fuU i Afi 
 
 ORATION 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES HALSEY MOORE, 
 
 OF PLATTSBURGH, N. Y., 
 
 ,v 
 
 N3 
 
 A 
 
 . rft 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 Knights of Labor 
 
 OF SARANAC, N. Y., 
 
 CTTJILir ^FblfcL, 18B7. 
 
 Fellow Citizens :— 
 
 Again the cold and frosts of winter have come and 
 gone. Again the snow and ice have melted from 
 your fruitful hills and valleys. Spring and summer 
 each with its seedtime and growth ; their gentle rains 
 and sunshine have caused your fields to nurture the 
 waving grain. Your meadows, with succulent grass 
 to imitate the green of the leafy forest trees upon 
 your borders. The month of June with its roses 
 sweet has come and gone. The sun has swung back 
 upon the summer solstice, but the fragrance of the 
 rose, still left upon the summer air, mingles with 
 the scent of the new mown hay, while the sound of 
 the songs of the lark and the linnet and the robin 
 echoes on the ear, and all nature thus equipped in the 
 
gttrB of its rejoicing and fruit-bearing season fulfills 
 the word of Scripture that summer and harvest shall, 
 not fail, but greet and usher in this summer month 
 of July, so fateful with the the interests of the 
 American people, and through them of the “universe- 
 of men.” 
 
 This month of July, named after the greatest and 
 most successful of military heroes, Julius Caesar, is 
 indeed a marked one in the American calendar.. 
 
 First, because in it and upon the 4th day there¬ 
 of, 111 years ago to-day, was signed an act 
 by a few brave and resolute hands and hearts, 
 which is preserved in the archives of our govern¬ 
 ment and enshrined in the memories of our people. 
 
 Second, because we to-day celebrate the doing of 
 that act. It is doubtless unnecessary for me to tell 
 an American audience what that act was. To name 
 as the Declaration of Independence is sufficient to call 
 up in every patriotic mind the event and its signifi¬ 
 cance, to cause every patriotic heart to beat with 
 emotions of gratitude, every bosom to swell and 
 every eye to glisten with the tear of joy as he looks 
 back upon that act and upon our country then and 
 now. 
 
 In an upper chamber, in the city of Philadelphia, 
 where those signers of the Declaration of Independ¬ 
 ence dared to enunciate its principles of true freedom 
 against the tyranny of a despotic government, risk¬ 
 ing by and pledging in that act their lives, their 
 liberty and their sacred honor, was accomplished in 
 a sense the preservation of the liberties of the peo¬ 
 ples of all climes. 
 
 The whole civilized world looked on in wonder 
 at what then seemed to be the act of fools or fanatics. 
 This and other acts of the American colonists at- 
 
tracted the favorable attention of all lovers of free*-. 
 *dom, and aroused the partisans of tyranny to ener¬ 
 getic hatred and opposition. One side was called 
 Patriots, the other Tories, 
 
 The Declaration of Independence, coming as It did, 
 more that a year after the battles of Lexington, 
 Concord and Bunker Hill, all of which were in the 
 main disastrous to the colonists, showed the indom¬ 
 itable character of the people with whom the Tories 
 had to deal. That upon the issue raised by Patrick 
 Henry, "“Give me liberty or give me death,” the 
 colonists were determined to stand or fall. Kings, 
 emperors and dynasties stood aghast, while the 
 young American eagle dared to beard the old British, 
 lion in his den. 
 
 The signers of that instrument, though appre¬ 
 ciating the gravity of the situation, were not devoid, 
 even then, of that sang froid which carried their 
 compatriots, the Continental army, through many a 
 trying crisis. Here is an instance; 
 
 It is said that during the serious debate which 
 ensued on the question of the adoption of the reso¬ 
 lutions, one speaker referred in glowing terms to a 
 picture of the sun hanging up behind the President 
 John Hancock’s chair, as the 4 ‘rising sun,” when 
 Dr. Franklin rose and said that he was glad to hear 
 that sun spoken of as representing the rising sun, 
 for from the gloomy utterances of some of the 
 speakers he had doubted whether it did not repre¬ 
 sent a setting sun, a witicism which was doubtless 
 well received. Another instance also well illustrates 
 the same idea. When President Hancock rose to 
 speak he said; “We mi||t be unanimous; there 
 must be no pulling different ways; we must all 
 hang together.” “Yes,” implied Franklin, “we 
 
