Qass. Book. ri > THE VOTERS LIBP'ARY Seri.es of fz.oo per year -^.--^ r Published Tri-WeeKly -by- BEN. FRAN KLIN PUBLISHING CO. ■ PHILADELPHIA, WASHINGTON. CHICAOO, Vol. I. rHILADELPlIIA, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1892. . No. 7. Abraham Lincoln. ,1 ^.u 1hU The Immortal President Discussed as "the Greatest of American Work- ingmen"— His Greatness Gained in the Academy of Actual Labor — In Working With His Own Hands He "Learned the Freemasonry of Human Feeling." — As President He Struck Down the Conspiracy Against American Labor as Carried on Under Guise of Free=Trade and Slavery by the Democratic Party — How the Republican Party Has Made American Labor the Best Paid in the World— Now It Will Fos- ter and Encourage Profit=Sharing, Co=Operation, and Industrial Capi- talization — Thus Helping to Gain Larger Profits and New Dignities to all American Labor — "Take the Post=Office Out of National Politics and Put It in Neighborhood Politics" — Lincoln the Great Workingman. r. J. S. Clarkson, Chairman of the Republican National Conimittep, was invited to address the RepubUcan State I^eague of Ohio, at Columbas, on the 12th inst., the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Clarkson had prepared sometliing in which he dealt mth Mr. Lincoln from a new standpoint, but was prevented by illness from going to the banquet. Below is what he intended to say on the question of Lincoln as a workingman : It has always seemed to me that the State of Ohio is the most favorable ground in America for liberal speech. It Ls the typical American State. It is of the North, and yet near the South. It is neither East nor West. The representative American, to-day nearest the typical American of the future, is the citizen of Ohio. Here, on this mifldle ground, where the fom- great subdivisions of the Rei)ublic meet, is good counsel ground for American thought and discussion. Here is neither Eastern narrowness nor Western prejudice. Here is best represented in feeUng the future re- lations between the North and the South. In schools, in business achievements, in .social life, in all the larger tokens of civilization, in loyalty to the Union, in liberality to all people, in courage of opinion, and coui-age of action, the State of Ohio and its people are always willing to hear any good cause, and to give intelligent judgment upon any proposition for the good of the Republic, 33 t-45 .8 S^^ A flan of the People. Speaking to the gallant Republicans of Ohio on the birthday of Abraham Lincohi, I would not talk of liini as the great ruler whpse serene and lofty fame has become a cherished possession of that wider world which now runs wherever human Uberty is knowTi. Instead, I would speak of him as the greatest of American workmgmen. I would tiu-n to the seamy side of his life, to his boyhood, when working with his ovm hands, he learned in poverty that free-m;isonry of human feeling which is never other\\Tse acquired. I would turn to the days when, face to face with want and hardslaip, his own heart touched the cross of human suffering, never after to lose its sympathy with sorrow nor to cease its opposition to wrong. Lincoln, when he often tired of the advice of Cabinet and Congress and of the counsel of all the famous and the wise, always sought refuge and instruction in the sympathy and friendship of those whom he called "the plain people. " He had the larger vision, and was lifted up above mere statesmanship or experienced human knowledge. He could tm-n from power, from wealth, from the precedents of time and the axioms of the ages in (Government, and go among the plain people, and find there the wisdom to save the Republic, to free a race from slavery, and to give new meanmg to human liberty. The Party of the People. I^eaders of public thought and students of publit^ aifalrs in this ne^v [generation, which does not kno\v Abraham lincoln as the generation of the war time knew him, may find illumination for many dark places now in going nearer to the plain people. All the jiower the Republican |>arty has ever gained, all the renown it has ever won in service to the Republic and the cause of universal freedom, it sought and found in the wisdom of the millions who, like Lincoln, learned the sufficient knowledge through their o\\'n suffering and trials. It is well enough to recall on this birthday of the great commoner, of this greatest of American workingmen, that in his Americanism he knew nothing of aristocracy, and in his RepubUcanism nothing but hmiian sympathy. The Reiiublican party was born without an aristocracy. The Republican party is ple- beian, not patrician. The Rei>ul3lican party to-day Is typified In the mechanic or the' farmer, as the I\ei)ublican jiarty during the war was the Union soldier. The average American of this time, as then, is not the jirofessional man, nor the banker, nor the rich man. If an artist were commissioned to make a statue of the typical American in this century he would make it a Rei)ublican workingman. Therefore the Repub- lican party is a party of the i)eoi)le. It is the people. Wherever it