Year: 1878

nave Deen avoided. The question is,
having arrived at home, shall we 90 in
and rest, or shall we spitefully retrace
our steps and come in more weary still
over the rough but less rough way that
our guide should have chosen in
the first place. Republicans may
well be proud of the achievement of
their party in lifting so high and
| settling so firmly the national
credit. As l said in the canvass
of 1876, this greenback boy is of Re-
| publican parentage. Democrats sneered
at his birth and reviled his youth, but
he won his way with the people. We
have led him up, till he stands to-day
crowned on the golden summit of re-
sumption. We may now say to all
questioners, as did the parents of him
who was born blind: {" He is of age:
let him speak for himself"


The claim that our commercial de-
preston is the result of deficiency of
currency is mere bald assertion. If
money is scarce, will any one tell us
why nearly $2,000,00 in a dav last
week were invested in a Government
per cent bond? Or why other hun
dreds of millions are seeking a safe in
vestment at and per cent. interest?
II money was scarce it would be high,
but no man who hears me ever knew
of its selling so cheap. To say the
currency was contracted and financial
distress followed, therefore the con-
traction produced the distress, is very
shallow logic. Why, then, shall we
repeal the resumption actP If
resumption ever means contrac-
ton, it does not now; contraction
is forbidden by law. Resumptio
will set free the precious metals
Those who oppose resumption are
contractiOnists, unless they will avow
their purpose not only to keep our cur
rency irredeemable but to increase its
volume.


Nothing is more fatal to the interests
of labor than anarchy. A condition of
society in which law is supreme is for
the poor man the only tolerable one.
The law reinforces his weakness and
makes him the peer of the strongest.
1t is his tower. If he forsakes or de-
stroys it, his folly or his fury delivers
him a prey to the strong. In this land
of universal suffrage, if he will be wise
and moderate, no right legislation can
tarry long. That which is Just will not
be denied. But fury and threats and
force will not persuade. They provoke
their like, and in this clash and strife
all must suffer. One of the most dis
tressing and alarming features of our
time is the growing hostility between
capital and labor. Those who should
be friends have been drawing apart
and glaring tiercely at each other.


The Republican party has given to
| the laboring man free homestead on
the public lands. 1t has emancipated
| 100000 laborers from slavery, and
brought by the same charter free labor
itself to an honor it could not attain
while companioned with slavery. In
our State platform several other re-
forms within the scope of State legisla-
| ton are proposed, to all of which give
my hearty approval. Among them is
a homestead law which shall secure
AGAINST sale or execution for debt the
home of the distressed debtor, and pre-
serve to his family roof-tree when the
storm of adversity breaks upon them.
To such reforms, and these specifica-
| tions do not at all exhaust the list, the
Republican party is pledged. The
practical knowledge which the laboring
man has of the evils under which he
suffers should be reinforced by the
wisest thought of those who are learned
in political economy and the law.
Every aid which public sentiment and
the law can give-withOut trenching
upon Constitutional restrictions or the
rights of others-waits only for kind
ly call But it will not answer to the
summons of hate and violence.


1t seems to me, and to this | ask the
serious thought of all classes, that the
pressing wants of the time are: First,
that lawlessness, communism in all its
forms, threats, and class hatreds shall
be put away forever. If the need of
this is more urgent to one class than
another, it is to the honest laboring
man who is out of work. Threats and
fears can drive money cut of active
employment in double-barred safes and
into four per cent. bonds only security
and confidence can call it back to its
natural partnership with labor. Sec
ond, that we put our currency on an
honest basis-where those who buy and
sell and those who work can know
when they contract what the dollar of
payment is to be. Third, that we lift up
our eyes toward the hills and recognise
the faint but sure signs of the morning