4 
 
 must all hang together or most assuredly we shall 
 hang separately” 
 
 With such wit as this, but with set purpose, did 
 these patriots accomplish their design, though they 
 knew too well what their fate would be at the hands 
 of the British Crown, they were determined to be 
 free. The promulgation of the Declaration of In¬ 
 dependence, the doctrine till then in the political 
 world almost unknown, that there are certain in¬ 
 alienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit 
 of happiness belonging originally to mankind, and 
 that these colonists of right ought to be, therefore, 
 and are forever free and independent, did not by 
 any means terrify the British government, or deter 
 it from making more strenuous efforts to conquer the 
 colonists, to enslave them, in a word, to reduce them 
 even from the position of British subjects to that of 
 outlaws, and to degrade them to the level of penal 
 colonists, to advertise and publish their leaders, 
 Adams, Hancock, Washington, Carroll, Marion, 
 Franklin, Morris, Livingston and Trumbull, as 
 outlaws and convicts, wdth a price set on their heads 
 as of escaped and condemed criminals. Your own 
 Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, carried in 
 chains to England; your Nathan Hale, denied even 
 the boon of a word of prayer or Scripture, hung in 
 the morning air by the neck until he was dead, with 
 the cry upon his lips : “I only regret that I have 
 but one life to lose for my country.” 
 
 Washington’s headquarters then were where is 
 now in New York city Murray Hill, and he had sent 
 young Hale into the British army as a spy. Disguis¬ 
 ed as a farmer, he mSfee sketches and notes un¬ 
 suspected, but a Tory kinsman, Judas that he was, 
 betrayed hirp, and without even the form of a trial, 
 
5 
 
 Hale was handed over next morning, September 22,' 
 1776, to the Provost Marshal to be hanged. A 
 quick shrift and short rope were the British judg-. 
 rnent on spies, and Cunningham, the Provost Mar- 
 shal, not only refused him the services of a clergy¬ 
 man and the use of a Bible, but when the more 
 humane officer who superintended the execution 
 permitted him to write to his mother, his betrothed 
 and sisters, the brutal Cunningham destroyed these 
 letters before the face of his victim, while tears and 
 sobs marked the sympathy of the spectators. Cun¬ 
 ningham gave as a reason that he did not want the 
 
 -rebels to know how brave a man Hale was, and 
 
 how willingly and bravely he sacrificed his life on the 
 altar of his country. Hale had been confined in the 
 green house of the Beckman mansion in New York, 
 then Lord Howe’s headquarters, and tradition says he 
 might have escaped, but he had given his word he 
 ■would not, so true a Bayard, indeed, mnsjpeur sum 
 reprock , this fair-haired boy, for he was nothing 
 else, having just passed his 21st year, was swung 
 into eternity almost in sight of the Connecticut home 
 he had shortly left at the call of his country. 
 
 His execution was justified as a measure of mill, 
 tary necessity, but the brutal Cunniugham, who 
 starved, persecuted and murdered American prison¬ 
 ers in the city of New York, who sold the rations of 
 2,000 of them, who consequently starved to death, 
 and who privately hung more than 250 of them 
 without trial to gratify his cruel appetite, met his 
 own just deserts from the very government which he 
 served, for he himself was executed in England for 
 forgery August 10th, 1791. Thus was accomplish¬ 
 ed the divine edict, “With what judgment ye judge, 
 ye shall be judged.” To-day, then, we celebrate the 
 
6 
 
 labors, the sacrifices of the Revolutionary patriots. 
 The war they waged from April 19, 1775, begun at 
 Lexington, where “the shot was fired heard 
 round the world,” to Yorktown, October 10th, 1781, 
 when the army, under Cornwallis, surrendered to 
 the American arms, had been fought against innumer¬ 
 able odds, difficulties and sacrifices of blood and 
 treasure. All over the thirteen colonies, from Maine 
 to Florida, were patriots like Hale, ready, willing 
 and doing for the rights of country and of man. 
 
 Peace and independence were won at last. The 
 seven years of war, with its Lexington, Bunker 
 Hill, Brandy Wine, Valley Forge, Saratoga, Eutaw 
 Springs, Monmouth, Princeton and Yorktown, was 
 over a$ last. The war had ended. Independence 
 achieved, what next? To solidify all the constitu¬ 
 ent parts of the colonies into one harmonious politi¬ 
 cal whole, turn the sword into a plowshare and the 
 spear into a pruning hook. The “piping times of 
 peace” had come, and now the question rose what 
 to do in them, and the answer came quick from the 
 people, “make us a nation, giveus a union of states,” 
 and thus was formed the United States. Oppres¬ 
 sion first, necessity afterwards, made us a nation. 
 
