Hard Times and the Way Out
Boston, October 20, 1878.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1878)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 9.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/hard-times-and-the-way-out/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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• Boston, October 20, 1878.

LADIES and Gentlemen:—The lovers of the human race, the
philanthropists, the dreamers of grand dreams, all predicted and all
believed that when man should have the right to govern himself, when
every human being should be equal before the law, pauperism, crime, and
want would exist only in the history of the past. They accounted
for misery in their time by the rapacity of kings and the cruelty of
priests. Here, in the United States, man at last is free. Here, man
makes the laws, and all have an equal voice. The rich cannot oppress the
poor, because the poor are in a majority. The laboring men, those who
in some way work for their living, can elect every Congressman and every
judge; they can make and interpret the laws, and if labor is oppressed
in the United States by capital, labor has simply itself to blame.
The cry is now raised that capital in some mysterious way oppresses
industry; that the capitalist is the enemy of the man who labors. What
is a capitalist? Every man who has good health; every man with good
sense; every one who has had his dinner, and has enough left for supper,
is, to that extent, a capitalist. Every man with a good character, who
has the credit to borrow a dollar or to buy a meal, is a capitalist; and
nine out of ten of the great capitalists in the United States are simply
successful workingmen. There is no conflict, and can be no conflict, in
the United States between capital and labor; and the men who endeavor
to excite the envy of the unfortunate and the malice of the poor are the
enemies of law and order.

As a rule, wealth is the result of industry, economy, attention
to business; and as a rule, poverty is the result of idleness,
extravagance, and inattention to business, though to these rules there
are thousands of exceptions. The man who has wasted his time, who has
thrown away his opportunities, is apt to envy the man who has not. For
instance, there are six shoemakers working in one shop. One of them
attends to his business. You can hear the music of his hammer late and
early. He is in love with some girl on the next street. He has made up
his mind to be a man; to succeed; to make somebody else happy; to have
a home; and while he is working, in his imagination he can see his own
fireside, with the firelight falling upon the faces of wife and child.
The other five gentlemen work as little as they can, spend Sunday in
dissipation, have the headache Monday, and, as a result, never advance.
The industrious one, the one in love, gains the confidence of his
employer, and in a little while he cuts out work for the others. The
first thing you know he has a shop of his own, the next a store; because
the man of reputation, the man of character, the man of known integrity,
can buy all he wishes in the United States upon a credit. The next thing
you know he is married, and he has built him a house, and he is happy,
and his dream has been realized. After awhile the same five shoemakers,
having pursued the old course, stand on the corner some Sunday when he
rides by. He has a carriage, his wife sits by his side, her face covered
with smiles, and they have two children, their eyes beaming with joy,
and the blue ribbons are fluttering in the wind. And thereupon, these
five shoemakers adjourn to some neighboring saloon and pass a resolution
that there is an irrepressible conflict between capital and labor.

There is, in fact, no such conflict, and the laboring men of the United
States have the power to protect themselves. In the ballot-box the
vote of Lazarus is on an equality with the vote of Dives; the vote of
a wandering pauper counts the same as that of a millionaire. In a land
where the poor, where the laboring men have the right and have the power
to make the laws, and do, in fact, make the laws, certainly there should
be no complaint. In our country the people hold the power, and if any
corporation in any State is devouring the substance of the people,
every State has retained the power of eminent domain, under which it
can confiscate the property and franchise of any corporation by
simply paying to that corporation what such property is worth. And yet
thousands of people are talking as though the rich combined for the
express purpose of destroying the poor, are talking as though there
existed a widespread conspiracy against industry, against honest toil;
and thousands and thousands of speeches have been made and numberless
articles have been written to fill the breasts of the unfortunate with
hatred.

