Agricola

Power goes by votes; the handworker is now a voter; and the voice of the handworker is loud in the land.      No scheme is too wild to find advocates; and those who venture to assert the right of invention, organization and thrift to superior recognition as public benefits often think it necessary to adopt an apologetic tone. Now it may be that this is a passing phase, and that the so-called ‘working-class’—that is, handworkers for wages—will come to see that the civilization whose comforts they enjoy, and whose discomforts they resent, does not wholly depend upon the simple repeated acts of the handworkers themselves. Perhaps there are already signs of some such reaction. But, if so, the reaction must be voluntary; for no power exists in this country to constrain the handworker to take reasonable views, in short to face facts. In these words I am not implying any denial of the reasonableness of many of his claims. To offer an opinion on questions of more or less is no business of mine. 

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