A PITIFUL CONDITION by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Sep 26, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 39.

A PITIFUL CONDITION.

By T.

THE newspapers reported a few days since that the great Rogers Locomotive Works at Paterson, N. J., are about to be shut down. These works have on their pay-roll some fifteen hundred men. One machinist has been in that shop for fifty-two years working steadily. Another one has been there fifty years. Still another for forty-five years, and another for forty-two years. Many others have been there for long periods of time. Now the crisis has come, and there is danger that the shop will have to be closed because of a lack of work.

In the very nature of things, when the country was building up and a great many locomotives were needed, the shops would have to be run very strongly, but any one ought to see that there must come a time when the demand would be quite largely supplied with the needed locomotives. Then there are other firms springing into existence that do the same work, and hence the constant danger of being thrown out of employment.

Now why is it that men will be so short-sighted as to work right along year after year at a job that they can not hope to keep always, and cognizant of the fact all the time that if they were thrown out of that position they would not know which way to turn for a livelihood? The Lord created man with a great variety of faculties, so he might be able to turn his hand to a great many different things. The individual who cultivates these abilities God has given him will never be at the mercy of circumstances, nor of the employing class. Every individual should learn to employ himself, and no one who is continuously employed by others can develop into the strength and manhood that are developed by being his own employer. When we work for others it should be from the standpoint of an accommodation to them and not from that of necessity on our part.

A great deal of the labor troubles that are in the country would be swept away if men were not "hoodooed" by the idea that certain classes are born to be employers, while others can never employ themselves. Instances are numerous where men have been employed year after year and thought they could not do anything except the job they were set at by their foreman or superintendent, but a reversal of some kind has thrown them out of their position, and, while they thought at first they could not do anything, yet necessity drove them to the exercise of the faculties they had possessed all these years, and they have soon found that they were able to make a success of employing themselves, and thus be independent of the employing class. In these days men should very carefully consider these important principles. T.