3. But again I congratulate you, because your lot is cast in America. Do not smile at this. I am not on the point of flying the American eagle, nor of raising the stars and stripes. It is, however, a good thing to have been born in this country. For in all important respects it is the most favored of all lands. It is the fashion with certain people to disparage our government and its institutions; and one must admit that in some particulars there might be improvement, and will be some day; but, notwithstanding these defects, it is unquestionably true that it is the best government on earth. Is there any country where a poor young man has opportunities as good as he has here, to get on in life? Is there any obstacle or hindrance whatever, outside of himself, in the way of his success? If a young man has good health of mind and body, and a fair English education and good manners, and will be honest and industrious, is he not much more certain to attain success, in one way or another, in this country than anywhere else? You know he is. Why? Because of our equal rights under the law. There is no caste here, that curse of monarchies. There is no aristocracy in sentiment or in power, no House of Lords, no established church, no law of primogeniture. One man is as good as another under the law as long as he behaves himself.
If you want further evidence, only look for a moment at the condition of the seething, surging masses of Europe, and the continual apprehensions of a general war. Before this year 1885 has run its course the United States may be almost the only country among the great powers that is not involved in war.
And if still further illustration were needed, let me point to that most extraordinary scene enacted in Washington some weeks ago.
A great political party, which has held control of this government nearly a quarter of a century, and which has exercised almost unlimited power, yields most quietly and gracefully all high places, all dignity, all honor and patronage, to the will of the people who have chosen a new administration. And everybody regards it as a matter of course.
Was such a thing ever known before? And could such a thing occur anywhere else among the nations?
Once more, I congratulate you because you live in Philadelphia. Ah, now we come to a most interesting point. Most of you were born here, and you come to this by inheritance. This is the best of all large cities. More to be desired as a place to live in than Washington, the seat of government, the most beautiful of all American cities, or New York, with its vast commerce and enormous wealth, or Boston, with its boasted intellectual society.
They may call us the “Quaker City,” or the “worst paved city,” or the “slow city,” or the “city of rows of houses exactly alike;” but these houses are the homes of separate families, and in a very large degree are occupied by their owners, and you cannot say as much of any other city in the world. Although there are doubtless many instances in the oldest part of the city, and among the improvident poor, where more than one family will be found in the same house, yet these are the exceptions and not the rule; and so far as I know there is not one “tenement house” in this great city that was built for the purpose of accommodating several families at the same time. I need not point you to New York and Boston, where the great apartment houses, with their twelve and fourteen stories of flats for rich and well-to-do people prevail, utterly destroying that most cherished domestic life of which we have been so proud, and introducing the life of European cities, with its demoralizing associations and results; nor shall I describe the awful tenement houses in those two cities, where the poor are crowded like animals in a cattle-train, suffering as the poor dumb creatures do, for want of air, and water, and space, and everything else that makes life desirable.
Of all cities on the face of the earth, Philadelphia is the most desirable for the young man who must make his own way in the world....
And having shown you how favorable are the conditions which are about you, the next point is, What will you do when you set out for yourselves?
All of you are expecting when you leave school to be employed by somebody, or engaged in some business. And I suppose you may be looking to me to give you some hints how to take care of yourselves, or how to behave in such relations.