We have passed through a period of wonderful and unprecedented
inflation. For years we enjoyed the luxury of going into debt, the
felicity of living upon credit. We have in the United States about
eighty thousand miles of railway, more than enough to make a treble
track around the globe. Most of these miles were built in a period of
twenty-five years, and at a cost of at least five thousand millions
of dollars. Think of the ore that had to be dug, of the iron that was
melted; think of the thousands employed in cutting bridge timber and
ties, and giving to the wintry air the music of the axe; think of the
thousands and thousands employed in making cars, in making locomotives,
those horses of progress with nerves of steel and breath of flame; think
of the thousands and thousands of workers in brass and steel and iron;
think of the numberless industries that thrived in the construction
of eighty thousand miles of railway, of the streams bridged, of the
mountains tunneled, of the plains crossed; and think of the towns and
cities that sprang up, as if by magic, along these highways of iron.

During the same time we had a war in which we expended thousands of
millions of dollars, not to create, not to construct, but to destroy.
All this money was spent in the work of demolition, and every shot and
every shell and every musket and every cannon was used to destroy. All
the time of every soldier was lost. An amount of property inconceivable
was destroyed, and some of the best and bravest were sacrificed. During
these years the productive power of the North was strained to the
utmost; every wheel was in motion; there was employment for every kind
and description of labor, and for every mechanic. There was a constantly
rising market—speculation was rife, and it seemed almost impossible
to lose. As a consequence, the men who had been toiling upon the farm
became tired. It was too slow a way to get rich. They heard of their
neighbor, of their brother, who had gone to the city and had suddenly
become a millionaire. They became tired with the slow methods of
agriculture. The young men of intelligence, of vim, of nerve became
disgusted with the farms. On every hand fortunes were being made. A
wave of wealth swept over the United States; huts became houses; houses
became palaces with carpeted floors and pictured walls; tatters became
garments; rags became robes; and for the first time in the history of
the world, the poor tasted of the luxuries of wealth. We wondered how
our fathers could have endured their poor and barren lives.

Every business was pressed to the snow line. Old life insurance
associations had been successful; new ones sprang up on every hand.
The agents filled every town. These agents were given a portion of the
premium. You could hardly go out of your house without being told of the
uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. You were shown pictures
of life insurance agents emptying vast bags of gold at the feet of a
disconsolate widow. You saw in imagination your own fatherless children
wiping away the tears of grief and smiling with joy.

These agents insured everybody and everything. They would have insured a
hospital or consumption in its last hemorrhage.

Fire insurance was managed in precisely the same way. The agents
received a part of the premium, and they insured anything and
everything, no matter what its danger might be. They would have insured
powder in perdition, or icebergs under the torrid zone with the same
alacrity. And then there were accident companies, and you could not
go to the station to buy your ticket without being shown a picture of
disaster. You would see there four horses running away with a stage, and
old ladies and children being thrown out; you would see a steamer being
blown up on the Mississippi, legs one way and arms the other, heads
one side and hats the other; locomotives going through bridges, good
Samaritans carrying off the wounded on stretchers.

The merchants, too, were not satisfied to do business in the old way. It
was too slow; they could not wait for customers. They filled the country
with drummers, and these drummers convinced all the country merchants
that they needed about twice as many goods as they could possibly sell,
and they took their notes on sixty and ninety days, and renewed them
whenever desired, provided the parties renewing the notes would take
more goods. And these country merchants pressed the goods upon their
customers in the same manner. Everybody was selling, everybody was
buying, and nearly all was done upon a credit. No one believed the day
of settlement ever would or ever could come. Towns must continue to
grow, and in the imagination of speculators there were hundreds of
cities numbering their millions of inhabitants. Land, miles and miles
from the city, was laid out in blocks and squares and parks; land that
will not be occupied for residences probably for hundreds of years to
come, and these lots were sold, not by the acre, not by the square
mile, but by so much per foot. They were sold on credit, with a partial
payment down and the balance secured by a mortgage.

These values, of course, existed simply in the imagination; and a deed
of trust upon a cloud or a mortgage upon a last year's fog would have
been just as valuable. Everybody advertised, and those who were not
selling goods and real estate were in the medicine line, and every rock
beneath our flag was covered with advice to the unfortunate; and I have
often thought that if some sincere Christian had made a pilgrimage
to Sinai and climbed its venerable crags, and in a moment of devotion
dropped upon his knees and raised his eyes toward heaven, the first
thing that would have met his astonished gaze would in all probability
have been:
    "St. 1860 X Plantation Bitters."

