Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1856-10-01

20 educate ms chlldren ana 10 ieau d nie Vi
lavish expenditure. But do mean to say,
that man in slave State, who hopes by his
own labor to support himself and raise his fam
Iy, has no chance of seeing any of them ught
TO read and write, in any just sense of the ex-
preston. do mean to say that there are no
public schools for such do mean to say there
are no libraries for such and do mean to say
that the life of laboring mana purely labor
ing man--in the slave States is life of degra-
dation, shutting out every hope of advance
ment to himself or his children. [applause] and
mean to say, my feliow-citizens, that because
the free laborers understand this, that beautiful
region of country constituting the southern
States, is SO sparsely populated, while here at
the n forth, population is already becoming too
dense. You know the efforts that are requir
ed to be made during the winter in New York,
and Boston, and Philadelphia, to ferret out the
laboring poor who may chance to be unem-
ployed and are suffering.
You know that when there is any derange-
ment in the financial affairs of our country, or
in the commercial affairs of the world, there
comes a glut in the labor market-our laborers
are unemployed, our poor laboring women are
As said before, why do they not emigrate to
the s.sunny south ?'' 1t is because times are
still harder there. What does the laboring
man, or the laboring woman, get for wages in
slave State When L asked the question at
ameeting the other night, the response from
one of my hearers was ssnir,'' and it was right.
Ianswered that it was 'sniehts kom raus," and
worse than that, because, not only does the
slave give his labor, but he gives his children
as pay for food and clothing. Do you know
that the time was, when slave babe was worth
but twenty dollars in this country. When
stated the other night, at meeting, that
slave babe was now worth fifty dollars, gen.
tleman from Missouri, who was present-aFre-
mont man, [loud applausel-told me that was
mistaken, that the average value of healthy
slave babe, at the hour of its birth, is now one
hundred dollars. The poor slave mother is
toiling in the cotton field, toiling in the ktch-
en-, toiling as the dressing maid to her mis-
tress; and the poor slave father is laboring in
the field, or in the blacksmith shop, or in the
iron works. or in the tobacco factory, or in the
cotton factories of Savannah-for slaves work
in them all. When a child is to be born to
the woman, it inspires no hope in her heart,
and no aspiration in that of the father. =.
Can the laborer work in the midst of sys-
tenn of this kind You do expect to rear your
children; you welcome the doctors bill,' the
first expense they bring you. You clothe them;
you provide for them in advance, and when
you labor hard to provide them sustenance,
you do it cheerfnlly, because in them your
hope lives, and their future gilds your down
ward path in life.
And, again, ask you, laborer, can you say
that others shall be doomed to labor in all the
twelve Pennsylvania embraced in Kansas ter
rtory, beside that system of servile labor p
Will you, working men of Pennsylvania, for
ever exclude your posterity from all that ter
ritory acquired by the common country of
which you are citizens? do not believe you
will. Let us trust, fellow-citizens, that it may
not be done.
By what is called the Democratic rule, IL is
said that the South will be injured if she can
not take her slaves into all our vast territory.
Who and what is the South2 The south has
six millions of free people, living in States
which embrace over nine hundred thousand
square miles of territory, and they have with
them over three millions of slaves. What is
the North They have not nine hundred thou
sand miles of territory they have but $50, 900
miles, on which there are dwelling this day
thirteen millions of free people. Now, say
the South has forced this issue upon us, and
suppose accept it as an issue in which one
or the other must be injured, shall the injured
party be the sir millions who have SOC, 900
square miles of territory to dwell in, or the 13
millions, who have but 45O, 900 miles. Shall
slavery be hemmed in, or shall the frecmen of
the North be crushed into that little space p
This is the question, my fellow-citizens, for
you to decide, and as you vote at the next
Presidential election, SO, perhaps, will you in
Philadelphia decide it.
But, say you, slavery is in the States, and we
have nothing to do with it. So say /. The
Constitution, you say, protects it in theStates.
So says every Republican and we agree that
it is our duty, as citizens loyal to the Consti-
tuition, to protect slavery in the States; but
the question for US to decide is, shall it go
into the Territories Shall the white labor
ing man be sscrushed out 20 Shall we be pent
up in these 10 States SO That the population
shall become so abundant, and land is high,
that wages will fall and the white man become
little better than slavel Where, my friends
will the European emigrant find footing W hen
New York, and Philadelphia, and Boston, and
Baltimore, and Cincinnati have their over
crowded streets, and lanes, and alleys, and
when there shall be no more land in the West
to emigrate tor What will be the condition
of the American laborer7 Will not twenty or
thirty wears hiring MS to Mr. Buohanan's stand