for the last twenty-five years, and what looked to be a burden almost impossible to bear has been removed, under the Republican fiscal system, until now it is less than $1,000,000,000, and with the payment of this vast sum of money the nation has not been impoverished. The individual citizen has not been burdened or bankrupted. National and individual prosperity have gone steadily on, until our wealth is so great as to be almost incomprehensible when put into figures.

"First, then, to retain our own market, under the democratic system of raising revenue by removing all protection, would require our producers to sell at as low a price and upon as favorable terms as our foreign competitors. How could that be done? In one way onlyby producing as cheaply as those who would seek our markets. What would that entail? An entire revolution in the methods and condition and conduct of business here, a leveling down through every channel, to the lowest line of our competitors; our habits of living would have to be changed, our wages cut down 50 per cent more, our comfortable homes exchanged for hovels, our independence yielded up, our citizenship demoralized. These are conditions inseparable to free trade; these would be necessary if we would command our own market among our own people; and if we would invade the world's markets, harsher conditions and greater sacrifices would be demanded of the masses. Talk about depression-we would then have it in its fulWe would revel in unrestrained trade. Everything would, indeed, be cheap, but how costly when measured by the degradation which would ensue! When merchandise is the cheapest, men are the poorest, and the most distressing experiences in the history of our country-ay, in all human history-have been when everything was the lowest and cheapest, measured by gold, for everything was the highest and the dearest, measured by labor. We want no return of cheap times in our own country. We have no wish to adopt the conditions of other nations. Experience has demonstrated that for us and ours, and for the present and the future, the protective system meets our wants, our conditions, promotes the national design, and will work out our destiny better than any other.

ness.

"With me, this position is a deep conviction, not a theory. I believe in it and thus warmly advocate it because enveloped in it are my country's highest development and greatest prosperity; out of it come the greatest gains to the people, the greatest comforts to the masses, the widest encouragement for manly aspirations, with the largest rewards, dignifying and elevating our citizenship, upon which the safety, and purity, and permanency of our political system depend."-House of Representatives, May 7, 1890.

THE BLACK COLOR-BEARER.

"Our black allies must neither be deserted nor forsaken. Every right secured them by the constitution must be as surely given to them as though God had put upon their faces the color of the AngloSaxon race. They fought for the flag in the war, and that flag, with all it represents and stands for, must secure them every constitutional right in peace. At Baton Rouge, the first regiment of the Black brigade, before starting for Port Hudson, received at the hands of its white colonel-Colonel Stafford-its regimental colors in a speech from the colonel, which ended with this injunction:

"Color-bearer, guard, defend, protect, die for, but do not surrender, these colors.'

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"To which the sergeant replied—and he was as black as my coat: 'Colonel, I'll return those flags to you in honor, or I'll report to God the reason why.'

"He fell mortally wounded, in one of the desperate charges in front of Port Hudson, with his face to the enemy, with those colors in his clenched fist pressed upon his breast. He did not return the colors, but God above him knew the reason why.

"Against those who fought on the other side in that great conflict we have no resentment; for them we have no bitterness. We would impose upon them no punishment; we would inflict upon them no indignity. They are our brothers. We would save them even from humiliation. But I will tell you what we insist upon, and we will insist upon it until it is secured-that the settlement made between Grant and Lee at Appomattox, which was afterward embodied in the constitution of the United States, shall be obeyed and respected in every part of this Union. More we have never asked, less we will not have.”— New York, "The American Volunteer Soldier," May 30, 1889.

THE AMERICAN WORKINGMAN.

"The ideals of yesterday are the truths of to-day. What we hope for and aspire to now we will realize in the future if we are prudent and careful. If right is on our side, and we pursue resolute but orderly methods to secure our end, it is sure to come. There is no better way

of securing what we want, and what we believe is best for us and those for whom we have a care, than the old way of striving earnestly and honestly for it. The labor of the country constitutes its strength and its wealth, and the better that labor is conditioned, the higher its rewards, the wider its opportunities, and the greater its comforts and refinements, the better will be our civilization, the more sacred will be

our homes, the more capable our children, and the nobler will be the destiny which awaits us. We can only walk in the path of right, resolutely insisting on the right, always being sure at the same time that we are right ourselves, and time will bring the victories. To labor is accorded its full share of the advantages of a government like ours. None more than the laborers enjoy the benefits and blessings which our free institutions make. This country differs in many and essential respects from other countries, and, as is often said, it is just this difference which makes us the best of all. It is the difference between our political equality and the caste conditions of other nations which elevates and enlightens the American laborer, and inspires within him a feeling of pride and manhood. It is the difference in recompense received by him for his labor and that received by the foreigner which enables him to acquire for himself and his a cheery home and the comforts of life. It is the difference between Our educational facilities and the less liberal opportunities for learning in other lands which vouchsafes to him the priceless privilege of rearing a happy, intelligent, and God-fearing family. The great Matthew Arnold has truly said, 'America holds the future.' It is in commemoration of the achievements of labor in the past that Labor day was established. It was eminently fitting that the people should turn aside on one day of the year from their usual vocation and rejoice together over the unequaled prosperity that has been vouchsafed to them. The triumphs of American labor cannot easily be recited nor its trophies enumerated. But, great as they have been in the past, I am fully convinced that there are richer rewards in store for labor in the future."Cincinnati, O., Sept. 1, 1891.