Suddenly there came a crash. Jay Cooke failed, and I have heard
thousands of men account for the subsequent hard times from the fact
that Cooke did fail. As well might you account for the smallpox by
saying that the first pustule was the cause of the disease. The failure
of Jay Cooke & Co. was simply a symptom of a disease universal.

No language can describe the agonies that have been endured since 1873.
No language can tell the sufferings of the men that have wandered over
the dreary and desolate desert of bankruptcy. Thousands and thousands
supposed that they had enough, enough for their declining years,
enough for wife and children, and suddenly found themselves paupers and
vagrants.

During all these years the bankruptcy law was in force, and whoever
failed to keep his promise had simply to take the benefit of this law.
As a consequence, there could be no real, solid foundation for business.
Property commenced to decline; that is to say, it commenced to resume;
that is to say, it began to be rated at its real instead of at its
speculative value.

Land is worth what it will produce, and no more. It may have speculative
value, and, if the prophecy is fulfilled, the man who buys it may become
rich, and if the prophecy is not fulfilled, then the land is simply
worth what it will produce. Lots worth from five to ten thousand dollars
apiece suddenly vanished into farms worth twenty-five dollars per acre.
These lots resumed. The farms that before that time had been considered
worth one hundred dollars per acre, and are now worth twenty or thirty,
have simply resumed. Magnificent residences supposed to be worth one
hundred thousand dollars, that can now be purchased for twenty-five
thousand, they have simply resumed. The property in the United States
has not fallen in value, but its real value has been ascertained. The
land will produce as much as it ever would, and is as valuable to-day
as it ever was; and every improvement, every invention that adds to the
productiveness of the soil or to the facilities for getting that product
to market, adds to the wealth of the nation.

As a matter of fact, the property kept pace with what we were pleased to
call our money. As the money depreciated, property appreciated; as the
money appreciated, property depreciated. The moment property began to
fall speculation ceased. There is but little speculation upon a falling
market. The stocks and bonds, based simply upon ideas, became worthless,
the collaterals became dust and ashes.

At the close of the war, when the Government ceased to be such a vast
purchaser and consumer, many of the factories had to stop. When the
crash came the men stopped digging ore; they stopped felling the forest;
the fires died out in the furnaces; the men who had stood in the glare
of the forge were in the gloom of want. There was no employment for
them. The employer could not sell his product; business stood still,
and then came what we call the hard times. Our wealth was a delusion and
illusion, and we simply came back to reality. Too many men were doing
nothing, too many men were traders, brokers, speculators. There were not
enough producers of the things needed; there were too many producers of
the things no one wished. There needed to be a re-distribution of men.

Many remedies have been proposed, and chief among these is the remedy
of fiat money. Probably no subject in the world is less generally
understood than that of money. So many false definitions have been
given, so many strange, conflicting theories have been advanced, that
it is not at all surprising that men have come to imagine that money
is something that can be created by law. The definitions given by the
hard-money men themselves have been used as arguments by those who
believe in the power of Congress to create wealth. We are told that gold
is an instrumentality or a device to facilitate exchanges. We are told
that gold is a measure of value. Let us examine these definitions.

"Gold is an instrumentality or device to facilitate exchanges."

That sounds well, but I do not believe it. Gold and silver
are commodities. They are the products of labor. They are not
instrumentalities; they are not devices to facilitate exchanges; they
are the things exchanged for something else; and other things are
exchanged for them. The only device about it to facilitate exchanges is
the coining of these metals. Whenever the Government or any government
certifies that in a certain piece of gold or silver there are a certain
number of grains of a certain fineness, then he who gives it knows that
he is not giving too much, and he who receives, that he is receiving
enough, so that I will change the definition to this:

The coining of the precious metals is a device to facilitate
exchanges.

The precious metals themselves are property; they are merchandise; they
are commodities, and whenever one commodity is exchanged for another it
is barter, and gold is the last refinement of barter.

The second definition is:

"Gold is the measure of value."

We are told by those who believe in fiat money that gold is a measure of
value just the same as a half bushel or a yardstick.

