Let us protect our mothers, our wives and our children from the deformity of toil, from the depths of poverty.
Question. Is not the ballot an assurance to the laboring man that he can get fair treatment from his employer?
Answer. The laboring man in this country has the political power, provided he has the intelligence to know it and the intelligence to use it. In so far as laws can assist labor, the workingman has it in his power to pass such laws; but in most foreign lands the laboring man has really no voice. It is enough for him to work and wait and suffer and emigrate. He can take refuge in the grave or go to America.
In the old country, where people have been taught that all blessing come from the king, it is very natural for the poor to believe the other side of that proposition—that is to say, all evils come from the king, from the government. They are rocked in the cradle of this falsehood. So when they come to this country, if they are unfortunate, it is natural for them to blame the Government.
The discussion of these questions, however, has already done great good. The workingman is becoming more and more intelligent. He is getting a better idea every day of the functions and powers and limitations of government, and if the problem is ever worked out— and by "problem" I mean the just and due relations that should exist between labor and capital—it will be worked out here in America.
Question. What assurance has the American laborer that he will not be ultimately swamped by foreign immigration?
Answer. Most of the immigrants that come to American come because they want a home. Nearly every one of them is what you may call "land hungry." In his country, to own a piece of land was to be respectable, almost a nobleman. The owner of a little land was regarded as the founder of a family—what you might call a "village dynasty." When they leave their native shores for America, their dream is to become a land owner—to have fields, to own trees, and to listen to the music of their own brooks.
The moment they arrive the mass of them seek the West, where land can be obtained. The great Northwest now is being filled with Scandinavian farmers, with persons from every part of Germany—in fact from all foreign countries—and every year they are adding millions of acres to the plowed fields of the Republic. This land hunger, this desire to own a home, to have a field, to have flocks and herds, to sit under your own vine and fig tree, will prevent foreign immigration from interfering to any hurtful degree with the skilled workmen of America. These land owners, these farmers, become consumers of manufactured articles. They keep the wheels and spindles turning and the fires in the forges burning.
Question. What do you think of Cleveland's message?
Answer. Only the other day I read a speech made by the Hon. William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, upon this subject, in which he says in answer to what he calls "the puerile absurdity of President Cleveland's assumption" that the duty is always added to the cost, not only of imported commodities, but to the price of like commodities produced in this country, "that the duties imposed by our Government on sugar reduced to ad valorem were never so high as now, and the price of sugar was never in this country so low as it is now." He also showed that this tax on sugar has made it possible for us to produce sugar from other plants and he gives the facts in relation to corn sugar.