 In 1794 and again in 1818, with some changes, 
 Congress adopted the flag which now represents our 
 government, its sovereignty and power. This beau¬ 
 tiful banner became very dear to the hearts of the 
 people after the publication of that national song, 
 commencing: 
 
 Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light, 
 
 What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, 
 
 Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the clouds of 
 the fight, 
 
 O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? 
 
 And the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in air, 
 
 Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there. 
 
 O, say, does that star spangled banner yet wave 
 O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave ? 
 
7 
 
 This song, written by Francis Barton Key, in the 
 midst of the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the 
 second war for independence (1814) represented 
 then the feelings of the Americans when their flag 
 was under fire, and so flying from every flag staff to¬ 
 day after more than a century of toil, war and pro¬ 
 gress, after four great wars, we answer the question 
 with: 
 
 The star spangled banner—oh, yes, it still waves 
 
 O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 
 
 Fellow citizens, knights of labor, it is for you and 
 such as you to still echo that answer, and it ever 
 “shall wave o’er the home of the free.” Profiting by 
 the lessons of the past, you may keep your country 
 free. There are many ways of enslaving men other 
 than by wars. And these other ways are generally 
 from within ; come from unadjusted balances in the 
 individual and body politic. A people which has 
 grown from three millions to sixty millions in a cen¬ 
 tury, which has converted howling and pathless wil- 
 - dernesses into great commercial highways, and cre¬ 
 ated towns, villages and cities wherever there 
 seemed to be a spot for them, whose territory is so 
 large that you set it down in the Atlantic Ocean 
 and it will fill it up from shore to shore and making 
 a land bridge from eastern to western continent, 
 
 ' whose breadth is nearly equal to one-eighth the cir¬ 
 cumference of the globe, or to more than one-third 
 of the diameter of the earth, whose teeming millions 
 demand and need every comfort of civilized life, it 
 is not strange that the attempt to solve some of the 
 problems resulting from our mode of life, has tested 
 the judgment and talent of our people to the utmost. 
 
 There has been, ever since the foundation of civil¬ 
 ized society, a constant struggle of the masses with 
 
the few wlio had, or seemed to have, obtained the 
 control of affairs, to the detriment of the former. It 
 is impossible in a speech of this brevity to give any¬ 
 thing like even an epitome of that first, last and a IB 
 the time great, ever-living and irrepressible 
 struggle for independence by the wage earner from, 
 the thraldom of the wage payer. 
 
 The great natural principle underlying aM busi¬ 
 ness dealings of this life is, “Oct all you can and- 
 keep all you’ve got.” Hence, as there must be two* 
 parties to every contract, the wage earner and the 
 wage payer pull each the opposite way. 
 
 The laborer, when he comes to the cashier’s desk 
 and receives his pay, turns away, and in nine cases 
 out of ten says, “That’s mighty small pay,” while 
 the employer in the rear of the office says to himself 
 as he orders it paid out, “That’s good pay, more 
 than I can afford and more than he ? s worth.” What 
 is the result? Friction. Bye and bye the laborer 
 says he can’t work so cheap, must have more pay, 
 can’t work so long, either, must have less hours. 
 Employer says can’t give any more, and you 
 must work longer hours instead of fewer* laborers 
 rise up en masse and say no. Employers say no, 
 too. Then you’ve got a lock out and a strike. 
 
 Every country in the world has had its labor 
 troubles, and will have so long as the curse of Eden re¬ 
 mains in force, viz : that man shall earn his bread by 
 the sweat of his face, and when we consider that 
 that condition was not imposed by rich men Or poor 
 men, either, but by the Almighty Himself, we may 
 a3 well make up our minds that for us it is unalter¬ 
 able. But there is no badge of servitude or con¬ 
 tempt attached to the so-called curse of the ground 
 for our sakes. No starving attached to it; only 
 
9 
 
 this : In the sweat of thy facd shall thou eat bread 
 until thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast 
 thou taken; and so far as the memory of man run¬ 
 neth not to the contrary. That curse has rested 
 pretty solidly upon all mankind ever since. 
 
