under the sceptre of an iron rule, which is unintelligent and revolutionary. By this retrogressive movement, solely on account of their color and previous condition, millions of our citizens are violently deprived of a most essential civil right, the privilege of pursuing means of education upon terms of civil equality with all the other citizens. The fundamental law of the Fourteenth Amendment cannot free him from the merciless clutches of the monopolistic labor class, which has condemned him to the unremunerative pursuits of caterer, cook, coachman, porter, drayman, scrubber, carpet-beater, hod-carrier, stevedore, or bootblack.
The late decade has been a momentous era for classes and interests. A vast upheaval of industries has been evolved from different conditions, and is inspired by different purposes, North and South. In the political and industrial departments the invasions of majorities are as unlimited and unconscionable as their power over minorities is absolute. The plutocracy of money and the oligarchy of labor overwhelmingly repudiate the constitutional limitations whenever their interests can be promoted, apparently with the sanction of public opinion, certainly without the arrest of the law. The disasters which overwhelm our race's industrial factors touch the interests of the country at large. This result is the effect of the contagious example of these law-breakers in the formation of public opinion. The society of the state has not yet grown sufficiently enlightened to conform its opinion to its constitutional law. Instead of being a living force, the law has now grown to be a familiar skeleton, a mere scare-crow of retributive justice.
These addressers realize that it takes many blows of the hammer of advancing knowledge to awaken to full activity that thick-headed, mole-eyed, somnolent giant, the public. In behalf of their undertaking, they humbly implore the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe to aid those Christian messengers who
Celebrate the throne and equipage of God's almightiness
in strains which angels pause to hear; who represent the reign of God and the reign of law on earth: those intrepid disciples