has kept near its own heart, which has always been the heart of labor, it has been invincible. When it has strayed from it it has lost. Democratic Conspiracy against Labor. What Is the lesson of Lincoln's fife and the suggestion of Lincoln's birtlnlay? It is to take the Republican party nearer than ever to the people. I say frankly that the greatest work and most solemn duty resting upon the Republican party is first an ;^. always to address itself to meeting any danger menacing or any real grievance existing among the people, the laborers of the farm and the shop. The greatness of IJncoln'M cariu-r was in resisting and dofeuting tlie culmination of tl.ie first great con- 34 spiracy against American labor, for free-trade in the United States has never been anything else but a plot agamst the American workingman. Slavery as it existed in this Republic was not simply a conspu'acy agamst the negro because he was black ;• it it was because he was a workingman. The South wanted slavery, not to enslave the negro, but to get his labor as nearly for nothing as possible, and to j^rotect the ruling wliite class from being compelled to labor themselves. The struggle in this country has always been, in the South for cheap labor, in the North for free and well-paid labor. McDuffie, of South Carolina, the greatest of all American free-traders, past or present, who wielded the power of his party in Congress from 1822 to 1853, in assailing protection always did so on the bold public ground of protesting against ' ' compelling the South ■with slave labor costing twenty-five cents a day to com- pete with free labor in the North at a dollar a day." He and all Southern white leaders then boldly said that labor was the work of a slave alone, and for fifty years the Democratic party in tfce United States attempted to make all labor either slave labor or else paid in slave's wages. McDuffie in speeches in Congress always said that Northern white labor would ui the end be coerced to the same wages and the same condition as the Southern black slaves. For fifty years this was the purpose of the Democratic party ; and McDuffie in his message as Governor of South Carolina in 1835 declared the labor element, " bleached or unbleached, the dangerous element in the body politic." The result of fifty years of Democratic effort for free-trade was the appeal of the South to rebellion — the last resort to retam slave labor. President Lincoln, who had watched the development of the Southern purpose, clearly under- stood it all, and in his inaugural message of 1861 characterized " the rebellion as the result of an effort to place capital above labor in the structure of the government." The North, true to human liberty and to free labor, raUied to his defense, and the first conspu'acy against the workingmen of America failed signally before the eyes of the world, stricken down by the faithful hand of a workingman occupying the high- est office in the land. Republican Protection to Labor and Capital. Not only this. Lincoln and the RepubHcan party in, their humanity stooped down and took the three miUions of slaves held by the South and in the cruelty of free-trade, and made them citizens and free laborers, adding their enormous labor to the competition of its owti free labor, which, so far from opposing the action, demanded and welcomed it. The capital of the North, which had opposed the free- trade conspiracy against labor, also supported Lincoln, and has, in the main, ever since, very largely stood in its defence. For the American policy of protection Ls, when it is all told, maintained for the purpose of perpetuating the difference between the wages of Em'ope and America. Measure it as you may, there is the Avhole fact. Protection is no longer for capital. It is wholly for labor. Thus, the Republican party, while protecting labor, also protected and promoted cacital in the interest of labor and the interest of the country. The party early pi'vvv'ed its basiness thrift, as well as its humanity. Early in its life, beginning in '61 , it displayed such supreme basiness abihty, and gave to the American people such rule and legislation as enabled this generation of Americans to make and amass more 35 money than any people in the world at any time in history have ever bet n abK' to fiain. Fortunes were never made so rai)idly. The condition of labor was never intproved so qiiiekly. It is estimated now by reliable and skUled authorities that in he thirty-two years since 1860 thiity-ei^ht billions in value has been added to the wealth of the United States under Kej)ublican jjuhcies. The South alone, which was destroyed at the end of the war as completely as men and armies can destroy a country, has itself gained and now possesses more wealth than the entire nation possessed at the beginning of the war. Give Capital Its Just Due. It is to be said, too, that the mass of American capital in this last thirty years nas been sympathetic and patriotic. Itfurnished the five billions of dollars nece.s.sary to subdue the Democratic rebelUon and save the Union. It furnished the money