A SIX HOUR LAW. 255 



causing competition that reduces wages, or in any 

 other manner injuriously affects labor, the hours of 

 work, throughout the country, may be so shortened as 

 to bring all into regular and constant employment. 



In the economy of life the necessity to labor grows 

 out of the fact that man must work that he may live. 

 Though nature, in its munificence, provides in the 

 greatest fulness for the sustenance of all brute animal 

 life, man is alone required to provide for himself. The 

 earth is given to him that he may subdue it. It pro- 

 duces abundantly of grass, weeds, thorns, thistles, and 

 wild fruits, well adapted to furnish food for the lower 

 animals, but not for man. He must subdue the weeds, 

 extirpate the thorns and the thistles that he may sow 

 the seed and grow the grain that gives him bread. 



Nature, from the storehouse of its providence, fitly 

 and abundantly clothes all animal life, except man, 

 with the raiment adapted to its requirements, locali- 

 ties, and seasons. But man is born into the world 

 naked, and so remains if he does not clothe himself. 

 He must grow or gather the wool, the flax, the grass, 

 the cotton, the silk, the bark, the skins, the furs, the 

 feathers, and whatever else may be used, and work 

 and fashion the whole into material fit for garments, 

 and make the same into the clothing that shall cover 

 his body. 



The Divine Master declared that the foxes have 

 holes, and the birds have nests, but that the Son of 

 Man hath not where to lay His head. A literal truth 

 that describes the condition of the whole human fam- 

 ily, except where the members thereof, through the 