I deny that gold is a measure of value. The yardstick is not a measure
of value; it is simply a measure of quantity. It measures cloth worth
fifty dollars a yard precisely as it does calico worth four cents. It
is, therefore, not a measure of value, but of quantities. The same with
the half bushel. The half bushel measures wheat precisely the same,
whether that wheat is worth three dollars or one dollar. It simply
measures quantity; not quality, or value. The yardstick, the half
bushel, and the coining of money are all devices to facilitate
exchanges. The yardstick assures the man who sells that he has not sold
too much; it assures the man who buys that he has received enough; and
in that way it facilitates exchanges. The coining of money facilitates
exchange, for the reason that were it not coined, each man who did any
business would have to carry a pair of scales and be a chemist.

It matters not whether the yardstick or half bushel are of gold, silver,
or wood, for the reason that the yardstick and half bushel are not the
things bought. We buy not them, but the things they measure.

If gold and silver are not the measure of value, what is? I
answer—intelligent labor. Gold gets its value from labor. Of course, I
cannot account for the fact that mankind have a certain fancy for gold
or for diamonds, neither can I account for the fact that we like certain
things better than others to eat. These are simply facts in nature, and
they are facts, whether they can be explained or not. The dollar in gold
represents, on the average, the labor that it took to dig and mint it,
together with all the time of the men who looked for it without finding
it. That dollar in gold, on the average, will buy the product of the
same amount of labor in any other direction.

Nothing ever has been money, from the most barbarous to the most
civilized times, unless it was a product of nature, and a something to
which the people among whom it passed as money attached a certain value,
a value not dependent upon law, not dependent upon "fiat" in any degree.

Nothing has ever been considered money that man could produce.

A bank bill is not money, neither is a check nor a draft. These are all
devices simply to facilitate business, but in or of themselves they have
no value.

We are told, however, that the Government can create money. This I deny.
The Government produces nothing; it raises no wheat, no corn; it digs no
gold, no silver. It is not a producer, it is a consumer.

The Government cannot by law create wealth. And right here I wish to
ask one question, and I would like to have it answered some time. If
the Government can make money, if it can create money, if by putting
its sovereignty upon a piece of paper it can create absolute money, why
should the Government collect taxes? We have in every district
assessors and collectors; we have at every port customhouses, and we are
collecting taxes day and night for the support of this Government. Now,
if the Government can make money itself, why should it collect taxes
from the poor? Here is a man cultivating a farm—he is working among the
stones and roots, and digging day and night; why should the Government
go to that man and make him pay twenty or thirty or forty dollars taxes
when the Government, according to the theory of these gentlemen, could
make a thousand-dollar fiat bill quicker than that man could wink? Why
impose upon industry in that manner? Why should the sun borrow a candle?

And if the Government can create money, how much should it create, and
if it should create it who will get it? Money has a great liking for
money. A single dollar in the pocket of a poor man is lonesome; it never
is satisfied until it has found its companions. Money gravitates towards
money, and issue as much as you may, as much as you will, the time will
come when that money will be in the hands of the industrious, in the
hands of the economical, in the hands of the shrewd, in the hands of the
cunning; in other words, in the hands of the successful.

The other day I had a conversation with one of the principal gentlemen
upon that side, and I told him, "Whenever you can successfully palm off
on a man a bill of fare for a dinner, I shall believe in your doctrine;
and when I can satisfy the pangs of hunger by reading a cook-book, I
shall join your party." Only that is money which stands for labor. Only
that is money which will buy, on the average, in all other directions
the result of the same labor expended in its production. As a matter
of fact, there is money enough in the country to transact the business.
Never before in the history of our Government was money so cheap; that
is to say, was interest so low; never. There is plenty of money, and we
could borrow all we wished had we the collaterals. We could borrow
all we wish if there was some business in which we could embark that
promised a sure and reasonable return. If we should come to a man who
kept a ferry, and find his boat on a sandbar and the river dry, what
would he think of us should we tell him he had not enough boat? He would
probably reply that he had plenty of boat, but not enough water. We have
plenty of money, but not enough business. The reason we have not enough
business is, we have not enough confidence, and the reason we have not
confidence is because the market is slowly falling, and the reason it is
slowly falling is that things have not yet quite resumed; that we have
not quite touched the absolute bedrock of valuation. Another reason is
because those that left the cultivation of the soil have not yet all
returned, and they are living, some upon their wits, some upon their
relatives, some upon charity, and some upon crime.

