Background
Seth Luther was born in 1795 probably in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. His ancestors may have been the Welsh Luthers who settled in Rhode Island about 1650, and founded there the first Baptist church in America.
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( Title: An address on the right of free suffrage : with ...)
Title: An address on the right of free suffrage : with an appendix containing the Rhode-Island Bill of Rights ... Author: Seth Luther Publisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more. Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more. Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ SourceLibrary: Huntington Library DocumentID: SABCP02138000 CollectionID: CTRG96-B3805 PublicationDate: 18330101 SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to America Notes: "Delivered by the request of freeholders and others of the city of Providence, Rhode-Island ..." " ... and the rejected petition, presented in 1829, to the Legislature of Rhode-Island, by nearly 2000 petitioners, including 700 freeholders, who were all denominated vagabonds and renegades by Benjamin Hazard ..." Collation: 25, xvi p. ; 8vo
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Seth Luther was born in 1795 probably in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. His ancestors may have been the Welsh Luthers who settled in Rhode Island about 1650, and founded there the first Baptist church in America.
Luther received limited education.
In 1817 Luther made a trip down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati. His travels took him "in and about 14 of the United States, including a visit to the frontiers of Upper Canada and East Florida". Upon his return from his journeys he went to work as a carpenter, in Providence or Boston, or one of the mill towns that were growing so fast just before 1830. According to his own account, he lived for years "among Cotton mills, worked in them, traveled among them".
He espoused the workingman's cause whole-heartedly. From the West he had brought back the democratic spirit of the frontier, and the class distinctions of New England irritated him. His first pamphlet, An Address to the Working-men of New England, based on speeches in a half-dozen towns and cities, was an attack on the abuses of the factory system. The author cited instances of children who worked twelve to fifteen hours per day and of their physical maltreatment; quoted factory regulations showing paternalistic control exercised by employers, and asserted that "the whole system of labor in New England, more especially in cotton mills, is a cruel system of exaction on the bodies and minds of the producing classes, destroying the energies of both". His conclusion may be questioned, since his temperament was not that of an impartial observer; nevertheless, although political leaders frowned upon the proposals of Luther and his fellow agitators and the newspapers gave them no support, the best educated and the most intelligent element of the community were sympathetic, and in 1842 Massachusetts enacted the first American child-labor law.
In 1833 Luther published An Address on the Right of Free Suffrage, and in 1834 An Address on the Origin and Progress of Avarice. The latter was a denunciation of political and religious as well as economic oppression. At its conclusion the author laid down the following program of reform: Universal equal education by means of manual labor schools supported at the public expense; abolition of all licensed monopolies; abolition of capital punishment and of imprisonment for debt; the entire revision or total abolition of the militia system; a less expensive system for the administration of justice; equal taxation for property; and an effective mechanic's lien law. His deadly sincerity, forceful language, grim humor, and biting sarcasm made his pamphlets valuable weapons in the labor movement.
The General Trades Convention in Boston in 1834 selected him as one of its secretaries and a year later he helped draft a manifesto known as the Boston Circular, in favor of the ten-hour day, which, reprinted in Philadelphia, is said to have inspired a general strike. In 1835 he addressed the National Trades Union Convention upon the condition of women and children in cotton mills. The last mention which has been found of him is a record of his participation in a ten-hour convention in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1846.
Luther was a prominent figure in the labor movement of the 1830s in the United States. He was instrumental in organizing and agitating workers into trade unions in the New England area and played an important part in Rhode Island's Dorr Rebellion of 1842. In 2001, The Rhode Island Heritage Society inducted Luther into its Hall of Fame for his pioneering work in organizing the unions in Rhode Island.
( Title: An address on the right of free suffrage : with ...)
Luther was a staunch advocate of American labor reforms and he ardently opposed the child labor in the cotton mills.
Quotations:
"I had no advantages but those of a common school, and that of a far inferior kind to those of the present day. . I am indebted for what little I do know to newspapers and books, and to a constant habit of observation. "
"You cannot raise one part of the community above another unless you stand on the bodies of the poor. "
