“To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed
is the only dignified thing to do in life.”
—Edwin Markham

Edwin Markham, universally acclaimed as “the Dean of American poetry” and the “Poet Laureate of the People,” beloved by Americans from coast to coast throughout his very long public life, was unequivocal in his convictions: “To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in life.” Markham’s life and work may be summed up in the overview of his dedication and life-long directions: as a poet and a citizen of conscience and conviction, he stood for expression of Eternal Values.

Four days before the turn of the 20^th Century, Markham’s world-renowned poem was published in the San Francisco Examiner, to be immediately hailed as “the battle cry for the next one thousand years.” Challenging as it did the exploitation of labor, the poem exploded instantaneous polarization of opinion.  Those people with sympathetic social conscience rallied to the cause, both in words of approbation and in energized demands for social change.  Those representing the  moguls of industry and attitudes towards labor which Mark-ham’s poem decries, rallied to defense of the status quo. Heated debate raged throughout America.  Every day for six months the Examiner carried a full page of praise and refutation.  The poem, along with intense praise and vehement refutation of its author, traveled to Europe, soon to be translated into twenty, and later into forty, languages.

Of the Millet painting of the man with the hoe, Markham said, “It held my soul, as one is held by some object of menace and terror.  I could not get the picture of that degraded ‘Hoe-Man’ from my mind.  It haunted me like some threat of eternal judgment. …  I immediately jotted down in my notebook the first verse of the poem … and held fast to my purpose to write a poem that should cry the lost rights of the toiling multitude in the abyss of civilization—the multitude helplessly chained to the present, fettered at their narrow field, deprived of the enlarging education of the mind, deprived of the ennobling education of the heart.

“As I studied Millet’s The Man with the Hoe, I realized that I was looking on no mere man of the field: but was looking on a plundered peasant, typifying the millions left over as the debris from the thousand wars of masters and from their long industrial oppressions, extending over the ages.  This Hoe-man might be a stooped consumptive toiler in a New York City sweat-shop; a man with a pick, spending nearly all his days underground in a West Virginia coal mine; a man with a labor-broken body carrying a hod [a long-handled trough or tray for carrying bricks, mortar, coal, and so on] in a London street; a boatman with strained arms and aching back rowing for hours against the heavy current of the Volga.”

National and international response to this poem thrust Edwin Markham into a high-profile public position.  From youth engaged in farm and other manual labor, he struggled for an education. Though early in life dedicating himself to self-education through reading and a deep commitment to becoming a writer, he taught for a living, later earning a position as a superintendent of schools.  Always he had written poetry, much of which was published in various magazines and periodicals.  As well, he was an accomplished and popular public speaker, noted for his outspokenness and unconventional views. Practical and civic-minded, Markham was nevertheless inspired by the mystic and romantic, for example by the works of Byron, Shelley, and Swedenburg.  However, Markham’s deep love of nature, the philosophical and the esoteric were overshadowed throughout his life by his compelling social conscience and his dedication to championing the cause of the oppressed, to the eradication of exploitation of labor in general, and the inhumanity of child labor in particular.  With the demands of public acclaim more and more requiring his presence in the Eastern States, he eventually moved with his wife and young son, Virgil, from his beloved California to New York.

There he enjoyed the friendship and acquaintance of many intellectuals and leaders of the era, becoming untiringly aligned with social issues and the Twilight Club ideals of practical application of the principle of brotherhood of man.  He was honored with prizes, awards, honorary positions and life-long acclaim.  Heard by the 100,000 people present and by three million listening on the radio, he read his poem Lincoln, the Man of the People at the dedication of the Lincoln memorial.  Similarly honored, he read his poem chosen for the induction of Walt Whitman to the Hall of Fame. He toured the nation on speaking engagements, frequently addressing university audiences. Though a friend and co-worker with many of position and leadership, he was very much at home with working people.  He earned the reputation of addressing all people alike.  Labeled “a Christian socialist,” Markham was a vitally energetic public spokesperson for the reaffirmation of personal integrity, human values and the unity of mankind, and as such was for decades universally beloved.  His motto became: “Come, let us live the poetry we sing.”  He considered selfishness a cardinal crime.  Through his person, poetry, prose and oration he passionately demanded social conscience and promoted social justice.

