I greet most affectionately these comrades of the war who are before me to-day. Let them abide in honor in all your communities. Let shafts of marble and bronze lift themselves in all your towns to tell the story of patriots' work well done and to teach the generations that are to come how worthy their fathers were. Let us preserve all these inspiring lessons of history, all these individual examples of heroism, of which Vermont furnished so many during the war. Let them not be forgotten. Let them be the illuminated and inspiring pages of your State's history, and then, whatever shock may come to us in the future, whenever the hand of anarchy or disorder shall be raised, whenever foreign powers shall seek to invade the rights or liberties of this great people, there will be found again an impenetrable bulwark in the brave hearts of a sturdy and patriotic people. [Applause.] You will, I am sure, crown your kindness by excusing me from attempting further speech and allowing me to express, as I part from you, my good wishes for Vermont and all her good people. [Applause.]
[PROCTOR, VERMONT, AUGUST 28.]
On the return to Proctor in the evening the President was tendered the final reception of his trip to Vermont. The village was elaborately decorated; an illuminated evergreen arch spanned the entrance to Secretary Proctor's beautiful grounds. The residences and grounds of E. R. Morse, F. D. Proctor, B. F. Taylor, W. E. Higbee, G. H. Davis, E. J. Boyce, J. H. Edson, and H. E. Spencer were also brilliantly illuminated. From a platform fronting the Secretary's home the party reviewed the procession of 1,000 workmen from the marble quarries.
Secretary Proctor, in an affectionate address, introduced President Harrison, who spoke as follows:
It is not my privilege to call you neighbors, but I am sure I may call you friends. This journey in Vermont is crowned to-night by a reception and a good-by that is surpassingly brilliant and artistic in its preparation and one that I have never seen exceeded. But above all this, I have been able here in Proctor to witness in its best manifestation that which I have seen elsewhere in New England and especially in Vermont—a community of workers, men industriously pursuing mechanical avocations and doing it under conditions of the greatest possible comfort. As I look upon these homes in which you dwell and contrast them with the wretchedness of the crowded tenement-houses of our great cities; as I inhale to-night the bracing air of these mountains, and as my eye has looked to-day upon their green summits, I have said how happy is the lot of that man and that woman who work in one of these bright, wholesome New England villages. [Applause.] It has seemed to me that the relation of our mutual friend who has inaugurated and developed these works in which many of you find employment was that of a public benefactor and a personal friend. [Applause.] The simplicity and naturalness of his own life among you, his ready appreciation of the loyalty and intelligence of those who are employed by him, his interest in their success in life, is the ideal relation between the employer and his workmen. [Applause.] I would to God it was always and everywhere so, that when a man is put at a machine he should not be regarded by his employer as a part of it, that the human nature, the aspirations of a man, should still be recognized, and the relations with the employer be that of mutual confidence and helpfulness and respect! [Applause.]
You are sharers in the responsibilities of local government, of the government of your State and of the Nation, of which Vermont is one of the honored members. I am sure that you have pride in the faithful discharge of all these duties. I cannot but feel that our national policy should be in the direction of saving our working people from that condition of hopelessness which comes when wages are barely adequate to the sustenance of animal life. [Applause.] There is no hope for any community where this state of things exists, and there will be no hope for the Nation should it become the general condition of the workingmen of America. That man or woman out of whose heart hope has gone, who sees nothing better in life, before whom the vista of life stretches in one dead level of unending and half-requited toil, that man's estate is calculated to make him reckless in character. It is one of the beneficent conditions of citizenship here that there are no disabilities put in the way of ambitions and the aspiring. I hope it may always be so. I cannot always sympathize with that demand which we hear so frequently for cheap things. Things may be too cheap. They are too cheap when the man who produces them upon the farm or the man or woman who produces them in the factory does not get out of them living wages with a margin for old age and for a dowry for the incidents that are to follow. [Applause.] I pity that man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment shall starve in the process. [Applause.]
I am most profoundly grateful to you, my fellow-citizens, and to my good friend Governor Proctor, for this beautiful demonstration—this magnificent rural welcome which we have had here to-day. It will live always in my memory. I shall carry this community in my thoughts as one of the best types of American neighborhood life. I have found in him a most valuable contribution to the administration of the Government at Washington. [Applause.] You cannot know fully how he has grown into the respect and confidence of all who have been associated with him in the Cabinet and of all our legislators in Congress without distinction of party. I regret that there is some danger that you may reclaim him for Vermont [applause]; yet it is quite natural that it should be so, and I shall do the best I can to get a substitute. The labors of public office at Washington are full of high responsibility and most burdensome toil. No man is endowed with an incapacity to make mistakes. We can, however, all of us, in public or private trust, be sure of our motives. These are our own. We can know whether we are pursuing low and selfish ends or have set before us the general good, the highest good of all our people. Judgment upon what has been done is with you. I am sure only that I have had it in my heart to do that which should in the highest degree promote the prosperity of our people and lift the glorious flag yet higher in the esteem of the world. [Great applause.] We have been endeavoring to open a foreign market for American trade. If these efforts are met, as I trust they will be, by enterprise on the part of our merchants and manufacturers, I do not doubt that the next ten years will see a most gratifying increase in our foreign trade. [Applause.] They should diligently set themselves to the study of the new markets into which their goods may now go. The most intelligent representatives should be sent there, and their goods adapted to the market that is to be supplied. This I have no doubt they will do, and I add the expectation that we shall presently have a most gratifying increase in the American merchant marine. [Applause.]