The next question is: Suppose the Government should issue a thousand
millions of fiat money, how would it regulate the value thereof? Every
creditor could be forced to take it, but nobody else. If a man was in
debt one dollar for a bushel of wheat, he could compel the creditor to
take the fiat money; but if he wished to buy the wheat, then the owner
could say, "I will take one dollar in gold or fifty dollars in fiat
money, or I will not sell it for fiat money at any price." What will
Congress do then? In order to make this fiat money good it will have to
fix the price of every conceivable commodity; the price of painting
a picture, of trying a lawsuit, of chiseling a statue, the price of a
day's work; in short, the price of every conceivable thing. This even
will not be sufficient. It will be necessary, then, to provide by
law that the prices fixed shall be received, and that no man shall be
allowed to give more for anything than the price fixed by Congress.
Now, I do not believe that any Congress has sufficient wisdom to tell
beforehand what will be the relative value of all the products of labor.

When the volume of currency is inflated it is at the expense of the
creditor class; when it is contracted it is contracted at the expense
of the debtor class. In other words, inflation means going into debt;
contraction means the payment of the debt.

A gold dollar is a dollar's worth of gold.

A real paper dollar is a dollar's worth of paper.

Another remedy has been suggested by the same persons who advocate fiat
money. With a consistency perfectly charming, they say it would have
been much better had we allowed the Treasury notes to fade out. Why
allow fiat money to fade out when a simple act of Congress can make it
as good as gold? When greenbacks fade out the loss falls upon the chance
holder, upon the poor, the industrious, and the unfortunate. The rich,
the cunning, the well-informed manage to get rid of what they happen to
hold. When, however, the bills are redeemed, they are paid by the
wealth and property of the whole country. To allow them to fade out
is universal robbery; to pay them is universal justice. The greenback
should not be allowed to fade away in the pocket of the soldier or in
the hands of his widow and children. It is said that; the Continental
money faded away. It was and is a disgrace to our forefathers. When the
greenback fades away there will fade with it honor from the American
heart, brain from the American head, and our flag from the air of
heaven.

A great cry has been raised against the holders of bonds. They have been
denounced by every epithet that malignity can coin. During the war our
bonds were offered for sale and they brought all that they then appeared
to be worth. They had to be sold or the Rebellion would have been a
success. To the bond we are indebted as much as to the greenback. The
fact is, however, we are indebted to neither; we are indebted to the
soldiers. But every man who took a greenback at less than gold committed
the same crime, and no other, as he who bought the bonds at less than
par in gold. These bonds have changed hands thousands of times. They
have been paid for in gold again and again. They have been bought at
prices far above par; they have been laid away by loving husbands
for wives, by toiling fathers for children; and the man who seeks to
repudiate them now, or to pay them in fiat rags, is unspeakably cruel
and dishonest. If the Government has made a bad bargain it must live up
to it. If it has made a foolish promise the only way is to fulfill it.

A dishonest government can exist only among dishonest people.

When our money is below par we feel below par.

We cannot bring prosperity by cheapening money; we cannot increase
our wealth by adding to the volume of a depreciated currency. If the
prosperity of a country depends upon the volume of its currency, and if
anything is money that people can be made to think is money, then the
successful counterfeiter is a public benefactor. The counterfeiter
increases the volume of currency; he stimulates business, and the money
issued by him will not be hoarded and taken from the channels of trade.

During the war, during the inflation—that is to say, during the years
that we were going into debt—fortunes were made so easily that people
left the farms, crowded to the towns and cities. Thousands became
speculators, traders, and merchants; thousands embarked in every
possible and conceivable scheme. They produced nothing; they simply
preyed upon labor and dealt with imaginary values. These men must
go back; they must become producers, and every producer is a paying
consumer. Thousands and thousands of them are unable to go back. To a
man who begs of you a breakfast you cannot say, "Why don't you get
a farm?" You might as well say, "Why don't you start a line of
steamships?" To him both are impossibilities. They must be helped.

