Answer. I am in sympathy with laboring men of all kinds, whether they labor with hand or brain. The Knights of Labor, I believe, do not allow a lawyer to become a member. I am somewhat wider in my sympathies. No men in the world struggle more heroically; no men in the world have suffered more, or carried a heavier cross, or worn a sharper crown of thorns, than those that have produced what we call the literature of our race. So my sympathies extend all the way from hod-carriers to sculptors; from well-diggers to astronomers. If the objects of the laboring men are to improve their condition without injuring others; to have homes and firesides, and wives and children; plenty to eat, good clothes to wear; to develop their minds, to educate their children—in short, to become prosperous and civilized, I sympathize with them, and hope they will succeed. I have not the slightest sympathy with those that wish to accomplish all these objects through brute force. A Nihilist may be forgiven in Russia—may even be praised in Russia; a Socialist may be forgiven in Germany; and certainly a Home-ruler can be pardoned in Ireland, but in the United States there is no place for Anarchist, Socialist or Dynamiter. In this country the political power has been fairly divided. Poverty has just as many votes as wealth. No man can be so poor as not to have a ballot; no man is rich enough to have two; and no man can buy another vote, unless somebody is mean enough and contemptible enough to sell; and if he does sell his vote, he never should complain about the laws or their administration. So the foolish and the wise are on an equality, and the political power of this country is divided so that each man is a sovereign.
Now, the laboring people are largely in the majority in this country. If there are any laws oppressing them, they should have them repealed. I want the laboring people—and by the word "laboring" now, I include only the men that they include by that word—to unite; I want them to show that they have the intelligence to act together, and sense enough to vote for a friend. I want them to convince both the other great parties that they cannot be purchased. This will be an immense step in the right direction.
I have sometimes thought that I should like to see the laboring men in power, so that they would realize how little, after all, can be done by law. All that any man should ask, so far as the Government is concerned, is a fair chance to compete with his neighbors. Personally, I am for the abolition of all special privileges that are not for the general good. My principal hope of the future is the civilization of my race; the development not only of the brain, but of the heart. I believe the time will come when we shall stop raising failures, when we shall know something of the laws governing human beings. I believe the time will come when we shall not produce deformed persons, natural criminals. In other words, I think the world is going to grow better and better. This may not happen to this nation or to what we call our race, but it may happen to some other race, and all that we do in the right direction hastens that day and that race.
Question. Do you think that the old parties are about to die?
Answer. It is very hard to say. The country is not old enough for tables of mortality to have been calculated upon parties. I suppose a party, like anything else, has a period of youth, of manhood and decay. The Democratic party is not dead. Some men grow physically strong as they grow mentally weak. The Democratic party lived out of office, and in disgrace, for twenty-five years, and lived to elect a President. If the Democratic party could live on disgrace for twenty-five years it now looks as though the Republican party, on the memory of its glory and of its wonderful and unparalleled achievements, might manage to creep along for a few years more.
—New York World, October 26, 1886.