The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-12-13
WI. l.. A.
Lecture by Col. Homer n. sprague.

Col. Homer B Sprague lectured last evening
at City Hall before fair audience, upon the
subject Riches and what Constitutes Them -
The concert by Chandler prior to the lecture
was. as usual interesting, and kept the audi.
ence in good hnmor until the arrival of the lee
turer. The principal points of the discourse
are substantially as follows:
The lecturerer stated that labor was the first
price paid for all articles and commodities, and
was the first standard by which all things were
measured. How can we arrive at the value of
human bone and muscle? The price of a slave
in the time of the war was about eighteen hmm
dred dollars in gold, and that was his market
value A white mar will earn say five thou
sand dollars a year, and thus we see that labor
is riches. Five thousand dollars was the cash
value paid by railroad in New York state to
the relatives of man who was killed in an ac-
cident upon their road. New York with pop
ulation of eight hundred thousand, reckons the
cash value of her laboring classes at more per
annum than her taxable property. The chief
riches of country do not consist therefore in
its estate and merchandise, but in its laborjpg
classes. A country cannot exist without labor
gentlemen cannot live without labor to support
them, and those who tried it in jamestown in
1907, found it to be lamentable failure 1t is
labor that has made the steam engine that has
connected continents by the pulsations of the
electric telegraph, that has populated the bound
less West of America. that has planted over
the world the throbbing arteries of trade and
industry, ana that has made occidental reality
outstrip oriental romance.
In England, that great centre OF trade and
commerce. work is honored but not the worker:
and what does English aristocracy rest upon?
Is it not permeated through and through with
poverty? Yes, in sight of the dome of St
Paups are the abodes of those who live in squat
or and wretchedness, and also those of their
pur.e-proud and arstocratic masters The
great object of government should be to protect
labor and the laboring man, but does it? Shall
not the laboring man have share in the fruits
of his industry? What is the object of all the
strikes and workngmen's unions? 1t is the
blind groupings of the giant, labor, who dimly
sees the injustice that is done him. and he
strikes for cooperative trade, for more privi-
leges and for more just share in the results of
his efforts.
Intellect is riches. The brain that invents
and creates labor saving machines is not, as
many suppose, an enemy to the laoorlng class
es; and if apy Inconvenience arise they are
but local and temporary. They open new ave-
nues OF employment to the multitudes; they
give new impetus to that branch of business
OF which they were the offspring, and they
cheaper commodities that may have been pre-
viously only within the reach of the rich and
bring them within the grasp of the poor. What
would the world have lost had it not had the
genius of Fulton, of Watts of Milton, and of
Shakespeare. Had they never been known, or
their works recorded, would the world stand as
it does today, SO far advanced in riches and in
Intellect?
But brain is often overrated. Elihu BGrritt
killed his calves on hay tea, and not all the
philosophers of jamestown were able to turn
pyrites into gold "a sound body and robust
y all OF the worlds riches.'' Nearly half of
the men of power and of intellect, have
been blest with sound bodies and robust
health, it was necessity, they needed it, for
without they could not as they have done, have
fought half so manfully in the struggle, and
placed themselves on the mountain tops so high
above the level of the masses.
The CLEANS of power in others deprived of
health WIRE generally ftful and transitory.
Who can tell to what depths their imagination
might have wandered, or what their genius
might have created had health been allotted
them.
Courage is riches. The city of Thebes with
its massive walls and brazen gateways was not
better protected than was old Sparta, with its
ten thousand soldiers
Integrity is riches. Nothing is SO economi-
cal as honesty, and nothing so expensive as
dishonesty.
Precious memories are riches. The memory
OF the Greeks at Salamis and at Thermopyla,
the memory of Plymouth Rock and of Wash
ington and of the events surrounding all these
are riches to the world, for they give it new inn
pulses and teach its legislators to reason by the
past. Good books are riches for they preserve
for us the Thoughts of ages past, and thus we
may take lessons from them. And lastly the
tine arts are riches for they lead into higher
life the minds of the millions who know of
them and contemplate them. And if the
work of man is productive of so much good how
much more that of nature aud natures God.
Here the lecturer gave brief epltome Of his
lecture and closed by saying that it was "Men
of thought and men of action that must clear
the way for the worlds progress