Labor Writings
―In the Beginning . . .‖: A Knight’s Sacred Oath
The Knights of Labor, a nineteenth-century labor union, employed elaborate rituals and symbols
in their local assembly meetings. The initiation ceremony for new members, for example, relied
heavily on religious imagery and language. It also drew on the rituals of other fraternal
organizations like the Masons and the Odd Fellows that had many working-class members. The
ceremony emphasized that all that was valuable and worthy in society derived from human labor.
New Knights agreed to commit themselves to improve the conditions of all working people.
Hundreds of thousands of workers in the 1880s were ―baptized‖ in a Knights of Labor initiation
ceremony that required the following promises.
In the beginning, God ordained that man should labor, not as a curse, but as a blessing; not as a
punishment, but as means of development, physically, mentally, morally, and has set thereunto
his seal of approval in the rich increase and reward. By labor is brought forward the kindly fruits
of the earth in rich abundance for our sustenance and comfort; by labor (not exhaustive) is
promoted health of the body and strength of mind, labor garners the priceless stores of wisdom
and knowledge. It is the ―Philosopher’s Stone,‖ everything it touches turns to wealth. ―Labor is
noble and holy.‖ To glorify God in its exercise, to defend it from degradation, to divest it of the
evils to body, mind, and estate, which ignorance and greed have imposed; to rescue the toiler
from the grasp of the selfish is a work worthy of the noblest and best of our race.
You have been selected from among your associates for that exalted purpose. Are you willing to
accept the responsibility, and, trusting in the support of pledged true Knights, labor, with what
ability you possess, for the triumph of these principles among men?
―The Man with a Hoe‖ by Edwin Markham, and L'homme à la houe by Jean-François Millet
In 1899 an American schoolteacher, Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940), who used
the penname Edwin Markham, was inspired by an 1863 painting to write a poem. The painting
was "L'homme à la houe" by the French artist, Jean-François Millet (1814-1875); the poem was
"The Man with a Hoe.‖
The poem quickly became as famous as the painting. Both continue to be moving testimonies to
what the too prevalent inhumanity of humanity can cause.
The Man with a Hoe
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this-More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed-More filled with signs and portents for the soul-More packed with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-With those who shaped him to the thing he is-When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?
A Craft Unionist Rewrites the Ten Commandments
The moral code of craft unionism was part of a larger system of late nineteenth-century workingclass values that went well beyond behavior on the job. Moreover, those values drew upon other
deeply held moral beliefs, particularly those growing out of religion. In ―Labor’s Decalogue,‖ G.
Edmonston, the first president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, offered a
new twist on the biblical Ten Commandments. Edmonston’s novel set of ―rules‖ for workers
found its way into a variety of labor publications, including an issue of the Florida Labor Journal
on May 13, 1903. While this document revealed the indebtedness of craft culture to universalist
religious ideas, it also reflected the exclusive nature of craft work (members of craft unions in
this era were overwhelmingly white and male).
I.
Thou shalt join a union of thy craft and have no other unions before it.
II.
The meetings thereof thou shalt attend and pay thy tithes with regularity. Thou shalt not appeal
from the decisions of the chair in a captious spirit.
III.
Thou shalt not take thy neighbor’s job.
IV.
Thou shalt not labor more than eight hours for one day’s work, nor on the Sabbath, except as
provided in the law.
V.
Thou shalt not hire out thy offspring of tender years. ―Poverty and shame shall be unto him that
refuseth instruction to his children.‖
VI.
Clothe not the wife of thy bosom in mean apparel lest it be a testimony against thee.
VII.
Thou shalt not live in a hovel, or feed on the husk that the swine doth eat. Take thou not alms
from the unrighteous.
VIII.
Waste not thy substance in riotous living, but place thy shekels in a good building association
and borrow not. Therein lieth the secret of success.
IX.
Honor the female sex, for on this rock rests the strength of the nation.
X.
Mind your own business.
“Store Pay Is Our Ruin”: The Tyranny of the Company
Store
Starting in the mid-19th century, industrial methods of producing goods began to overtake the
small-scale methods of artisans and apprentices. The artisanal ideal of independence was eroded
by the replacement of craft work by machine work, strict new work rules, and the growth of
child labor. For miners and some other workers, the prevalence of store pay (wages paid only as
credit), scrip wages (money redeemable only by the company), and company stores intensified
their dependence on employers. If company stores lacked the items that miners wanted, they had
no alternative but to do without. In these three excerpts from the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics
First Annual Report in 1878, miners complained about the stranglehold that company-owned
stores, scrip wages, and store pay had on the welfare and independence of coal and iron ore
workers in the Buckeye State.
Athens County Correspondent:
When a man’s work is done, it is money that is due him, yet he must take just what he can get or
do without. If he sues for it a stay is taken, and his family can starve. There should be no stay on
the wages of labor, and the man or company should be compelled under penalty to pay wages
every two weeks in currency. The plea is that they cannot have the books made up—it is too
much trouble. I ask, is it any more trouble to see what is due a man in money than in scrip or
checks. . . . We cannot exchange. . . (the checks) with farmers or others. A farmer comes to my
door. He has produce, just what I need. He sells for thirty cents. He also wants something out of
the store and would willingly give me the produce and take the ―check‖ on the store but the store
will not receive the check from him so he is obliged to sell his produce to the store, and I am
forced to pay the store forty cents for the article I could have bought for thirty cents. . . .
Lucas County (Sylvania) correspondent:
Store pay is our ruin. . . The store keeps no meat, no potatoes, no lard, and the most of the time
this summer no flour, no butter, no eggs; but we can get hominy at 5 cents per pound, crackers at
10 cents per pound, and rice at 10 cents per pound. Now, it must be evident, that if I work for
store-pay, and the store has no meat, I must go without it, and if they have no flour I must buy
crackers. If we were paid in cash, we could go to Toledo, and save, at least, 40 per cent. . . How
can a man be a moral, liberty loving citizen, when he can not send his children to school for want
of clothes, or take his wife to church in decent attire?
Perry County (New Straitsville) correspondent:
Competition is not lawful in the eyes of God when it results to the destruction of our country and
the rights of our fellow-man. The State is bound to prevent the unlawful reduction of wages, as
much as it is bound to prevent the burning of property. To enslave and starve a man, or to drive
him to desperation by actions the most uncharitable and unjust, is just as bad as to destroy
property; both should be prevented. To my mind, the blasting a man’s social happiness, by
forcing him to wander from his wife and children in quest of employment is a thousand times
worse than to injure property, when no lives are in peril. One family of poor should be worth
more than the world could purchase. . . .
Source: Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, First Annual Report (Columbus, Ohio: 1878), 156–192.