6

Feb. 1888.

Monday 13^th Two weeks since my last
entry. The time has passed along quietly
with me- one day being much like another.
The weather has continued severe, with
several additions to our snow so that it
is now quite deep. This morning the sun
shines out cheerily, & the eaves are dropping
freely which has not been the case before
for some weeks. Almost up to the present
time our papers have been full of ac-
counts of blizzards & severe weather & dis-
asters on the sea & land with much
damage to life & property. In old times
it would have been said the judgments
of God were heavy upon our people in
almost all parts of our land. And to
gether with these calamities we have, &
are likely to have, trying times on account
of the wide-spread alienation & conflict be-
tween capital & labor, or rather between Em-
ployers & Employees. This evil has been felt
very directly of late in connection with the
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Robert Crawford was a Congregationalist minister at the "Orthodox Society" in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The society had been formed in the 1830s in response to liberal trends in the Congregationalist church. Crawford was born in Scotland and migrated to Canada, where he worked as a canal worker. His experiences as a working man may be reflected in his diary. Although Crawford viewed the world through the eyes of a conservative believer in tradition, he seems sympathetic to the plight of the worker. Here he comments on the "conflict between capital and labor," perhaps a reference to the recent violence in Chicago known as the "Haymarket riot."

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