Suggestive programs for special day exercises/Labor Day/The Moral Dignity of Labor

by Stephen Higginson Tyng

THE MORAL DIGNITY OF LABOR.

STEPHEN H. TYNG.

Human talent, industry, wisdom, and skill, under the favoring blessing of Heaven, must now go forth to sow and to gather in the harvest of the earth. We are teaching lessons of political economy which the world has never heard before. It is a noble dispensation for our country. Other nations may see us, but not with the vines or olives of Italy or France, nor with the oranges and grapes of Spain or Portugal, nor even the rich and glowing verdure and teeming harvests of England and the lowland of Scotland.

The magnificence of their time-honored architecture we have not attained. And yet there are intelligence, prosperity, dignity, independence, and self-respect marking the laboring classes of our population, which lifts us far above all envy of the grandeur and glory of European display. They see that we have a people, flourishing and prosperous beyond comparison

It is the province of America to build, not palaces, but men; to exalt, not titled stations, but general humanity; to elevate, not the few, but the many; and to make herself known, not so much in individuals as in herself, spreading to the highest possible level (but striving to keep it level still), universal education, prosperity, and honor.

The great element of this whole plan of effort and instruction, is the moral relative dignity of labor; an element which we are to exalt, in public estimation, in the highest possible degree, and transmit to our families and to posterity, as the true greatness of the country and the world.

We are to look at this enlarging elevation of the working classes of men—a fact which may be considered the main index of our age—not as a difficulty to be limited, but as an attainment in which we greatly rejoice. And, if our heraldry is in the hammer and the ax and the awl and the needle, we are to feel it a higher honor than if, in their place, we could have dragons and helmets and cross-bones and skulls. Our country’s greatness is to be the result, not of foreign war, but of domestic peace; not of the plunder of the weak, but of the fair and even principles of just commerce, a thriving agriculture, a beautiful and industrious art. Let us glory in everything that indicates this fact, as an index also of our desire for renown. This great lesson—honor to the working classes, in the proportion of their industry and merit—the world will yet completely learn.

And when the great, exalting, leveling system of Christianity gains its universal reign, mountains will be brought down and valleys will be filled; a highway shall be made for human prosperity and peace—for the elevation and dignity and security of man—over which no oppressor's foot shall pass; the poorest of the sons of Adam shall dwell unmolested and fearless beneath its own vine and fig-tree; the united families of earth shall all compete to acquire and encourage the arts of peace; nation shall not rise up against nation, and men shall learn war no more.