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[175] Charles Lamb said, “never brought up; they were dragged up.” They never had any fair chance; they were starved in body and mind. It is like a chain weak in one link; the moment temptation came, it went over. Now, just so long as you hold two thirds of this nation on a narrow, superficial line, you feed the criminal classes.

Any man that wants to grapple with the Labor Question must know how you will secure a fair division of production. No man answers that question.

I hail the Labor movement for two reasons; and one is, that it is my only hope for democracy. At the time of the Antislavery agitation, I was not sure whether we should come out of the struggle with one republic or two; but republics 1 knew we should still be. I am not so confident, indeed, that we shall come out of this storm as a republic, unless the Labor movement succeeds. Take a power like the Pennsylvania Central Railroad and the New York Central Railroad, and there is no legislative independence that can exist in its sight. As well expect a green vine to flourish in a dark cellar as to expect honesty to exist under the shadow of those upastrees. Unless there is a power in your movement, industrially and politically, the last knell of democratic liberty in this Union is struck; for as I said, there is no power in one State to resist such a giant as the Pennsylvania road. We have thirty-eight one-horse legislatures in this country; and we have got a man like Tom Scott, with three hundred and fifty million dollars in his hands; and, if he walks through the States, they have no power. Why, he need not move at all. If he smokes, as Grant does, a puff of the waste smoke out of his mouth upsets the legislature.

Now, there is nothing but the rallying of men against money that can contest with that power. Rally industrially

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