We should all remember that society must support all of its members, all
of its robbers, thieves, and paupers. Every vagabond and vagrant has
to be fed and clothed, and society must support in some way all of its
members. It can support them in jails, in asylums, in hospitals, in
penitentiaries; but it is a very costly way. We have to employ judges
to try them, juries to sit upon their cases, sheriffs, marshals, and
constables to arrest them, policemen to watch them, and it may be,
at last, a standing army to put them down. It would be far cheaper,
probably, to support them all at some first-class hotel. We must either
support them or help them support themselves. They let us go upon the
one hand simply to take us by the other, and we can take care of them as
paupers and criminals, or, by wise statesmanship, help them to be honest
and useful men. Of all the criminals transported by England to Australia
and Tasmania, the records show that a very large per cent.—something
over ninety—became useful and decent people. In Australia they found
homes; hope again spread its wings in their breasts. They had different
ambitions; they were removed from vile and vicious associations. They
had new surroundings; and, as a rule, man does not morally improve
without a corresponding improvement in his physical condition.
One biscuit, with plenty of butter, is worth all the tracts ever
distributed.

Thousands must be taken from the crowded streets and stifling dens, away
from the influences of filth and want, to the fields and forests of the
West and South. They must be helped to help themselves.

While the Government cannot create gold and silver, while it cannot
by its fiat make money, it can furnish facilities for the creation
of wealth. It can aid in the distribution of products, and in the
distribution of men; it can aid in the opening of new territories;
it can aid great and vast enterprises that cannot be accomplished by
individual effort. The Government should see to it that every facility
is offered to honorable adventure, enterprise and industry. Our ships
ought to be upon every sea; our flag ought to be flying in every port.
Our rivers and harbors ought to be improved. The usefulness of the
Mississippi should be increased, its banks strengthened, and its channel
deepened. At no distant day it will bear the commerce of a hundred
millions of people. That grand river is the great guaranty of
territorial integrity; it is the protest of nature against disunion, and
from its source to the sea it will forever flow beneath one flag.

The Northern Pacific Railway should be pushed to completion. In this
way labor would be immediately given to many thousands of men. Along
the line of that thoroughfare would spring up towns and cities; new
communities with new surroundings; and where now is the wilderness there
would be thousands and thousands of happy homes.

The Texas Pacific should also be completed. A vast agricultural and
mineral region would be opened to the enterprise and adventure of the
American people. Probably Arizona holds within the miserly clutches of
her rocks greater wealth than any other State or territory of the world.
The construction of that road would put life and activity into a hundred
industries. It would give employment to many thousands of people, and
homes at last to many millions. It would cause the building of thousands
of miles of branches to open, not only new territory, but to connect
with roads already built. It would double the products of gold and
silver, open new fields to trade, create new industries, and make it
possible for us to supply eight millions of people in the Republic of
Mexico with our products. The construction of this great highway will
enable the Government to dispense with from ten to fifteen regiments of
infantry and cavalry now stationed along the border. People enough will
settle along this line to protect themselves. It will permanently settle
the Indian question, saving the people millions each year. It will
effectually destroy the present monopoly, and in this way greatly
increase production and consumption. It will double our trade with
China and Japan, and with the Pacific States as well. It will settle
the Southern question by filling the Southern States with immigrants,
diversifying the industries of that section, changing and rebuilding the
commercial and social fabric; it will do away with the conservatism of
regret and the prejudice born of isolation. It will transmute to wealth
the unemployed muscle of the country. It will rescue California from
the control of a single corporation, from the government of an oligarchy
united, watchful, despotic, and vindictive. It will liberate the
farmers, the merchants, and even the politicians of the Pacific coast.
Besides, it must not be forgotten so to frame the laws and charters that
Congress shall forever have the control of fares and freights. In this
way the public will be perfectly protected and the Government perfectly
secured.

