify, elevate, and redeem it. 
 
 I verily believe that, although you feel grap- 
 pling at the roots of your tongues an almost 
 omnipotent thirst, if you will give your heart to 
 God, He will help you by His grace to con- 
 quer. Try it It is 
 
 YOUR LAST CHANCE. 
 
 I have looked off upon the desolation. Sit- 
 ting in our religious assemblages there are a 
 good many people in awful peril ; and, judging 
 from ordinary circumstances, there is not one 
 chance in five thousand that they will get clear 
 of it. There are men in my congregation from 
 Sabbath to Sabbath of whom I must make the 
 remark, that if they do not change their 
 course, within ten years they will, as to their 
 bodies, lie down in drunkards' graves ; and as 
 to their souls, lie down in a drunkard's perdi- 
 tion. I know that is an awful thing to say, but 
 I cannot help saying it. 
 
106 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 Oh, beware ! You have not yet been cap- 
 tured. Beware! Whether the beverage be 
 poured in golden chalice or pewter mug, in the 
 foam at the top, in white letters, let there be 
 spelled out to your soul, " Beware !" When 
 the books of Judgment are open, and ten mil- 
 lion drunkards come up to get their doom, I 
 want you to bear witness that I, this morning, 
 in the fear of God and in the love for your soul, 
 told you, with all affection and with all kind- 
 ness, to beware of that which has already ex- 
 erted its influence upon your family, blowing 
 out some of its lights — a premonition of the 
 blackness of darkness forever. 
 
 Oh, if you could only hear this morning In- 
 temperance with drunkards' bones drumming 
 on the head of the liquor-cask the Dead March 
 of immortal souls, methinks the very glance of 
 a wine-cup would make you shudder, and the 
 color of the liquor would make you think of 
 the blood of the soul, and the foam on the top 
 of the cup would remind you of the froth on 
 the maniac's lip ; and you would go home from 
 this service and kneel down and pray God that, 
 rather than your children should become cap- 
 tives of this evil habit, you would like to carry 
 them out some bright spring day to the ceme- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 107 
 
 tery, and put them away to the last sleep, un- 
 til at the call of the south wind the flowers 
 would come up all over the grave — sweet 
 prophecies of the resurrection ! God has a 
 balm for such a wound ; but what flower of 
 comfort ever grew on the blasted heath of a 
 drunkard's sepulchre ? 
 
108 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 BLACK SERVANTS OF THE SKY. 
 
 " And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in 
 the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening/' — 
 i Kings, xvii. 6. 
 
 The ornithology of the Bible is a very inter- 
 esting study. The stork which knoweth her 
 appointed time. The common sparrows teach- 
 ing the lesson of God's providence. The os- 
 triches of the desert, by careless incubation, 
 illustrating the recklessness of parents who do 
 not take enough pains with their children. The 
 eagle symbolizing riches which take wings and 
 fly away. The pelican emblemizing solitude. 
 The bat, a flake of the darkness. The night 
 hawk, the ossifrage, the cuckoo, the lapwing, 
 the osprey, by the command of God in Leviti- 
 cus, flung out of the world's bill of fare. 
 
 I would like to have been with Audubon as 
 he went through the woods, with gun and pen- 
 cil, bringing down and sketching the fowls of 
 heaven, his unfolded portfolio thrilling all 
 Christendom. What 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. . IO9 
 
 WONDERFUL CREATURES 
 
 of God the birds are ! Some of them, this 
 morning, like the songs of heaven let loose, 
 bursting through the gates of heaven. Consider 
 their feathers, which are clothing and convey- 
 ance at the same time ; the nine vertebrae of the 
 neck, the three eyelids to each eye, the third 
 eyelid an extra curtain for graduating the light 
 of the sun. Some of these birds scavengers and 
 some of them orchestra. Thank God for quail's 
 whistle, and lark's carol, and the twitter of the 
 wren, called by the ancients 
 
 THE KING OF BIRDS, 
 
 because when the fowls of heaven went into a 
 contest as to who should fly the highest, and the 
 eagle swung nearest the sun, a wren on the back 
 of the eagle, after the eagle was exhausted, 
 sprang up much higher, and so was called by 
 the ancients the king of birds. Consider those 
 of them that have golden crowns and crests, 
 showing them to be feathered imperials. And 
 listen to the humming-bird's serenade in the ear 
 of the honeysuckle. Look at the belted king- 
 fisher, striking like a dart from sky to water. 
 Listen to the voice of the owl, giving the key- 
 note to all croakers. And behold the condor 
 
I 10 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 among the Andes, battling with the reindeer. 
 I do not know whether an aquarium or aviary 
 is the best altar from which to worship God. 
 
