Page:Labour in Madras.djvu/186

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LABOUR IN MADRAS


the interests and the welfare of the great country to which you belong. I want you to think of that. You have a part in the great coming new life which will express itself in this country in the coming months and the coming years. I want you to realize that and stand up and make your voices heard and your influence felt. Do not think that because you are poor, because you are called illiterate or uneducated, you should allow yourselves to go to a corner and be forgetten by other countrymen of yours who are rich or educated. You have in your hearts, in your minds a power divine which ought to help you towards that realization and enable you to take the right place in the great work of National importance that will be a done in the coming months in this country. I pro mise to do all that I possibly can for the entire Labour movement in this country in England where I am going. But you must help me while I am away by doing all this work by organizing other labour unions, enabling other people to come together, so that by the time I return we will be able to work hand in hand on a greater scale in wider field than we have been able to do in the past. I thank you once again for the address you have presented to me and have thus given me an opportunity of serving your cause in my own humble way. On May 7th, the M. & S. M. Ry. Workshop Union presented an address to Mr. Wadia, text of which will be found in the appendix. In reply Mr. Wadia made the following speech : MY BROTHERS, -I am very glad that you, belong. ing to the M. & S. M. Ry. Workshop, have formed a