 Now, there is nothing debasing in this; nothing 
 except a condition imposed upon all men alike by 
 the Almighty. There is no chattel mortgage in this 
 on bodies and souls of laborers; no store orders for 
 pay; no class favored more than another; no ty¬ 
 ranny of man over man in this ; nothing except these 
 two conditions—bread and sweat. All men shall 
 earn. Their wages shall be bread; the conditions 
 shall be sweat. In other words, that while they 
 have got to work they shall be duly recompensed. 
 
 That bread, by which is meant everything neces¬ 
 sary for man in the age in which he lives, shall he 
 there —shall be his—earned, however, by honest toil. 
 Not by speculation, not by hoarding up millions ob¬ 
 tained by dishonest issues of watered stock, but by 
 labor—honest toil. 
 
 I am not a Knight of Labor. Indeed, I am 
 barred from becoming one by the rules of your or¬ 
 der, which classes lawyers with rum-sellers, bankers, 
 professional gamblers and a precious lot of stock 
 brokers. Lawyers always have to carry the sins of 
 others. 1 am a laborer, nevertheless, in every sense 
 of the word, and earn my bread by the sweat not 
 only of my face, but of my whole body. I know 
 something of what hard labor is—how exhausting. 
 Urnr after hour I have toiled in the hot sun plough¬ 
 ing, sowing, haying and harvesting on the prairies 
 of Wisconsin. Day in, day out, when necessary, 
 have I sawed and split wood for a great farm house 
 and for my father's house. Week after week have I 
 
m 
 
 Hung Between tBe surface of the earth and its bowels- 
 in some deep shaft, while I adjusted to a delicate* 
 balance the force pumps running down them. Miles- 
 ©f iron pipe have I cut and threaded. Many and' 
 many a time have I come forth begrimmed with dust r 
 dirt, mud and greese, like the laborer I was. Gen¬ 
 tlemen, my life then w T as one of hard, manual labor. 
 Why d,id I do it? Because it was honest and digni¬ 
 fied, and I was obliged to earn my living and edu¬ 
 cate my head while I supported my body. 
 
 I have lived on six dollars a week and paid four 
 of it out for board and saved the other tw r o until I 
 had got together enough to buy my first installment 
 of $50 worth of law books, and that, gentlemen r 
 was only in 1874. So you see I have been and am 
 really one of you, although I have the honor (which, 
 however, your by-laws seem to think otherwise) to 
 have been admitted the bar of the State of New York. 
 
 Men talk about eight hours labor. I have always 
 worked from twelve to fourteen hours and sometimes 
 the twenty-four hours through. Therefore I say that 
 so far as occupation goes,. I am a Knight of 
 Labor. 
 
 The panacea, gentlemen, for the woes of human¬ 
 ity, is not so much less hours of labor and more pay,, 
 however desirable they may be, but more thrift and 
 temperance among the masses and less extravagance 
 among the wealthy. Men have invented many ex¬ 
 pedients and loaded, so to speak, onto the sweat of 
 the face < which we must carry always, ‘ 4 many de¬ 
 vices” to make the sweat bitter, to make it grimj^ 
 yea, even scalding in many instances to the laborer. 
 So that in the words of Holy Writ, “the voice of 
 the laborer crieth out from the ground.” 
 
 Since the Great Laborer for the welfare of men ? 
 
11 
 
 the carpenter of Judea, preached to the listening 
 multitudes the fatherhood of God and the brother¬ 
 hood of men,slowly but surely men have been learn¬ 
 ing the sublime truth that the true Knight, be he of 
 laborer any other-order, is the one who does by his 
 neighbor as he would be done by, and that this is 
 the key to true individual and national independence. 
 
 As much as I would like to, I cannot talk to you 
 to-day of the industrial aspects of the labor ques¬ 
 tion. I cannot discuss to-day the rights and wrongs 
 of society. It is too great a subject to be handled in 
 one short hour. Neither can I believe that we in 
 this, our day and generation, have solved the prob¬ 
 lem which has puzzled the wisest heads of all na¬ 
 tions. That problem is the true relation of labor 
 and capital. The unbalanced part of it is that in the 
 beginning of a commercial venture capital takes all 
 the risks of profit and loss and labor none. It is 
 this which has made capital so exacting and at times 
 unjust. On the other hand, the laborer enables the 
 capitalist to employ his capital and make profit on it. 
 Therefore, it looks as if that obligation was about 
 balanced. 
 