 There is an incident in my text that baffles 
 all the ornithological wonders of the world. 
 The grain crop had been cut off. Famine was 
 in the land. In a cave by the brook Cherith 
 sat a minister of God, 
 
 ELIJAH, WAITING 
 
 for something to eat. Why did he not go to 
 the neighbors ? There were no neighbors ; it 
 was a wilderness. Why did he not pick some 
 of the berries? There were none. If there 
 had been, they would have been -dried up. 
 Seated one morning at the mouth of his cave, 
 the prophet sees a flock of birds approaching. 
 Oh, if they were only partridges, or if he only 
 had an arrow with which to bring them down ! 
 But as they come nearer, he finds they are not 
 comestible, but unclean, and the eating of them 
 would be spiritual death. The strength of their 
 beak, the length of their wings, the blackness 
 of their color, their loud, harsh " cruck ! 
 crack !" prove them to be ravens. 
 
 They whirr around about the prophet's head, 
 and then they come on fluttering wing and 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. Ill 
 
 pause on the level of his lips, and one of the 
 ravens brings bread, and another raven brings 
 meat, and after they have discharged their- tiny 
 cargo they wheel past, and others come, until 
 after awhile the prophet has enough, and these 
 black servants of the wilderness table are gone. 
 For six months, and some say a whole year, 
 morning and evening, a breakfast and 
 
 A SUPPER-BELL 
 
 sounded as these ravens rang out on the air 
 their " cruck ! cruck !" Guess where they got 
 the food from. The old rabbins say they got it 
 from the kitchen of King Ahab. Others say 
 that the ravens got their food from pious 
 Obadiah, who was in the habit of feeding the 
 persecuted. Some say that the ravens brought 
 the food to their young in the trees, and that 
 Elijah had only to climb up and get it. Some 
 say that the whole story is improbable; for 
 these were carnivorous birds, and the food they 
 carried was the torn flesh of living beasts, and 
 that ceremonially unclean ; or it was carrion, 
 and it would not have been fit for the prophet. 
 Some say they were not ravens at all, but that 
 the word translated " ravens" in my text ought 
 to have been translated " Arabs ;" so it would 
 
112 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 have read, " The Arabs brought bread and flesh 
 in the morning, and bread and flesh in the 
 evening." Anything but admit the Bible to be 
 true. 
 
 Hew away at this miracle until all the miracle 
 is gone. Go on with the depleting process, but 
 know, my brother, that you are robbing only 
 one man — and that is yourself — of one of the 
 most comforting, beautiful, pathetic, and tri- 
 umphant lessons in all the ages. I can tell you 
 
 WHO THESE PURVEYORS WERE 
 
 — they were ravens. I can tell you who 
 freighted them with provisions — God. I can 
 tell you who launched them — God. I can tell 
 you who taught them which way to fly — God. 
 I can tell you who told them at what cave to 
 swoop — God. I can tell you who introduced 
 raven to prophet and prophet to raven — God. 
 There is one passage I will whisper in your ear, 
 for I would not want to utter it aloud, lest 
 some one should drop down under its power — 
 "If any man shall take away from the words 
 of the prophecy of this book, God shall take 
 away His part out of the book of life and out 
 of the Holy City." 
 
 While, then, this morning we watch the 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 113 
 
 ravens feeding Elijah, let the swift dove of 
 God's Spirit sweep down the sky with divine 
 food, and on outspread wing pause at the lip of 
 every soul hungering for comfort. 
 
