John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[101] carpenters occurred, and Dana, notwithstanding his own recent strike for a higher salary, at once recorded himself against it as a measure “which could be of no permanent value.” True to his convictions, he pointed out, then and frequently afterwards, that the remedy for such injustice as existed should be looked for in “association,” or “cooperative carpentering,” but he failed to indicate the essential difference between his plan and that of the strikers. It doubtless lay in his belief that it was then and always the inherent right of every carpenter to stay out of the association, or to join it, just as he pleased, without coercion or any other infringement of his personal liberty or restraint upon his perfect freedom of action. Be this as it may, it will be seen as we proceed that this is the fundamental principle upon which Dana always acted to the close of his life, whether the strike was against himself or against others.

About the same time, although strongly in favor of temperance in the use of intoxicating liquors, he took ground against absolute prohibition, and suggested instead such a tax upon the liquor-sellers as would reimburse the public for all the loss it might sustain from the traffic. While this cannot be claimed as a suggestion of the modern high license, as it has come to be applied in many States and communities, it evidently contains the germ of that measure, and is noticeable as one of the best as well as earliest solutions of a question which remains open to the present day.

As might have been supposed, the discussions of the slavery question led to much excitement, and occasionally to disturbances in the Northern States, where slavery had many apologists. It was no uncommon thing for ignorant and intolerant partisans to interfere with antislavery meetings, especially where the speakers were orators of such prominence as Garrison, Phillips, and Lovejoy. Frederick