And then I think of the strange and winding paths, the weary roads he has traveled from that mother's arms to vagrancy and want.
There should be labor and food for all. We invent; we take advantage of the forces of nature; we enslave the winds and waves; we put shackles upon the unseen powers and chain the energy that wheels the world. These slaves should release from bondage all the children of men.
By invention, by labor—that is to say, by working and thinking—we shall compel prosperity to dwell with us.
Do not imagine that wealth can be created by law; do not for a moment believe that paper can be changed to gold by the fiat of Congress.
Do not preach the heresy that you can keep a promise by making another in its place that is never to be kept. Do not teach the poor that the rich have conspired to trample them into the dust.
Tell the workingmen that they are in the majority; that they can make and execute the laws.
Tell them that since 1873 the employers have suffered about as much as the employed.
Tell them that the people who have the power to make the laws should never resort to violence. Tell them never to envy the successful. Tell the rich to be extravagant and the poor to be economical.
Tell every man to use his best efforts to get him a home. Without a home, without some one to love, life and country are meaningless words. Upon the face of the patriot must have fallen the firelight of home.
Tell the people that they must have honest money, so that when a man has a little laid by for wife and child, it will comfort him even in death; so that he will feel that he leaves something for bread, something that, in some faint degree, will take his place; that he has left the coined toil of his hands to work for the loved when he is dust.