 Our own country, in the 111 years of its existence* 
 has grown fin every possible way, except that the 
 growth of religion has not kept pace with the de- 
 delopment in other directions. 
 
 In 1800, the population of the United States Was 
 5,300,000; to-day it is 0)0,000,000. In 1800 the 
 church-going and non-church-going people were 
 ^out as three to one. To-day the non-church- 
 members number twice as many as the church mem¬ 
 bers, L e., the church of all denominations, so- 
 called, Protestant and Romanist, numbers about 
 20,000,000, while the non-church members number 
 
12 
 
 about 40,000,000. In other respects the country 
 has advanced with gigantic strides. From being the 
 largest importing, it has become the largest export¬ 
 ing nation. 
 
 We have sold our goods and taken somebody 
 else’s money in exchange. We sold goods to the 
 enormous amount of $840,000,000, or about $14 to 
 every man, woman and child. In the census of 
 1880 the leading farm products of the United States 
 
 were: 
 
 Milk.Over 500,000,000 pounds 
 
 Butter. “ 700,000,000 “ 
 
 Cheese. “ 27,000,000 “ 
 
 Hay. “ 35,000,000 tons 
 
 Hops. “ 2(5,000,000 pounds 
 
 Rice. “ 110,000,000 
 
 Potatoes. “ 169,000,000 bushels 
 
 By the same census 2,738,930 mechanical hands 
 were employed in that year to whom were paid near¬ 
 ly one billion of dollars in wages. The value of 
 manufacturing products, five billions of dollars. 
 The total number of persons engaged in business 
 was 17,392,000, or more than three times the whole 
 population in 1800, of which 7,600,000 were en¬ 
 gaged in agriculture; professional, 4,000,000; 
 manufacturing, mechanics and mining, 3,800,000; 
 and trade and transportation, 1,800,000. 
 
 The average wealth per inhabitant w r as in 1884 
 $930; with a saving by each of only seven cents 
 per day, amounts every day to more than $4,000,- 
 000. It is a singular fact brought out by statistics 
 that in two countries so closely allied as Europe aqji 
 the United States, the daily excess of births over 
 deaths is 11,000, but fortunately there is laid aside 
 to meet this increase of population $11,000,000 daily 
 or $1,000 for each, which is about the average salary 
 
n 
 
 of tire professional man. Tire amount every man is 
 to be capable ofearaing, viz ; $600, or that the capital 
 represented by his body and brains is $10,000, 
 and average earnings are six per cent, of that sum; 
 so that you represent $10,000 of capital. 
 
 The total wealth of the United States is equal to 
 more than fifty billions of dollars. Have you any 
 idea what an enormous sum this is? You cannot 
 count even ®ne billion. If Adam had counted con¬ 
 tinuously from his creation to the present day he 
 would not have reached that, for it would take him 
 nearly 10,000 years, and fifty billions would take 
 fifty times that or ten thousand times fifty-—five 
 hundred thousand years. And long before that you 
 and I hope to get where dollars are not the only 
 currency dr criterion of success. 
 
 The United States spends yearly for liquor $900,«* 
 €00,000; bread, $505,000,000; meat, $303,- 
 €00,000; iron and steel, $290,000,000 ; woolen 
 goods, $237,000,000; sawed lumber, $233,€00,000; 
 cotton goods, $210,000,000 ; boots and shoes, 
 $196,000,000; sugar and molasses, $155,000,000; 
 public education, $66,000,000 ; Christian missions, 
 home and foreign, $5,500,000. So you see that the 
 people of the United States look after their own ma¬ 
 terial comfort pretty well, and let the good Lord 
 take care of the missionary with the small balance. 
 
 Nine hundred millions of dollars for whiskey I 
 Five and and a half millions for religion, or about 
 $130 for whiskey to $1 for religion. 
 
 Gentlemen, does not this look as if in spite of our 
 material progress there is something ‘‘rotten in 
 Denmark?” Is it possible that the billions of 
 wheels of commerce and industry have to be lubri¬ 
 cated by liquor? I leave the men who buy and use 
 
14 
 
 it to answer ; but if I were a Knight of Labor as 1 
 am an American citizen, in the words of your own 
 grand master workman, Mr. Powderly, I would 
 “Shun the door of the saloon as I would the door of 
 hell.” 
 
