Be Contented, Say You?

To be contented under such circumstances would be criminal. And that is not an uncommon case: there are thousands and thousands of cases like that, where our women and children have not the bare necessaries of life to give warmth to their bodies. That is why we are agitators, and why we are working so hard to-day. Right or wrong, praise or blame, good repute or ill repute, gratitude or ingratitude, suffering or no suffering, glory or no glory, we are going on, and this grand old movement is going on, and it is rumbling and reverberating through the earth. You had it here from the Old Country: it has gone back and is re-echoing there. We shall take advantage of your reforms here, and shall improve on the faults you make. That is how the work will go on. We are not fighting for an aristocracy, for the page 24 few, but for mankind, for the enslaved people, for our glorious lands; we are fighting so that we may live that full life intended for us. We shall fight with our faces toward Canaan, and although many of us may not enter the beautiful lands beyond, we will carry our youngsters with us, so that they may see the country further away; and if the road to Canaan be strewed with the lives of our brave men and noble women, every gravestone added shall mark our progress; and if the pathway should continue to be the pathway of suffering, misery, and death, it is worth risking death to get the life for the generations yet to come. (Loud and continuous applause.)