The Working Man

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 22, 1 August 1885, Page 3

The Working Man

The following extract is made from an article entitled " Is our civilisation just to the working man," published in the Auckland Watchman: — Here is the eternal law — wealth comes only bjwork. Here, wherever our civilisation extends, is the social fact — those who work hardest and longest, those whom we style the working classes, am the poorest classes. The very word, working man, is associated with poverty. A working man's hotel is everywhere a poor hotel ; a working man's restaurant is a mean restaurant In a working man's store jou will find only the cheaper and coarser goods. What physician wants a working man'sjpractice if he can get any other ? What minister a working-man's church? Who wishes his son to became, or bis daughter to wed, a working-man ? We prate vainly of the dignity of labaur, fait facts give our words the lie. Labour is everywhere despised; everywhere it sinks into a back seat ; aye, even in the house of God ! Magnificent churches are dedicated to a carpenter, to a fisherman, and to a tent-maker, but are they workingsnen*scarriages which stand on Sundays before their doors? Are their well dressed congregations composed of that class to which the carpenter, the fisherman, and the tent-maker of 1 8 centuries «go belonged? Why even in the cathedrals of that church which most libasts that before her all are equal, fhe carpenter, the fisherman, and the tent-maker of the present day must go into the back seats and cheap seats. The good places and the soft seats — they are for the people who have got above labour.