 In spite of our apparent prosperity there have 
 sprung up abuses which must be remedied. From 
 a small neighborhood mill or shop has come the vast 
 Catalan forge; from a single loom or spinning wheel 
 in the old-fashioned farmer’s kitchen have come the 
 great cotton factories and mills of to-day; from the 
 old stage and packet lines, the combined efforts of 
 men, resultant in the railroads and the steamship. 
 
 It is an age of corporations, when men all over the 
 world, under cover of laws which they themselves 
 have assisted or have paid to have passed in their 
 favor, have endeavored and are now endeavoring to 
 decry the dignity of honest toil, and the doctrine that 
 the laborer is worthy of his hire. In other words, 
 capital in some instances seems combined against 
 labor. What is the result? Labor must combine 
 against capital. How? By lawful and peaceable 
 methods. 
 
 That’s what I believe you Knights mean to do, 
 and let me say right here that as the vast majority 
 of laborers are Romanists, none of them need object 
 to join the Knights of Labor. The Roman Catholic 
 Church has set its seal of approval upon your order. 
 You intend that while you respect the rights of capi¬ 
 tal, it shall also respect yours , and I for one 
 and all my friends will help you in such laudabj^e 
 efforts. So far as I have studied your 
 public orders and demonstrations your Knights 
 do not desire to tear down the fabric of society, 
 but to build it stronger by bettering the con- 
 
15 
 
 dition of the laborer and his family, by making 
 honest toil and manual labor the position of 
 honor. By making it so honorable and elevating 
 that such silly twaddle describing northern labor, as 
 was uttered by people supported by the unpaid 
 bloody toil of slave labor, as “greasy mudsills” can 
 be heard no more forever on the earth. Now, how are 
 you fitted for your work? How was it with the 
 Knight of old? What were the conditions of his 
 knighthood ? To be the true knight an old author 
 says : “Defend him from pride and the other dead- 
 ly sins of anger, envy, sloth and gluttony, and ren¬ 
 der it impossible that his conduct should ever be 
 stained with the vice of incontinence.” The literal 
 meaning of chevalier, or knight, “is a horse rider, or 
 one who rides above the people,” significant of his high 
 mission and lofty purpose and impregnable position 
 Why, the ancient armed Knight could ride through 
 a whole army of footmen unharmed. Their mission 
 was to protect the weak and defenceless; to see 
 that the peasant soldier or vassal had his rights as 
 against the tyranny of his lord—a fit type of oc¬ 
 cupation and your duty to-day. 
 
 In the middle ages these knights errantry were a 
 necessary part of the people, but as society advanced, 
 the power of the great nobles and feudatories de¬ 
 clined and chivalry almost died out; but the people 
 became greater. Just so will it be now. Under the 
 wise, protecting care of you. Sir Knights, wherever 
 your white plumes are waving may society be ad¬ 
 vanced. May the men who count labor as nothing 
 and the laborer as less, diminish by geometrical 
 progression, and the honest laborer, whether of the 
 ditch, the farm, the forge, the desk or road, shall 
 fulfill in every sense that sentence in the Declara- 
 
ikm of Independence, that all men (not great I, big- 
 1, and little you) but all men are created free and 
 equal. 
 
 k 
 
 The history of nations teaches us that there is no- 
 freedom where equality is not. The accumulation of 
 vast stores of wealth in the hands of a few Csesars in 
 ancient Rome caused the consequent poverty, 
 and vicious idleness of its laborers, and its subse¬ 
 quent overthrow. 
 
 Cicero, the Roman orator, who attempted' single- 
 handed to reform the State and cut off the abuses 
 which had crept in, said : “Justice consists in doing 
 injury to no man,” for which, however, he paid with 
 his life, being pot to death by a band of assassins 
 which was hired by the combined wealth of the 
 triumvirate to do the horrid deed. 
 
 Knights of freedom in all ages have had to do 
 battle, been obliged to endure hardships. But the 
 right will triumph in the end. You do right to law¬ 
 fully combine for your common protection and im¬ 
 provement. The American people in this year of 
 grace, 1887, and of our Independence the one hun¬ 
 dred and twelfth, have woke up to the fact that the 
 laws of a country must be radically wrong where it 
 is impossible without let or hindrance in less than a 
 century to so manipulate the sources of trade and 
 the avenues of industry that the results, less the 
 meager pay of the laborer, are the colossal fortunes 
 of the Vanderbilts, $200,000‘000, Goulds, $104,000,- 
 000, Mackays, $90,000,000, Stewarts, $80,000,000, 
 Astors, $50,000,000. Why the wealth of these five 
 men alone amounts to the enormous sum of five 
 hundred and twenty-four millions of dollars, or more 
 than half a billion of dollars. 
 
