The love of justice and
mercy toward the handicraftsman is spreading rapidly as it never did before
in any nation upon earth; and if any man still represents the holders of
property, as a class, as the enemies of those whom they employ, desiring
their slavery and their ignorance, I believe that he is a liar and a child
of the devil, and that he is at his father's old work, slandering and
dividing between man and man. These words may be severe: but they are
deliberate; and working men are, I hope, sufficiently accustomed to hear me
call a spade a spade, when I am pleading for them, to allow me to do the
same when I am pleading to them.
Of the disappointing experiences which I have had I shall say nothing,
save in as far as I can, by alluding to them, point out to the working man
the causes which still keep him weak: but I am bound to say that those
disappointments have strengthened my conviction that this book, in the
main, speaks the truth.
I do not allude, of course, to the thoughts, and feelings of the hero. They
are compounded of right and wrong, and such as I judged (and working men
whom I am proud to number among my friends have assured me that I judged
rightly) that a working man of genius would feel during the course of
his self-education.
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