Yet the workers in the modern world have great qualities. This class in
great masses will continually make sacrifices for the sake of a
principle. They have lived so long in the depths: many of them have
reached the very end of all the pain which is the utmost life can bear
and have in their character that fearlessness which comes from long
endurance and familiarity with the worst hardships. I am a literary
man, a lover of ideas, and I have found few people in my life who would
sacrifice anything for a social principle; but I will never forget the
exultation with which I realized in a great labor trouble, when the
masters of industry issued a document asking men on peril of dismissal
to swear never to join a trades union, that there were thousands of men
in my own city who refused to obey, though they had no membership or
connection with the objectionable association. Nearly all the real
manhood of Dublin I found was among the obscure myriads who are paid
from twenty to thirty shillings a week. The men who will sacrifice
anything for brotherhood get rarer and rarer above that limit of wealth.
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