p. 394 | Railing Epithets by Watchman

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 1, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 25.

Railing Epithets.

By Watchman

It has not been sufficiently attended to, how men augment their hatred of their adversaries by the constant use of railing epithets. In the strikes that now prevail, much of the argument used by the strikers is summed up in the words "scab" and "rat." After one has called a fellow-man a "scab" a number of times, it becomes easier to fall upon him and kick him into insensibility. It is like the lion lashing himself into fury with his own tail. Especially when a large number of men combine to call a workman a "scab," they create in themselves the unanimous conviction that he is a scab; in fact, his whole crime consists in being willing to work for a living at such wages as he can get. If there is one class of people which, more than another deserves public sympathy and the full protection of the law, it is these same people, who are willing to work rather than to join societies and persecute their fellow-men. One of the highest duties of this sore time is to guard the lives and limbs and labors of the free men who are so basely stigmatized and cruelly treated.—Watchman.