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Show AN EXCELLENT STROKE Delivered by the Joint Executive Boards of Local Assemblies. A Taper That Must Carry Sympathy, if Not Conviction, With the Knights. Commissioner Sparks' Order Relating to Confirmation of Land Patents Revoked. An Extraordinary Address From tUe Executive Committee of the Knights. St. Louis, April 6. The Joint Executive Board of Assemblies 101, 13, and 17, Knights of Labor, this afternoon issued the following follow-ing address: To the Workmen of tlie World: Friends and brothers, hear us, for we plead for our rights. Men of equity, look upon us, for we struggle against the giants of wrong. Mad with the frenzy of pride of self-adulation, begotten, as it is, of the success of outrage and infamy, there stands before us the giant of aggregated and incorporated wealth, every dollar of which is built upon blood, injustice and outrage. That giant of corporate wealth has centralized its power in, and is impersonated by the eager fiend who gloats as he grinds the life of his f ellowmen, and grimaces and dances as they writhe upon his instrument of torture. O! ye work-ingmen work-ingmen of America, who love your liberty and your native land, ye great creators of wealth who stand as the foundation of all National good, look upon your brothers today. to-day. Gould the ciant fiend, Gould the money monarch, is dancing as he claims over the grave of our order over the ruins of our homes, and the blight of our lives. Before him the world has smiled in beauty, but in his wake is a graveyard of hopes and a cyclone cy-clone path of devastation and 'death. - Our strong arms have grown weary in building the tower of strength, and yet he bids us build on or die. Our young lives have grown gray too soon beneath the strain of unrequited unre-quited and constant toil. Our loved ones at home are hollow-cheeked and pale with long and weary waiting for better days to come. Nay, more than this, the graveyards are hiding his victims from our longing eyes. Brother workmen, this monster fiend has compelled some of us to toil in the cold and rain for five and fifty cents a day; others have been compelled to yield their time to him for seventeen and thirty-six weary hours for the pittance of nine hours' pay. Others, who have dared to assert their manhood and rebel against hi3 tyranny, are black-listed and boycotted all over the land. He has made solemn compacts with the highest authority in our Order and then basely refused to fulfill his pledge. He lives under and enjoys all the benefits tif a Republican form of government, yet advocates and perpetuates per-petuates the most debasing form of white slavery. He robs the rich and poor, the high and low, with ruthless hand, and then appeals ap-peals to corrupt and purchased courts to help him take our little homes away. He breaks our limbs and maims our bodies, and then demands that we shall release him from every claim for damages or be blacklisted black-listed forever. He goes to our grocers and persuades them not to give us credit because we refuse to be ground in his human mill. He turns upon us a horde of lawless thugs, who shoot among our wives and children with deadly intent, and then howls for Government Gov-ernment help. Fellow-workmen, Gould must be overthrown, his giant power must be broken or you and I be slaves forever. The Knights of Labor alone dared to be the David to this Goliah. The battle is not for to-day the battle is not for to-morrow but for the trooping generations In the coming ages of the world, for our children and our children's children. It is the great question of the age. Shall we in coming ages be a nation of freemen or a nation of slaves? The question must be decided now. The chains are already forged that are to bind us. Shall we wait until they are riveted upon our limbs? May God forbid. Workmen of the world, marshal yourselves upon the battlefield. Workmen of every trade and clime, on to the fray. Gould and hia monopolies must go down; or your children chil-dren must be slaves. Think of the little olive plants around your hearthstones that will be blighted by his curse. Think of the little home he is seeking to rob you of. Think of the wife from whose eyes he has wrung the flood of tears and from whose heart he has tortured drops of blood. Who can look calmly upon his perfidy, his outrage and his crime? For he has sought to incite felony among our rank and file; he has bought the perfidy of vile men to entrap the unwary that he might stain our fair name and gloat over our misfortunes. Once for all, fellow workmen, arouse! Let every hand that toils be lifted to Heaven and swear by Him that liveth forever that these outrages must cease. Let every heart and brow be turned toward our common foe, and let no man grow weary until, like Goliah, our giant is dead at our feet. (Signed) Executive Boabds. District Assemblies, Nos. 101, 13 and 17. |