Look at the map, and you will see the immense advantages its
construction will give to the entire country, not only to the South, but
to the East and West as well. It is one hundred and fifty miles nearer
from Chicago to San Diego than to San Francisco. You will see that the
whole of Texas, a State containing two hundred and ten thousand square
miles; a State four times as large as Illinois, five times as large
as New York, capable of supporting a population of twenty millions of
people, is put in direct and immediate communication with the whole
country. Territory to the extent of nearly a million square miles
will be given to agriculture, trade, commerce, and mining, by the
construction of this line.

Let this road be built, and we shall feel again the enthusiasm born
of enterprise. In the vast stagnation there will be at last a current.
Something besides waiting is necessary to secure, or to even hasten, the
return of prosperity. Secure the completion of this line and extend the
time for building the Northern Pacific, and confidence and employment
will return together.

More men must cultivate the soil. In the older States lands are too
high. It requires too much capital to commence. There are so many
failures in business; so many merchants, traders, and manufacturers have
been wrecked and stranded upon the barren shores of bankruptcy, that
the people are beginning to prefer the small but certain profits of
agriculture to the false and splendid promises of speculation. We must
open new territories; we must give the mechanics now out of employment
an opportunity to cultivate the soil—not as day-laborers but as owners;
not as tenants, but as farmers. Something must be done to develop the
resources of this country. With the best lands of the world; with a
population intellectual, energetic, and ingenious far beyond the average
of mankind; with the richest mines of the globe; with plenty of capital;
with a surplus of labor; with thousands of arms folded in enforced
idleness; with billions of gold asking to be dug; with millions of acres
waiting for the plow, thousands upon thousands are in absolute want.

New avenues must be opened. All our territory must be given to
immigration. Greater facilities must be offered. Obstacles that cannot
be overcome by individual enterprise must be conquered by the Government
for the good of all. Every man out of employment is impoverishing the
country. Labor transmutes muscle into wealth. Idleness is a rust that
devours even gold. For five years we have been wasting the labor of
millions—wasting it for lack of something to do. Prosperity has been
changed to want and discontent. On every hand the poor are asking for
work. That is a wretched government where the honest and industrious
beg, unsuccessfully, for the right to toil; where those who are willing,
anxious, and able to work, cannot get bread. If everything is to be left
to the blind and heartless working of the laws of supply and demand, why
have governments? If the nation leaves the poor to starve, and the weak
and unfortunate to perish, it is hard to see for what purpose the nation
should be preserved. If our statesmen are not wise enough to foster
great enterprises, and to adopt a policy that will give us prosperity,
it may be that the laboring classes, driven to frenzy by hunger, the
bitterness of which will be increased by seeing others in the midst of
plenty, will seek a remedy in destruction.

The transcontinental commerce of this country should not be in the
clutch and grasp of one corporation. All sections of the Union should,
as far as possible, be benefited. Cheap rates will come, and can be
maintained only by competition. We should cultivate commercial relations
with China and Japan. Six hundred millions of people are slowly awaking
from a lethargy of six thousand years. In a little while they will have
the wants of civilized men, and America will furnish a large proportion
of the articles demanded by these people. In a few years there will be
as many ships upon the Pacific as upon the Atlantic. In a few years our
trade with China will be far greater than with Europe. In a few years
we will sustain the same relation to the far East that Europe once
sustained to us. America for centuries to come will supply six hundred
millions of people with the luxuries of life. A country that expects to
control the trade of other countries must develop its own resources to
the utmost. We have pursued a small, a mean, and a penurious course.
Demagogues have ridden into office and power upon the cry of economy,
by opposing every measure looking to the improvement of the country, by
endeavoring to see how cheaply nothing could be done. A government, like
an individual, should live up to its privileges; it should husband its
resources, simply that it may use them. A nation that expects to control
the commerce of half a world must have its money equal with gold and
silver. It must have the money of the world.

