The Shasta courier., 1872-09-28

see DelOre HE Hcu WHOm iCOoSihAC oo tol-
ing men; men who have to support the wives of
their bosoms and the children of their love by
manual labor | call the earnest attention of
these men to this terrible struggle through which
we have passed, and to what has been achieved
for the poor toiling men of this country during
the last twelve years. / feel that | have the
right to speak for toling men and to toiling men.
| was born here in your county OF Strafford. |
was born in poverty; want sat by my cradle. |
know what it is to ask 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 months schooling each
year, and at the end of eleven years of hard
work, a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which
brought me eightyfour dollars Eighty four
dollars for eleven years of hard toll | never
spent the amount of one dollar in money, count
ing every penny, from the time was born until
| was twenty-one years Of age. | know what it
is 10 travel weary miles and ask my fellow-men
to give me leave to toll
remember that in October, 1888, | walked
into your village from my native town, went
through your mills, seeking employment. If
anybody had offered me nine dollars a month |
should have accepted it gladly | went to Sal
mon Falls, | went to Dover, | went to New
market, and tried to get work, without success,
and | returned home footsore and weary, but not
discouraged. | put my pack on my back and
walked to where | now live, in Massachusetts,,
and learned a mechanics trade. | know the
hard lot that toiling men have to endure in this
world, and every pulsation of my heart, every
conviction of my judgment, every aspiration of
my SOUL puts me on the side of the toiling men
of my country-ay, of all countries. | became
an anti-slavery thirty-six years ago, because
the poor bondman was the lowest, most degraded
and helpless type of manhood. An antislavery
man from conviction is by logical necessity not
only the nexible foe of the doctrine that capital
should own aborers, 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 fetters from
four and a half million aboring men and women !;
converted them from things into men and women.
In making them free, it struck down that proud,
naughty and domineering aristocracy of the
South that held the doctrine-and proclaimed it,
too-that "capital should own labor" that the
men who toiled for wages were the mud-sills of
society," that the slavery of workingmen pro-
duced "a class of gentlemen, who were the
substitutes for order of nobility" Those
were the doctrines proclaimed in ears for
forty years by the Calhouns, the McDuffies, the
Hammonds the Rhetts, the Ruffins, the Fitz-
hughs, the Herschell v Johnsons, and men of
that class, who laid down the doctrine boldly
everywhere that slavery the normal cond-
ton of laboring men, black and white" In
emancipating these four and half million black
men and women we struck down the power Of
the owners of workingmen and workingwomen
in this country forever. They made labor dis
honorable in eight hundred thousand square
miles of the United States, in the sunny South,
as they were wont to call it. Laboring men
from abroad would not 90 there to toll; northern
laboring men would not go there to live; they
would not stand by the side of the fettere6 bond
men where labor was dishonored. But by the
steady, persistent adherence to principle of the
men trained in the faith of opposition to slavery,
who now stand in the ranks of the Republican
party, all this has been changed, so that to-day
the laboring men of New England can stand up
in South Carolina by the graves of Calhoun, of
McDuffe of Pickens, of the leaders of the slave
power, who proclaimed free society failure
that free men and women, when they emerged
from bondage into freedom were classed in four
subdivisions, " the hireng, the beggar, the thief
and the prostitute and look up and be proud
in the midst of their toll" We have made
labor honorable, even in the rice swamps of the
Carolinas and Georgia; we have taken the brand
of dishonor from the brow of labor throughout
the country; and in doing that grand work we
dignity of laboring men, than was ever achieved
by all the parties that arose in this country from
the time the Pilgrims put their feet upon Ply
mouth Rock up to the year 1860. Applause. |
And that grand and immortal achievement
is not all We have opened that eight hun
dred thousand square miles to free labOring
men; they go there now, they are going
there now. The German, the Englishman, the
Irishman, the New England Yankee, the man
of the middle States, of the Northwest, can
go there now, engage in the mechanic arts, cul-
tivate the SOIL and in all the pursuits of life no
longer feel the degradation that rested upon
workingmen when labor was extorted only by the
lash. Let the man who tolls for wages, whether
in the mill, on the farm, or in the mechanic shop,
realize what has been done during these last
dozen years to lift from toll the badge of dis
honor and to open the great South to the free
Iaboring men of the world Let him remember
with grateful heart that he owes it all, under
Providence, to the Republican party
The Republican party was brought especially
into being, and won the victory when it elected
Abraham Lincoln to save the magnificent ter
ritores of the United States to the free laborng
men of our country, their children, and their
childrens children, " while grass shall grow and
water run" 1t saved that magnificent territory
to freedom Auction-blocks bloodhounds, the
lash, chains, manacles, cannot go there now,
They have sunk down to the place from whence
they came-to the bottomless pit, and the lower
deep of the bottomless pit.
The Republican party maintains the policy
of the small farms against the great plantations.
The Democratic party joined with the South on
that issue, as it did in everything and on every
issue. We passed the homestead 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
andless men, that they might have small farms,
rather than that few men might have great
plantations. We were defeated but the first
wear the Republican party came into power, in
the midst of the struggle for national existence,
it passed the homestead bill, and saved the pub
lie lands to the free laboring men of this country
forever and forever.
Here tonight point you to these magnificent
achievements; | point you to what has been
accomplished in these twelve years for the work
ingmen, the mechanics, the free laborers, the
men who toll for wages and say again to you
that those achievements surpass all that had
been achieved in our country from the earliest
settlement of the colonies up to the year 1861,
when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated Presi-
dent of the United States. What claim, then,
has the Democratic party to the vote OF work