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A Labor Day Greeting
www.ForgottenDelights.com
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Marteleur (Metalworker),
by Constantin-Emile Meunier, 1884; this cast dedicated at Columbia
University, New York, 1914. |
Samuel Rea,
by Adolph A. Weinman, ca. 1910. Just west of the entrance to Penn
Station at 32nd St. and 7th Ave.
Rea was responsible not only for supervising the building of the
magnificent Pennsylvania Station (completed in 1910), but for the
whole project linking the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Jersey City terminal
with Manhattan, which included construction of railroad tubes under
the Hudson under the East River to the sprawling railroad yards in
Sunnyside, Queens. It was one of the most massive engineering projects
of the early twentieth century, matched only by the construction of
Grand Central Terminal
a few blocks away. |
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The Thinker
Back of the beating hammer by which the
steel is wrought,
Back of the workshop's clamor, the seeker may find the thought.
The thought that is ever master of iron and steam and steel,
That rises above disaster and tramples it under heel.
The drudge may fret and tinker, or labor with lusty blows,
But back of him stands the Thinker, the clear-eyed man who knows.
For into each plow or sabre, each piece
and part and whole,
Must go the brains of labor, which gives the work a soul.
Back of the motor's humming, back of the belts that sing,
Back of the hammer's drumming, back of the cranes that swing,
There is the eye which scans them, watching through stress and strain,
There is the mind which plans them--back of the brawn, the brain.
Might of the roaring boiler, force of the
engine's thrust,
Strength of the sweating toiler--greatly in these we trust.
But back of them stands the schemer, the thinker who drives things
through,
Back of the job, the dreamer, who's making the dream come true.
--Berton
Braley
Read more about the Marteleur and
Samuel Rea in Dianne Durante's Forgotten Delights: The Producers,
a celebration of nineteen of
Manhattan’s outdoor sculptures of
explorers,
inventors, engineers, businessmen and workers whose thoughts and efforts
reshaped New York, the United States and the world. For more details or to
purchase a copy, visit
www.ForgottenDelights.com.
Click here to go
to a version of the text in PDF
that can be sent as an attachment.
Photos copyright © 2004
Dianne Durante. You may distribute this greeting to others
as long as the format and content are kept intact.
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