 On the banks of what rivers have been the 
 great battles of the world ? While you are 
 looking over the map of the world to answer 
 that, I will tell you that 
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT 
 
 to-day is on the Thames, on the Hudson, on the 
 Mississippi, on the Kennebec, on the Savannah, 
 on the Rhine, on the Nile, on the Ganges, on 
 the Hoang-Ho. It is a battle that has been 
 going on for six thousand years. The troops 
 engaged in it are fourteen hundred millions, 
 and those who have fallen are vaster in num- 
 ber than those who march. It is a battle for 
 bread. 
 
 Sentimentalists sit in a cushioned chair, in 
 their pictured study, with their slippered feet 
 on a damask ottoman, and say that this world 
 is a great scene of avarice and greed. It does 
 not seem so to me. If it were not for the 
 
 ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES 
 
 of the cases, nine tenths of the stores, factories, 
 
114 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. - 
 
 shops, banking-houses of the land would be 
 closed to-morrow. Who is that man delving in 
 the Colorado hills? or toiling in a New England 
 factory ? or going through a roll of bills in the 
 bank ? or measuring a fabric on the counter ? 
 He is a champion sent forth in behalf of some 
 home circle that has to be cared for, in behalf 
 of some church of God that has to be supported, 
 in behalf of some asylum of mercy that has to 
 be sustained. Who is that woman bending 
 over the sewing-machine, or carrying the bundle, 
 or sweeping the room, or mending the garment, 
 or sweltering at the washtub ? That is Deborah, 
 one of the Lord's heroines, battling against 
 Amalekitish want, which comes down with iron 
 chariot to crush her and hers. 
 
 THE GREAT QUESTION 
 
 with the vast majority of people to-day is not 
 "Home Rule," but whether there shall be any 
 home to rule ; not one of tariff but whether 
 they shall have anything to tax. The great 
 question with the vast majority of people is, 
 " How shall I support my family ? How shall 
 I meet my notes ? How shall I pay my rent ? 
 How shall I give food, clothing, and education 
 to those who are dependent upon me ?" Oh, 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 115 
 
 if God would help me to-day to assist you in 
 the solution of that problem, the happiest man 
 in this house would be your preacher ! I have 
 gone out on a cold morning with expert sports- 
 men to hunt for pigeons ; I have gone out on 
 the meadows to hunt for quail ; I have gone 
 out on the marsh to hunt for reed-birds ; but 
 this morning I am out for ravens. 
 
 I. Notice, in the first place in the story of 
 my text, that these winged caterers came to 
 Elijah 
 
 • 
 
 DIRECTLY FROM GOD. 
 
 " I have commanded the ravens that they 
 feed thee," we find God saying in an adjoining 
 passage. They did not come out of some other 
 cave. They did not just happen to alight there. 
 God freighted them, God launched them, and 
 God told them by what cave to swoop. That 
 is the same God that is going to supply you. 
 He is your Father. You would have to make 
 an elaborate calculation before you could tell 
 me how many pounds of food and how many 
 yards of clothing would be necessary for you 
 and your family ; but God knows without any 
 calculation. You have a plate at His table, 
 and you are going to be waited on, unless you 
 
Il6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 act like a naughty child, and kick, and scramble, 
 and pound saucily the plate and try to upset 
 things. 
 
 God has a vast family, and everything is 
 methodized, and you are going to be served if 
 you will only wait your turn. God has already 
 ordered all the suits of clothes you will ever 
 need, down to the last suit in which you shall 
 be laid out. God has already ordered all the 
 food you will ever eat, down to the last crumb 
 that will be put in your mouth in the dying 
 sacrament. It may not be just the kind of food 
 or apparel we would prefer. 
 
 THE SENSIBLE PARENT 
 
 depends on his own judgment as to what ought 
 to be the apparel and the food of the minor in 
 the family. The child would say, "Give me 
 sugars and confections." "Oh, no," says the 
 parent ; " you must have something plainer 
 first." The child would say, "Oh, give me 
 these great blotches of color in the garment." 
 " No," says the parent ; " that wouldn't be suit- 
 able." 
 
