The Bishop and the Bricklayer
Methodist Bishop Robert McIntyre writes on the spiritual necessity of labor unions and the soulless nature of modern corporate industry.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
More and more the Christian church is approaching the viewpoint of the labor union—that the material needs of man must be ministered to as well as his spiritual needs. It is hard to talk to a man about salvation if his stomach is empty and his clothes ragged. I was a member of a labor union forty years ago. I am a member of one now, and I expect to die in good standing in the Methodist church and in the Bricklayers' local, for in both I find my kind of folks, and the sacred is balanced by the secular. When I earned my first dollars in a mill, my boss handed me the money with a pleasant word of human interest. My last employer I never saw. My salary was pushed at me in an envelope from a window by a hireling. I was hired by no one, discharged by no one, and I had not even a name, but was number twenty-three. There was no heart under the ribs of the huge machine.
“I was hired by no one, discharged by no one, and I had not even a name, but was number twenty-three.”
Bishop McIntyre's 1912 critique of 'impersonal, bloodless' corporations and the struggle for a living wage in Everett echoes contemporary debates over the gig economy and the erosion of human-centric labor practices. The union remains a touchstone for civic power in Everett, just as it was when this was penned.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.