The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1880-10-08
speech OF senator ConkIrnu.

MIR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW CITIZENS OF
Omo-not of Ohio alone, because Illinois is
here, and Pennsylvania is here: For well
come so great and so warm 1 beg you all to re-
celye strangers hearty thanks and yet not
all stranger because find the Western Re-
serve peopled with those whose brothers
= and whose kindred are neighbors of mine.
This Is, indeed a grand meeting. Its presid-
ing officer is the most Industrious citizen Of the
republic. 1t is held in grand Republican
State, a State which, trust, will give to the
country the next President of the United States
see the woods and even the rafters are full of
them. Ohio is the child of Virginia Connec-
ticut coded the Western Reserve, but Ohio is
the child of Virginia. Ohio is n years old this
year. Within the memory Of men still living
: the tomahawk and the scalping-knife did deeds
OF savage cruelty where now temples of religion,
temples of education, and temples of industry
outghtter each other in the broad sunlight
of wonderful civilization. When Ohio
began her people were few, and they were
strangers in the land. She began with As, 900
people. To-day she has 8, 200, 900. Biologists
/ Say that your soils, fertile and rich as they are
needing only to be tickled with hoe to laugh
with harvost-they say that more than half of
them came from far, far distant regions
clays and gravels washed by the surge and the
drift of gigantic primeval forests. This is typ
ical of the people l see around me. Not only
from New England, but from Old England, from
Ireland, from Scotland, from cold Norway and
Sweden, from warm, sunny France, from every
cline where humanity struggles, came to Ohio
men and women willing and eager to eat their
bread in the. sweat of their brow What
brought these men and women here? What
made Ohio the rendezvous and asylum of strug-
Cling humanity in all nationalities2 Liberty
and free labor. Ohio the child of Virginia, as
she rose from her cradle, turned her back upon
the precepts and examples of the mother State
The people who came here of all nationalities
were bound by one common tie they worshiped
one God under different forms, and they be-
heved in the batherhood of God and the BROTH
erhood of man. Here, on this soil, parent and
child have illustrated two opposing systems
of civilization. Ohio, respecting the dignity of
labor, believing honest labor the true founda-
ton and passport to all real progress
and greatness, has risen like a meteor
into the very zenith of the great republic.
Virginia, believing that labor is degrading. that
drudgery is mental and base, that capital should
own labor, has stagnated and weltered half
smothered in the pool of servile labor. One of
these systems has prospered exceedingly; the
other system has been enervated, has remained
PROSTATE, has cursed and rebelled, and AT LAST
drowned itself and slavery in its own blood
: Hand in hand with respect for labor has gone
in Ohio what we have learned to call the Amer
lean system. That is system of laying duties
on imports so as to tax those which come in
competition with our domestic industries.
What has been the result of this2 Diversi6a5
enterprise. The farmer has found at his own
door market for his productions and the
manufacturer has sold to the farmer. and
American labor has found reward. NOT in the
starving wages of the Old World, but in wages
which could buy the comforts and the luxuries
Of life.
: In the nexorasle logic of events twenty
years ago one of the systems triumnhed IN fly
choice of national rulers. By clear Main
majority the people chose for President Abra-
ham Lincoln. You may well cheer him. for
Lincoln was one Of those who darken nations