Who are the "Working-Men"?

It is not with us as it is in Europe. Here it is dangerous not to call a man a working-man, and as dangerous to call him accidentally the working-man. There are few well-to-do citizens among us who would not claim the title with an "a," and be put out with you should you deny it to them. On the other hand, speak of the Smiths and Browns and Kellys as "the" working-men, and they will have you roundly known that you are an aristocrat! And what a friend wrote me in a letter the other day has much truth; he said, "In England it is sometimes possible to work openly for the benefit of a class; in this country the only method to avoid jealousy and suspicion, and to catch your working-man, is to pretend that you don't care anything about him, but are yearning to do good to bankers and wholesale merchants." But I must run my risk. In speaking of Sunday for "working-men," the men and women that I really mean are those who have no leisure time by sunlight on the week-days; that vast class which, therefore, has no leisure time at all on week-days, save in tired evenings, because the ten or twelve hours daily work goes on from Monday's breakfast until Saturday's supper, and has to go on in that close, constant way to get that breakfast, and that supper, and the others in between. This class includes not only all who page 68 work with hand rather than with head, but very many too of those who work with head rather than with hand, with nerve rather than with muscle; includes day-laborers out of doors, the operatives in the factories, the mechanics in the workshops, the girls in sewing-attics, the clerks in stores and counting-rooms,—all these, at least, in our crowded city life: and on city life my words will chiefly bear. Once more, then,—all workers who, by the necessities of self-support, have no sunlight leisure on the week-days for rest or recreation or education: what should the Sunday do for them ?