 Now, God is our Father and we are minors, 
 and He is going to clothe us and feed us, 
 although he may not always yield to our infan- 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. I17 
 
 tile wish for sweets and glitter. These ravens 
 of the text did not bring pomegranates from 
 the glittering platter of King Arab. They 
 brought bread and meat. God had all the 
 heavens and the earth before Him and under 
 Him, and yet he sends this plain food, because 
 it was best for Elijah to have it. Oh, be 
 strong, my hearer, in the fact that the same 
 God is going to supply you ! It is never 
 "hard times" with Him. His ship never 
 breaks on the rocks. His banks never fail. 
 He has the supply for you and He has the 
 means for sending it. He has not only the 
 cargo, but the ship. If it were necessary, He 
 would swing out from the heavens a flock of 
 ravens reaching from His gate to yours, until 
 the food would be flung down the sky from 
 beak to beak and from talon to talon. 
 
 II. Notice again in this story of the text, 
 that the ravens did not allow Elijah to hoard 
 up a surplus. They did not bring enough on 
 Monday to last all the week. They did not 
 bring enough one morning to last until the 
 next morning. They came twice a day, and 
 brought just enough for one time. You know 
 as well as I, that 
 
Il8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 THE GREAT FRET 
 
 of the world is that we want a surplus ; we want 
 the ravens to bring enough for fifty years. 
 You have more confidence in the Fulton Bank, 
 or Nassau Bank, or Bank of England than you 
 have in the Royal Bank of Heaven. You say, 
 " All that is very poetic, but you may have the 
 black ravens ; give me the gold eagles." We 
 had better be content with just enough. If in 
 the morning your family eat up all the food 
 there is in the house, do not sit down and cry 
 and say, " I don't know where the next meal is 
 to come from." About five, or six, or seven 
 o'clock in the morning just look up, and you 
 will see two black spots on the sky, and you 
 will hear the flapping of wings, and instead of 
 Edgar A. Poe's insane raven alighting on the 
 chamber door, " only this and nothing more," 
 you will find Elijah's two ravens, or two ravens 
 of the Lord, the one bringing bread and the 
 other bringing meat — plumed butcher and 
 baker. 
 
 God is infinite in resource. When the city 
 of Rochelle was besieged and the inhabitants 
 were dying of the famine, the tides washed up 
 on the beach as never before, and as never 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. II9 
 
 since, enough shell-fish to feed the whole city. 
 God is good. There is no mistake about that. 
 History tells us that in 1555 in England there 
 was a great drought. The crops failed ; but in 
 Essex, on the rocks, in a place where they had 
 neither sown nor cultured, a great crop of peas 
 grew until they filled a hundred measures ; and 
 there were blossoming vines enough, promising 
 as much more. 
 
 But why go so far ? I can give you 
 
 A FAMILY INCIDENT. 
 
 Some generations back there was a great 
 drought in Connecticut, New England. The 
 water disappeared from the hills, and the farm- 
 ers living on the hills drove their cattle down 
 toward the valleys, and had them supplied at 
 the wells and fountains of the neighbors. But 
 these after a while began to fail, and the neigh- 
 bors said to Mr. Birdseye, of whom I shall 
 speak, " You must not send your flocks and 
 herds down here any more ; our wells are giving 
 out." Mr. Birdseye, the old Christian man, 
 gathered his family at the altar, and with his 
 family he gathered the slaves of the household 
 — for bondage was then in vogue in Connecti- 
 cut — and on their knees before God they cried 
 
120 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 for water ; and the family story is, that there 
 was weeping and great sobbing at that altar 
 that the family might not perish for lack of 
 water, and that the herds and flocks might not 
 perish. 
 
 The family rose from the altar. Mr. Birds- 
 eye, the old man, took his staff and walked out 
 over the hills, and in a place where he had 
 been scores of times, without noticing anything 
 particular, he saw the ground was very dark, 
 and he took his staff and turned up the ground, 
 and water started; and he beckoned to his 
 servants, and they came and brought pails and 
 buckets until all the family and all the flocks 
 and the herds were cared for ; and then they 
 made troughs reaching from that place down to 
 the house and barn, and the water flowed, and 
 it is a living fountain to-day. 
 