Whenever the laboring men are out of employment they begin to hate the
rich. They feel that the dwellers in palaces, the riders in carriages,
the wearers of broadcloth, silk, and velvet have in some way been
robbing them. As a matter of fact, the palace builders are the friends
of labor. The best form of charity is extravagance. When you give a man
money, when you toss him a dollar, although you get nothing, the man
loses his manhood. To help others help themselves is the only real
charity. There is no use in boosting a man who is not climbing. Whenever
I see a splendid home, a palace, a magnificent block, I think of the
thousands who were fed—of the women and children clothed, of the
firesides made happy.

A rich man living up to his privileges, having the best house, the
best furniture, the best horses, the finest grounds, the most beautiful
flowers, the best clothes, the best food, the best pictures, and all the
books that he can afford, is a perpetual blessing.

The prodigality of the rich is the providence of the poor.

The extravagance of wealth makes it possible for the poor to save.

The rich man who lives according to his means, who is extravagant in the
best and highest sense, is not the enemy of labor. The miser, who lives
in a hovel, wears rags, and hoards his gold, is a perpetual curse. He is
like one who dams a river at its source.

The moment hard times come the cry of economy is raised. The press, the
platform, and the pulpit unite in recommending economy to the rich. In
consequence of this cry, the man of wealth discharges servants, sells
horses, allows his carriage to become a hen-roost, and after taking
employment and food from as many as he can, congratulates himself that
he has done his part toward restoring prosperity to the country.

In that country where the poor are extravagant and the rich economical
will be found pauperism and crime; but where the poor are economical and
the rich are extravagant, that country is filled with prosperity.

The man who wants others to work to such an extent that their lives are
burdens, is utterly heartless. The toil of the world should continually
decrease. Of what use are your inventions if no burdens are lifted from
industry—if no additional comforts find their way to the home of labor;
why should labor fill the world with wealth and live in want?

Every labor-saving machine should help the whole world. Every one should
tend to shorten the hours of labor.

Reasonable labor is a source of joy. To work for wife and child, to toil
for those you love, is happiness; provided you can make them happy. But
to work like a slave, to see your wife and children in rags, to sit at
a table where food is coarse and scarce, to rise at four in the morning,
to work all day and throw your tired bones upon a miserable bed at
night, to live without leisure, without rest, without making those you
love comfortable and happy—this is not living—it is dying—a slow,
lingering crucifixion.

The hours of labor should be shortened. With the vast and wonderful
improvements of the nineteenth century there should be not only the
necessaries of life for those who toil, but comforts and luxuries as
well.

What is a reasonable price for labor? I answer: Such a price as will
enable the man to live; to have the comforts of life; to lay by a little
something for his declining years, so that he can have his own home, his
own fireside; so that he can preserve the feelings of a man.

Every man ought to be willing to pay for what he gets. He ought to
desire to give full value received. The man who wants two dollars' worth
of work for one is not an honest man.

I sympathize with every honest effort made by the children of labor
to improve their condition. That is a poorly governed country in which
those who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when men
are obliged to beg for leave to toil. We are not yet a civilized people;
when we are, pauperism and crime will vanish from our land.

There is one thing, however, of which I am glad and proud, and that is,
that society is not, in our country, petrified; that the poor are not
always poor.

The children of the poor of this generation may, and probably will, be
the rich of the next. The sons of the rich of this generation may be the
poor of the next; so that after all, the rich fear and the poor hope.

I sympathize with the wanderers, with the vagrants out of employment;
with the sad and weary men who are seeking for work. When I see one of
these men, poor and friendless—no matter how bad he is—I think that
somebody loved him once; that he was once held in the arms of a mother;
that he slept beneath her loving eyes, and wakened in the light of her
smile. I see him in the cradle, listening to lullabies sung soft and
low, and his little face is dimpled as though touched by the rosy
fingers of Joy.

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.

Tell your representatives in Congress to improve our rivers and harbors;
to release our transcontinental commerce from the grasp of monopoly;
to open all our territories, and to build up our trade with the whole
world.

Tell them not to issue a dollar of fiat paper, but to redeem every
promise the nation has made.

If fiat money is ever issued it will be worthless, for the folly that
would issue has not the honor to pay when the experiment fails.

Tell them to put their trust in work. Debts can be created by law, but
they must be paid by labor.

Tell them that "fiat money" is madness and repudiation is death.