Thus Markham became a compelling voice in the movement for national child labor laws, which, in fact, he lived long enough to see enacted.  Nowhere is the drama and emotional appeal of his writing seen as clearly as in his impassioned expose of the child labor system he abhorred.  Though accused of “exaggeration” by those who opposed child labor laws, his writing rivals Dickens for its appeal to the heart and its effect in arousing readers to action in a moral cause.  Children in Bondage, authored by Markham, Judge Benjamin B. Lindsay and George Creel, is a memorable classic.  “I have chosen,” said Markham, “not to speak the pleasant, but to speak the truth.”  The intensity of his conviction is solidly grounded in ethical principle and compassion.

“To what purpose then, is our ‘age of invention?’  Why these machines at all, if they do not help to lift care from the soul and burden from the back?  To what purpose is ‘age of enlightenment,’ if just to cover our nakedness, we establish among us a barbarism that overshadows the barbarism of the savage cycle?  Is this the wisdom of the wise? … Is this what our orators mean when they jubilate over ‘civilization’ and the progress of the species?” (Children in Bondage, page 41.)

Markham identified the appalling conditions under which thousands of children labored as responsible for  “the breakdown of the Soul,” the children “lured to their ruin by the Pied Piper of Greed.”  “Is this civilization?” he asked.  “Then let civilization perish!  Let the walls of the city crumble; let the ancient deserts return!”

His dramatic prose pictured as criminal the working conditions of children sent to join the labor force, sometimes as young as four or five years of age.  Their treatment at work in mines, textiles mills, glass factories, the tobacco industry and the sweat-shop conditions of garment factories was in opposition to human decency, and a degradation of the soul. “The factory blasts the moral nature, blights the mind of the child, and sows through his body the seeds of disease.  Death always sits on the right hand of mammon.”

Markham’s words were a stirring call to action: “What will ever take the despair and danger out of the lives of the toiling millions?  Nothing but the rise of men and women, resolute and consecrated—men and women sworn to sweep away this system of greed, this devouring of man by man.”

Edwin Markham was much honored and loved throughout America for five decades and more of the 20^th Century. Therefore, it would seem ironic indeed that Louis Filler’s biography of Markham should be titled The Unknown Edwin Markham: His Mystery and Its Significance.  What has transpired in the intervening years since Markham’s death in 1940?  Definitely styles of poetry have changed.  “Markham,” says Filler, “was an unconventional radical writing conventional poetry.”  20^th Century poetry became introspective and experimental in form; poets turned to new causes, as World War II turned attention from the local to the global.  By the time of his death in 1940, the specific changes that Markham championed were seemingly addressed and to a large extent rectified by social legislation, child labor laws included. 

And yet, are these problems solved globally?  The truth is, they are not.  The fact is that globally there are in the world today children living in bondage more degrading and horrific than that which Markham brought to light and legislature.  As global citizens, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that Mark-ham’s cause is not a closed case.  Deplorable problems remain. 

Fortunately, the spirit of Edwin Markham, who envisioned that “the reign of evil is to be supplanted by the reign of good” and that “our globe is destined to become a scene of social Unity, Harmony and Happiness,” is also very much alive in the world today.  In his last years, Markham wrote that “the past is a dead volcano,” and that he was “… done with the years that were.”  Even at eighty, he was not about to dwell on past victories. Were he here today, his passion, compassion, humanity, integrity and social awareness would without doubt compel him to take up globally the causes which informed and formed his action locally in America throughout his long life.

The spirit of Edwin Markham, poet of conscience and cause, inspires yet.  The torch he lighted and nobly carried he has passed on to those who share his vision and understanding that “It is in vain we build the city if we do not first build the man.”

These Words of Mine

References

Poems of Edwin Markham, selected and edited by Charles L. Wallis, Harper & Brothers, New York, copyright Virgil Markham, 1950.

Children in Bondage, Edwin Markham, Benjamin B. Lindsey and George Creel, reprinted in 1969 by Arno Press from a copy in the New York State Library.