James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[345] that these Associated Workers never lack employment when they desire it, and never ask any master's leave to refrain from working when they see fit, arrest public attention? Who is such a slave in soul that he would not rather be an equal member of a commonwealth than the subject of a despotism? Who would not like to taste the sweets of Liberty on work-days as well as holidays? Is there a creature so abject that he considers all this mere poetry and moonshine, which a little hard experience will dissipate? Suppose the Cincinnati Iron-Molders' Association should break down, either through some defect in its organization or some dishonesty or other misconduct on the part of one or more of its members—what would that prove? Would it any more prove the impracticability of Industrial Associations than the shipwreck and death of Columbus, had such a disaster occurred on his second or third voyage to America, would have disproved the existence of the New World?

The story is incomplete; the catastrophe is wanting. It can be told in one word, and that word is failure! The Union existed about two years. It then broke up, not, as I am very positively assured, from any defect in the system upon which it was conducted; but from a total stagnation in the market, which not only ruined the co-operators, but others engaged in the same business. They made castings on the co-operative principle, made them well, made them as long as anybody would buy them; then—stopped.

The reader of the volume from which I have quoted will find in it much that does less honor to the author's head than his heart. But I defy any one to read it, and not respect the man that wrote it. The kernel of the book is sound. The root of the matter is there. It shows Horace Greeley to be a man whose interest in human welfare is sincere, habitual, innate, and indestructible. We all know what is the usual course of a person who—as the stupid phrase is—‘rises’ from the condition of a manual laborer to a position of influence and wealth. If our own observation were not sufficient, Thackeray and Curtis have told the whole world the sorry history of the modern snob; how he ignores his origin, and bends all his little soul to the task of cutting a figure in the circles to which he has gained admittance.

Twenty men are suffocating in a dungeon—one man, by climbing upon the shoulders of some of his companions, and assisted up still higher by the strength of others, escapes, breathes the pure air of heaven, exults in freedom! Does he not, instantly and with all