Workingmen
Publishing a Paper?
To the Factory Girls
A Singular Medley
Introducing
the Voice
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New Newspaper Head
Servility of the Press
Call for Subscribers
To the Patrons
The Voice Sails On
The Association
Buys The Voice
A Few Advertisements
On The Road
for The Voice
Selling The Voice
to Mill Hands
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Editors and
Honorable Mentions
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The Lowell Offering: Mouthpiece of the Corporations?
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Female Department
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To the Workingmen
Bring out your standard Workingmen,
And give its folds free air;
Now raise it to the loftiest peak,
And boldly nail it there.
Now lift on high each toil worn hand
Invoke each holy Fane;
And swear you’ll never cease to strive
Till man his rights obtain.
Give work to every son of want,
Be hope no more defer’d,
And be the Voice of Industry
On every hill top heard.
Be this our motto evermore,
While Ocean rolls a save,
That glorious Being we adore,
Ne’er made nor own’d a slave.
The Press
The Press! What is the Press! I cried;
When thus a wondrous voice replied;
In me all human knowledge dwells;
The oracle of oracles,
Past, present, future, I reveal,
Or in oblivion silence send;
What I preserve can perish never –
What I forego is lost forever.
I speak all languages – by me
The deaf may hear, the blind may see,
The dumb converse, the dead of old
Communion with the living rule,
All nations learners in my school;
Men of all ages, everywhere,
Become contemporaries there;
What is the Press? ‘Tis what the tongue
Was to the world when Time was young,
When, by tradition, sire to son
Conveyed what’er was known or done;
But fact and fiction so were mixed,
That boundaries never could be fixed.
What is the Press? ‘Tis that which taught,
By hieroglyphic forms of thought,
Lore, from the vulgar proudly hid,
Life treasures in a pyramid;
If our knowledge then was mystery,
A captive under lock and key,
By Priests and Princes held in thrall,
Of little use, or none at all;
Till the redoucted Alphabet
Free their own great deliverer set,
At whose command, by simplest spells,
They work their mental miracles.
A power was wanting in insure
Life to words worthy to endure –
A power the race to multiply
Of intellectual poypi
It cam all hardship to redress,
And Truth and Virtue hailed the Press!
What am I then? I am a power
Years cannot waste, nor flames devour,
I am the mirror of man’s mind,
In whose serene, impassive face,
What cannot die on earth you trace –
Not phantom shapes that come and fly,
But like the concave of the sky,
In which the stars, by night and day,
Seen or unseen, hold on, their way.
Myself withdrawn from mortal sight,
I am invisible as light –
Light which revealing all beside,
Itself within itself can hide;
The things of darkness I make bare,
And, nowhere seen, I’m everywhere.
All that philosophy has sought,
Science discovered, genius wrought;
All that reflective memory stores,
Or rich imagination pours;
All that the writ of man conceives;
All that he wishes, hopes, believes;
All that he loves, or fears, or hates;
All that to earth or heaven relates;
These are the lessons that I teach
By [speading] silence – silent speech.
Ah! who like me can bless or curse?
What can be better, what can be worse,
Than language framed for Paradise,
Or sold to infamy and vice?
Blest be the man by whom I bless;
Accursed be who wrongs the Press,
The reprobate in prose or song,
Who yields the power of right for wrong -
Wrong, to outlast his laurell’d tomb,
And haunt the earth till crack of doom!
—James Montgomery Esq.
Gentle Voice
Impromptu–To the Voice of Industry
Like the sunlight of morning,
That gilds the frail flower,
And bespangles with beauty
The vine trellised bower –
Like the moonbeam of evening,
That laves the blue sea,
And hushes to silence
The sailor’s rough glee; -
Like the music of song,
As it floats o’er the plain,
And wakes to life’s beauties
The crushed heart again; -
Like the whisperings of love,
As they fall on the heart,
And bid all its discords,
And jarrings depart; -
Have thy tones, gentle ‘Voice,’
By the weary been heard;
And the chords that were mute
By thy touch have been stirred.
Thou pleadest for the wronged,
In thy young budding day; -
In the untrodden future,
Oh turn not away!
In thy struggle and weakness,
Thy strength and thy power,
Be thou to the crushed
As the dew to the flower.
Learn pride and oppression
Before thee to quail; -
If the watchword Be “union”,
Thy cause shall not fail.
Voice to Voice
For the Voice of Industry—
An Acrostic
Voice to voice the echo beareth,
Over mountain, hill and plain,
In gentle tones it ever speaketh,
Cheerfully of freedom’s reign –
Even now the day is dawning.
Oppressed sons of honest toil,
Freedom soon shall be your song,
Its notes of life, hope and gladness,
Nearer now are borne along;
Deep and loud let them swell –
Union let the watchword be;
Strife and discord send away,
Trust in God, he’ll set you free –
Rouse then brothers – now to-day;
Ye are Men, then why delay.
—Ada
To The Voice
To the Voice of Industry
Press onward, noble champion!
The People’s Rights proclaim!
As an advocate for the oppressed,
Thou art most justly famed.
Success attend they efforts, -
To raise thy “Voice” ne’er fail,
Till virtue, truth and honesty
O’er capital prevails.
They mighty influence shall be felt
By nations yet unborn;
They cause is just, and must prevail,
Though earth be filled with wrong.
Teach Young Men of America
To beware of the tyrant’s rod;
That they may guard that liberty
Bought by our fathers’ blood.
Speak Out!
For the Voice of Industry
“We will speak out. We will be heard,
Though all the earth’s systems crack;
We will not bate a single word,
Nor take a letter back.
We speak the truth, and what acre we
For hissing and for scorn,
While some faint glimmerings we can see
Of Freedom’s coming morn
Let liars fear, let cowards shrink,
Let traitors turn away;
What we have dared to think,
That dare we also say.”
—James Russell Lowell