to develop the country. When two hundred million dollars were needed to run one carload of commerce from San Francisco to New York, largely through a wild antl unsett'ed country, capital cheerfully furnished it. When thousands of milhons more were required to make the commerce between the North and the South, East and West, quick and certain and cheap, capital quickly furnished that. Wherever rail- i-oads thus bmlt made their way, the land was touched into a value in gold, the homesteader's farm and all. This increment of wealth amounted to staggering totais, and it was divided among the millions of the famis and the to\vns. The sanu- energy and patriotic ftuth shown by capital in these days were also shown in the estabUsh- ment of thousands of new factories and enterprises for the larger employmer.t of labor, for creating insurance, banking, telegrai>li, and all sorts of corporations, until thousands of millions of more money were put into human activities, labor sharing in it all. The capital and the labor of no country have ever fostered and developed a land as patriotically and as rapidly as American labor and American capital have developed this country in the past generation Grand Work of the Republican Party. Thas, in this short space of time, a mere breath in the life of a nation, the poli- cies and the courage of the Republican party first saved American labor from the conspiracy of free-trade to degrade it to slave labor, and next it set up in the new hemisphere a republic of workingmen the best-paid in the world. But it can not anvr i-ent., and then above that divides the additional profit with lal>(>r. It is not e)nly 30 American labor's logical right and good fortune under our peculiar system, Init every experiment which has been tried has sho\m that it profits capital as much as ■ labor. It gives to the laborer the dignity of partnersh.ip. It makes his work still more a pleasure and a matter of pride. It puts all work, even in the largest establishment, under the eye and hand of a partner. It gives higher reputation, wider market, and a velvet of additional profit to goods and wares so made. The RepubUcan party is sure to encourage capital to take its way to kindly results, and no one can now describe the immeasiu-able benefits which in this new order will result to the good of labor and the good of the countjy. Solution of the Labor Problem. P"or my part, I believe that profit-sharing is the coming solution of the labor problem and of the confiicts between labor and capital. The railways in the land may yet find then- i-efuge in this, from their present doubtful existence under the experiment of being private property under public control. They can look to that, or finally to government ownership, opeiated under an enlisted service, as well as government control. The immense private enterprises of cities, the large dry goods houses, as well as factories, are not only ready to follow, but some are ah-eady leaduig the way. The great hoases of Claflin, and of Thurber, Whyland & Co., of Kew York, the gi'eat Pillsbm-y INIiUs, of Minnesota, and other large American establishments, have all found in trying this new de})arture that it is better for themselves as well as better for lal)or. ^^'hile capital is trying pi-ofit-sharing, let labor and capital together try co-operation. The Republican party can devise the methods and clear the way, in the large 'wisdom and in the devotion to labor and the interest of the country that it has always shown. I do not doubt that in a few years we shall see nearly aU the arger estalilishments in America, especially those established and made prosperous under the Republican jiolicy of protection, adopting the ])lan of profit-sharing and co-operation, thus lifting up American labor still more, to the admh'ation and envy of the world. A Word of Warning. By all those tokens of the past, by all those promises of the future, there are mil- lions of workingmen in -the Democratic party, who belong in tlie Rei)ublican line. As slavery was maintained by the South to insure cheap labor, so are the millioiLs of black men in the South menaced and degraded to-day for the same purjiose. The plot of the Southern States against the negro race is the same old Democratic plot against free labor. The greatest menace to the well-paid labor of the North to-day is the settled attempt of the South to degrade black labor into a peasantry and into wages of twenty-five or fifty cents a day. No intelligent laboring man, North or South, should be blmd to these facts. The Democratic party has always adulated capital and been domineered by wealth. It protected property when it was mvested in human beings as slaves. The changes among rich men in New p]ngland now is money going back to the Democratic party. Harvard College goes back to its old love of the money class. All arrogance of wealth is generally disjilayed against the Repub- lican party. INIugwumpery itself is simply one of the eruptions of congested wealth 37 LB S '12 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011839 293 ^ v.Wiw fjsMmmmXi^ 0W0M mm #1