HANDS

THAT’S A PRETTY SHAPE of nail polish, Marge…. Oh, don’t belittle your hands, child—I think they are lovely. Yes, I know you get tired of being a house servant…. Yes, you should have every right to be as much as you can be. But when you come to think of it, everyone who works is a servant. Why, we couldn’t live without the hands and minds of millions of people.

Now you just look at anything in the room or in this apartment and try to point out something that working people didn’t have their hands in…. Well, you can stutter and stammer all you please, ’cause you can’t name a solitary thing, be it cheap or expensive.

Take that chair you’re sittin’ on…. Can’t you see the story behind it? The men in the forests sawin’ down the trees … the log rollers … the lumber-mill hands cuttin’ up the planks … people mixin’ up varnishes and paints … the artists drawin’ the designs … all the folks drivin’ trains and trucks to carry ’em … the loaders liftin’ them off and on … all the clerks writin’ down how many there are and where they’re goin’—and I bet that’s not half of the story.

Now Marge, you can take any article and trace it back like that and you’ll see the power and beauty of laboring hands.

This tablecloth began in some cotton field tended in the burning sun, cleaned and baled, spun and bleached, dyed and woven. Find the story, Marge, behind the lettuce and tomato sandwich, your pots and pans, the linoleum on the floor, your dishes, the bottle of nail polish, your stove, the electric light, books, cigarettes, boxes, the floor we’re standin’ on, this brick building, the concrete sidewalks, the aeroplanes overhead, automobiles, the miles of pipe running under the ground, that mirror on the wall, your clock, the canned goods on your shelf, and the shelf itself. Why, you could just go on through all the rest of time singin’ the praises of hands.

So you can see we are all servants and got a lot in common … and that’s why folks need unions. Well, for example, Marge, suppose all you had was money and you wanted to make some more money…. Oh hush, girl! I know you wouldn’t, but let’s suppose…. Well, you’d hire ten people without any money who knew how to make tablecloths … and you’d sell them for four hundred dollars and pay the folks who made them one hundred of that…. Marge, I didn’t say you would do that…. I’m only pretendin’…. Well, never fear, honey, we would form a union and tell you we wouldn’t sew any more for you until you paid us fair … and then you’d either do that or make nothin’!

Now, contrary to some opinion, I contend that healthy folks love to work, but “a servant is worthy of his hire” … and they want decent pay and clean places to work where they won’t be burnt up in no fire trap building, they want a little time to rest and enough pay to buy and enjoy some of the wonderful things they have made.

Yes, indeed, girl—I do get so tired of hearin’ folks say, “I’m just an ordinary workin’ man.” Why, workin’ people are the grandest folks in the whole wide world. They set the steamships on the ocean and the lighthouse on the land, they give us our breakfast coffee and a roof over our heads at night…. That’s right, Marge, when workin’ folks get together it should be with the highest respect for one another because it is the work of their hands that keeps the world alive and kickin’.

Oh, Marge, what do you mean “you guess they’re right nice.” … I told you before … YOU HAVE BEAUTIFUL HANDS!