 Now I call that old grandfather Elijah, and 
 I call that brook that began to roll then, and is 
 rolling still, the brook Cherith ; and the lesson 
 to me and to all who hear it is, when you are 
 in great stress of circumstances 
 
 PRAY AND DIG, 
 
 dig and pray, and pray and dig. How does that 
 passage go ? " The mountains shall depart and 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 121 
 
 the hills be removed, but My loving-kindness 
 shall not fail." If your merchandise, if your 
 mechanism, if your husbandry, fail, look out for 
 ravens. If you have in your despondency put 
 God on trial and condemned Him as guilty of 
 cruelty, I move this morning for a new trial. If 
 the biography of your life is ever written, I 
 will tell you what the first chapter, and the 
 middle chapter, and the last chapter will be 
 about, if it is written accurately. The first 
 chapter about mercy, the middle chapter about 
 mercy, the last chapter about mercy. The 
 mercy that hovered over your cradle. The 
 mercy that will hover over your grave. The 
 mercy that will cover all between. 
 
 III. Again, this story of the text impresses 
 me that relief came to this prophet with the 
 most unexpected and with seemingly impossible 
 conveyance. If it had been a robin-redbreast, 
 or a musical meadow lark, or a meek turtle- 
 dove, or a sublime albatross that had brought 
 the food to Elijah, it would not have been so 
 surprising. But no. It was a bird so fierce and 
 inauspicate that we have fashioned one of our 
 most forceful and repulsive words out of it — 
 ravenous. That bird has a passion for picking 
 out the eyes of men and of animals. It loves 
 
122 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 to maul the sick and the dying. It swallows 
 with vulturous guzzle everything it can put its 
 beak on ; and yet all the food Elijah gets for 
 six months or a year is from ravens. So your 
 supply is going to come from 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED SOURCE. 
 
 You think some great-hearted, generous man 
 will come along and give you his name on the 
 back of your note, or he will go security for 
 you in some great enterprise. No, he will not. 
 God will open the heart of some Shylock 
 toward you. Your relief will come from 
 the most unexpected quarter. The Providence 
 which seemed ominous will be to you more 
 than that which seemed auspicious. It will not 
 be a chaffinch with breast and wing dashed with 
 white and brown and chestnut ; it will be a 
 black raven. 
 
 Here is where we all make our mistake, and 
 that is in regard to 
 
 THE COLOR OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE. 
 
 A white providence comes to us, and we say, 
 " Oh, it is mercy !" Then a black providence 
 comes towards us, and we say, " Oh, that is 
 disaster !" The white providence comes to you, 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 23 
 
 and you have great business success, and you 
 have fifty thousand dollars, and you get proud, 
 and you get independent of God, and you be- 
 gin to feel that the prayer, " Give me this day 
 my daily bread," is inappropriate for you, for 
 you have made provision for a hundred years. 
 Then a black providence comes, and it sweeps 
 everything away, and then you begin to pray, 
 and you begin to feel your dependence, and be- 
 gin to be humble before God, and you cry out 
 for treasures in heaven. The black providence 
 brought you salvation. The white providence 
 brought you ruin. That which seemed to be 
 harsh, and fierce, and dissonant was your great- 
 est mercy. It was a raven. There was 
 
 A CHILD BORN 
 
 in your house. All your friends congrat- 
 ulated you. The other children of the family 
 stood amazed looking at the new-comer, and 
 asked a great many questions, genealogical and 
 chronological You said — and you said truth- 
 fully — that a white angel flew through the 
 room and left the little one there. That little 
 one stood with its two feet in the very sanctu- 
 ary of your affection, and with its two hands it 
 took hold of the altar of your soul. But one 
 
124 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 day there came one of the three scourges of 
 children — scarlet-fever, or croup, or diphtheria — 
 and all that bright scene vanished. The chat- 
 tering, the strange questions, the pulling at the 
 dresses as you crossed the floor — all ceased. 
 
