Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1872-03-06
WORDN For LABORLNG MEN.


The following remarks, made by Senator
Wilson in a late speech at Great Fa Is, n. H.,
are worthy of being read and considered by
all and particularly by those who are urged
by self II, led labor reformers to abandon the
republican party. The experience of MIR.
Wilson, as a laborer, in his younger days,
agrees with that of the mass of young men in
those old times, who will recognize the fdeli
ty of the picture drawn in the following, and
endorse the facts presented. Mr.. Wilson
sad
/ see before me men whom ! recognize as
toiing men; men who support the wives of
their bosoms and the children of their love
by manual labor. l cali the earnest attention
OF these men to this terrible struggle through
which we have passed, and to what has been
achieved for the poor toilng men OF this
country during the last twelve years. feel
that have the right to speak for toiling men
and to toiling women. Twas born here in your
county of Stafford. Twas born in poverty
want sat by my cradle. know what it is to ask
a mother for bread when she has none to give.
l left my home at ten years of age and served
an apprenticeship Of eleven years, receiving
a months schooling each year, and at the end
of eleven years of hard work, yoke of oxen
and six sheep, which brought me eighty four
dollars. A dollar would cover every penny I
spent from the time / was born until was
twenty one years of age. know what it is
to travel weary miles and ask my fellow men
to give me leave to toll. l remember that in
September, 1888, I walked into your village
from my native town, went through your mills,
seeking employment. Ifany body had offered
| 1lnr hnn
have accepted it gladly. l went down to
Salmon BALLS. went to Dover, l went to
Newmarket, aud tried to get work, without
success, and returned home, weary but not
discouraged, and put my pack on my back
and walked to the town where l now live, and
learned mechanics trade. l know the hard
lot that toiling men have to endure in this
world, and every pulsation of my heart. every
conviction of my judgment, puts me on the
side of the toiling men Of my country-aye,
| of all countries. l became an anti. slavery
man thirtysix years ago, because the poor
bondman was the lowest, most degraded, and
helpless type of manhood. An anti-slavery
man from conviction is, by logical necessity,
not only the inflexible foe of the doctrine that
capital should own labor, but the unyielding
friend of the rights of the sons and daughters
of toll.
Let us see what the republican party has
done for the laboring men of this country
during the last twelve years. 1t struck the
letters from four and half millions of labor
ing men and women. In making them free,
it struck down that proud, naughty, and dom
ineering aristocracy of the South that held the
doctrine-and proclaimed it, too-that 'capi-
tai should own labor" that the men who
| toiled for wages were ''the mud-sills of So
cety;" that the slavery of working men pro
| he
! substitutes for an order of nobility" Those
were the doctrines proclaimed in our ears for
forty years by the Calhouns, the McDuffies,
the Hammonds, the Rhetts, the Rufllns, the
Fitzhughs, the HerscheN V. Johnson's, and
men of that class, who laid down the doctrine
boldly everywhere that slavery was the nor
nal condition of labOring men, black ant
white" In black men and women, we strucl
down the power of that class of men in thi
: country forever. They made labor dshonor
able in eight hundred thousand square mile
of the United States, in the sunny South, a
they were wont to call it. Laboring men from
| abroad would not 60 there to toll, they woul'
not stand by the side of the fettered bonds
man, where labor was dishonored. But, b,
the steady, persistent adherence to principl
of the men trained in the full faith of opposi
ton to slavery, who now stand in the ranks o
the republican party, all this has been changed
so that to-day the laboring men of New Eng
lend can stand up in the Carolinas, by tn
graves of Calhoun, of McDuffie, OF Pickens
of the leaders of the slave-power, who pro
clainxed free society failure-that free mel
and women were classed in four subdivisions
"the hireling, the beggar, the thief, and tn
prostitute" and "look up and be proud in thu
midst of their TOLL We have made labor hon
orable, even in the rice swamps of the Caro-
| .,,l ha,,n tab
of dishonor from the brow Of labor through
out the country; and in doing that we hav,
done more for labor, for the honor and digni
ty of laboring men than was ever achieved By
all the parties that governed this country from
the time the Pilgrims put their feet upon Ply
mouth rock up to the year 1860. Applause.
! And that is not all. We have opened tina
100000 square miles to free laboring men
they can 20 there now, they are going there
now. The German, the English, the Irish
man, the New England Yankee, the men o
the Middle States, and of the Northwest, car
, 60 there now and engage in the mechanic
arts, in cultivating the soil, and no Longer
feel the degradation that rested upon work
ing men when labor was extorted from mel
by the lash. Let the man who tolls fo
wages, whether in the MILL on the farm, o.
in the machine shop, realize what has beer
done these last dozen years, to lift from tot
the badge of dishonor, and to open the grea
South to the free laboring men of the world
The Republican party was brought es
pecislly into being, and won the victory wheI
il elected Abraham Lincoln, to save the mag
nifcent Territories of the United States tt
the free laboring men of the country, theil
children and their children's children, "whilt
grass shall grow and water rum" and it saved
their magnificent territory to freedom. Auc-
ton blocks, bloodhounds, the lash, can not &c
there now. They have sunk down to the
place from whence they came-to the bottom
less pit, and the lower deep of the bottomless
pit.
The Republican party maintains the policy
Of the small farms against the great planta-
tons. The Democratic party joined with the
South on that issue, as it did in everything
and on every issue. We passed the home.
stead bill, and James Buchanan vetoed it
and the Democratic party supported him in
that veto. The object of that bill was to save
the vast public domain to landless men, thai
they might have small farms, rather than that
q few men might have gpcat plantations. We
were defeated; but the first year the Repub.
lican party came into power, in the midst OF
the struggle for national existence, we passed
the homestead bill and saved the public lands