 The people see that our cities, villages and towns. 
 
17 
 
 teeming with toiling millions, are the result of the la¬ 
 bor of those millions ; that the accumulation of such 
 immense fortupes in so short a time, means that the 
 labor, which is the base of all this civilization, has 
 been inadequately paid. That these tremendous 
 millions are really the profits of these capitalists on 
 the labor of America’s poorer sons. And they say 
 to-day it is not right. It shall be no longer. Thai 
 men all over this broad land shall be paid , and paid 
 adequately for their labor. The only question re¬ 
 maining is how to do it. The people are with you. 
 You have won their sympathy . Now win their votes, 
 by which, and by which only, will you be able to 
 celebrate bye and bye through patient continuance 
 in well-doing, that coming independence day of the 
 toilers of the land. 
 
 That day is sure to come. A few years ago a 
 prominent railroad official, when in Plattsburgh, 
 was reported to have said when conversing about- 
 cutting down the men’s pay : “We propose to pay 
 our men just enough wages so they can keep body 
 and soul together, and do us a good, long day’s 
 work, and if you see any laborer getting well off in 
 our employ, let us know.” What that meant you 
 can judge as well as I. 
 
 Knights of Labor of Saranac, much is committed 
 to your trust. Remember the lessons of history 
 that no good cause has ^ver thrived by violence and 
 anarchy, nor by passive acquiesence, incurable evils, 
 and that the peaceful method of educating the peo¬ 
 ple to unite with you is the surest and quickest way 
 in the end of accomplishing your design. Then you 
 can pass laws and enforce them which shall greatly 
 assist in the good work of elevating the condition of 
 the laborer. The time nov; is that a board of rail- 
 
18 
 
 road directors can build a magnificent rolling palace 
 car out of the earnings of their laborers for the di¬ 
 rectors exclusive use once or twice a year, and then 
 dock the hands 10 cents or 25 cents per day on ac¬ 
 count of the hard times. 
 
 I say that when such and worse injustice can no 
 longer be done; when the profits of labor are no 
 longer spent on the one hand by the capitalist in such 
 useless show, nor on the other hand by the laborer 
 for selfish gratification of depraved appetites; 
 when capitalists shall be allowed a fair interest 
 on the money invested, the expenses of the 
 business paid, then the profits divided up among 
 the lawful earners of it—then and not till then 
 can we call our land the Eldorado of the laborer 
 or the home of the tree. The common people, 
 the horny-handed son of toil, the poor student 
 and a legal protective tariff have made America 
 what she is. fetter the condition of the multitude, 
 and you hetter the condition of all. 
 
 Now, as citizens of our common country, let us in 
 the beautiful and appropriate verse of Longfellow : 
 
 Then be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate; 
 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 
 Learn to labor and to wait. 
 
 And with these Stars atig Stripes floating above 
 us, vow eternal vigilance to the cause of liberty 
 and elevated labor, which is the prosperity of the 
 people. 
 
 One word more and I am done. Great are the 
 toils of the laborer; many are his sacrifices and 
 hardships; but they are not chiefly for his experi¬ 
 ence here. Glorious as is the birthright of an 
 
19 
 
 American citizen, a boon not to be despised, there is 
 another citizenship for which all these labors and 
 toils are really fitting you beyond this life, prepared 
 for you by the Supreme Architect, Builder and 
 Laborer, the Grand Master Workman of the uni¬ 
 verse, who bids you strive for that citizenship in that 
 land awaiting us all beyond the grave, who en¬ 
 courages you to persevere in every grand work—to 
 labor not so much for the meat that perisheth, but 
 rather for that which cometh down from Heaven. 
 And He stands now at the head of the centuries, His 
 voice echoing adown the aisles of the ages, pro¬ 
 claiming success and everlasting rest to him when 
 life shall end, and “to him that overcometh will I 
 give to eat of the tree of life in the midst of the 
 paradise of God.” 
 
« 
 
 jm. Z&-' 
 
 ■ 
 
 ' ' ■ ■ , •