 As the great Friend of children stooped 
 down and leaned toward that cradle, and took 
 the little one in His arms and walked away 
 with it into the bower of eternal summer, your 
 eye began to follow Him, and 
 
 YOU FOLLOWED THE TREASURE 
 
 He carried, and you have been following them 
 ever since ; and instead of thinking of heaven 
 only once a week, as formerly, you are thinking 
 of it all the time, and you are more pure and 
 tender-hearted than you used to be, and you 
 are patiently waiting for the daybreak. It is 
 not self-righteousness in you to acknowledge 
 that you are a better man than you used to be 
 — you are a better woman than you used to be. 
 What was it that brought you the sanctifying 
 blessing ? Oh, it was the dark shadow on the 
 nursery ; it was the dark shadow on the short 
 grave ; it was the dark shadow on your broken 
 heart ; it was the brooding of a great black 
 trouble ; it was a raven — it was a raven ! Dear 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 25 
 
 Lord, teach this people that white providences 
 do not always mean advancement, and that 
 black providences do not always mean retro- 
 gression. 
 
 Children of God, get up out of your de- 
 spondency. The Lord never had so 
 
 MANY RAVENS 
 
 as He has this morning, Fling your fret and 
 worry to the winds. Sometimes under the vex- 
 ations of life you feel like my little girl of four 
 years, who said, under some childish vexation, 
 14 Oh, I wish I could go to heaven and see God 
 and pick flowers !" He will let you go when 
 the right time comes to pick flowers. Until 
 then, whatever you want, pray for. I suppose 
 Elijah prayed pretty much all the time. Tre- 
 mendous work behind him. Tremendous work 
 before him. God has no spare ravens for idlers 
 or for people who are prayerless. I put it in 
 the boldest shape possible, and I am willing to 
 risk my eternity on it : ask God in the right 
 way for what you want, and you shall have it 
 if it is best for you. 
 
 Mrs. Jane Pithey, of Chicago, a well-known 
 Christian woman, was left by her husband a 
 widow with one half dollar and a cottage. She 
 
126 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 was palsied, and had a mother ninety years of 
 age to support. The widowed soul every day 
 asked God for all that was needed in the house- 
 hold, and the servant even was astonished at 
 the precision with which God answered the 
 prayers of that woman, item by item, item by 
 item. One day, rising from the family altar, 
 the servant said, "You have not asked for coal, 
 and 
 
 THE COAL IS OUT." 
 
 Then they stood and prayed for the coal. 
 One hour after that the servant threw open the 
 door and said, " The coal has come." A gen- 
 erous man, whose name I could give you, had 
 sent — as never before and never since — a sup- 
 ply of coal. You cannot understand it. I do. 
 Ravens ! Ravens ! 
 
 My friend, you have a right to argue from 
 precedent that God is going to take care of you. 
 Has He not done it two or three times every 
 day ? That is most marvellous. I look back 
 and I wonder that God has given me food 
 three times a day regular all my lifetime, never 
 missing but once, and then I was lost in the 
 mountains ; but that very morning and that 
 very night I met the ravens. 
 
THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 27 
 
 Oh, the Lord is so good that I wish all this 
 people would 
 
 TRUST HIM 
 
 with the two lives — the life you are now living 
 and that which every tick of the watch and 
 every stroke of the clock inform you is ap- 
 proaching. Bread for your immortal soul comes 
 to-day. See ! They alight on the platform. 
 They alight on the backs of all the pews. They 
 swing among the arches. Ravens ! Ravens ! 
 " Blessed are they that hunger after righteous- 
 ness, for they shall be filled." To all the sin- 
 ning, and the sorrowing, and the tempted deliv- 
 erance comes this hour. Look down, and you 
 see nothing but your spiritual deformities. 
 Look back, and you see nothing but wasted 
 opportunity. Cast your eye forward, and you 
 have a fearful looking for judgment and fiery 
 indignation which shall devour the adversary. 
 But look up, and you behold the whipped 
 shoulders of an interceding Christ, and the face 
 of a pardoning God, and the irradiation of an 
 opening heaven. I hear .the whirr of their 
 wings. Do you not feel the rush of the air on 
 your cheek ? Ravens ! Ravens ! 
 
 There is only one question I want to ask : 
 
128 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 How many of this audience are willing to trust 
 God for the supply of their bodies, and trust 
 the Lord Jesus Christ for the redemption of 
 their immortal souls? Amid the clatter of the 
 hoofs and the clang of the wheels of the judg- 
 ment-chariot, the whole matter will be demon- 
 strated.