THE EIGHT-HOUR LAW.

"Mr. Speaker:-I am in favor of this bill. It has been said that it is a bill to limit the opportunity of the workingman to gain a livelihood. This is not true; it will have the opposite effect. So far as the government of the United States as an employer is concerned, in the limitation for a day's work provided in this bill to eight hours, instead of putting any limitation upon the opportunity of the American freeman to earn a living, it increases and enlarges his opportunity. Eight hours under the laws of the United States constitute a day's work. That law has been on our statute books for twenty-two years. In all these years it has been 'the word of promise to the ear,' but by the government of the United States it has been 'broken to the hope.' the government and its officials should be swift to execute and enforce

its own laws; failure in this particular is most reprehensible.

Now, it must be remembered that when we constitute eight hours a day's work, instead of ten hours, every four days give an additional day's work to some workingman who may not have any employment at all. It is one more day's work, one more day's wages, one more opportunity for work and wages, an increased demand for labor. I am in favor of this bill as it is amended by the motion of the gentleman from Maryland. It applies now only to the labor of men's hands. It applies only to their work. It does not apply to material, it does not apply to transportation. It only applies to the actual labor, skilled or unskilled, employed on public works and in the execution of the contracts of the government. And the government of the United States ought, finally and in good faith, to set this example of eight hours as constituting a day's work required of laboring men in the service of the United States. The tendency of the times the world over is for shorter hours for labor, shorter hours in the interest of health, shorter hours in the interest of humanity, shorter hours in the interest of the home and the family; and the United States can do no better service to labor and to its own citizens than to set the example to states, to corporations and to individuals employing men by declaring that, so far as the government is concerned, eight hours shall constitute a day's work, and be all that is required of its laboring force. This bill should be passed. This bill should be passed. My colleague, Mr. Morey, has stated what we owe the family in this connection, and Cardinal Manning, in a recent article, spoke noble words on the general subject when he said:

''But if the domestic life of the people be vital above all, if the peace, the purity of homes, the education of children, the duties of wives and mothers, the duties of husbands and of fathers be written in the natural law of mankind, and if these things are sacred, far beyond anything that can be sold in the market, then I say, if the hours of labor resulting from the unregulated sale of a man's strength and skill shall lead to the destruction of domestic life, to the neglect of children, to turning wives and mothers into living machines, and of fathers and husbands into-what shall I say, creatures of burden?I will not say any other word-who rise up before the sun, and come back when it is set, wearied and able only to take food and lie down to rest, the domestic life of men exists no longer, and we dare not go on in this path.'

"We owe something to the care, the elevation, the dignity, and the education of labor. We owe something to the workingmen and the families of the workingmen throughout the United States, who con

stitute the large body of our population, and this bill is a step in the right direction."-House of Representatives, August 28, 1890.

EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP.

"Mr. President, Members of the Faculty and Students of the Ohio State University, and Fellow Citizens:-The Prussian maxim, 'Whatever you would have appear in the life of a nation, you must put into your schools,' I would amend: 'What you would have appear in the life of a nation, you must put into your homes and schools.' The beginning of education is in the home, and the great advantage of the American system of instruction is largely due to the elevated influences of the happy and prosperous homes of our people. There is the foundation, and a most important part of education. pure, sincere, and good, the child is usually well prepared to receive all the advantages and inspirations of more advanced education. The American home, where honesty, sobriety, and truth preside, and the simple every-day virtues are practised, is the nursery of true education. Out of such homes usually come the men and women who make our citizenship pure and elevating, and the state and nation strong and enduring.

If the home life be

"It is unfortunate that the great National University which Washington so strenuously advocated was not long ago established, with an endowment commensurate with the dignity and importance of our government, to which all the universities of all the states would be auxiliary institutions and tributary in the same degree that our public schools are becoming more and more training schools for the state universities. To my mind the need of such a university is as essential today for the welfare of the republic as the most enlightened and progressive nation of the world as it was in the days of our first greatest president. His great character and broad comprehension not only dominated the age in which he lived, but his advice may yet be followed to the great advantage of the youth of this and future ages.

"In the limitations of an address of this character, it is impossible to do more than allude to the great work of the states of the Union, in their independent relations, in behalf of education. It has surpassed even the high standard of the nation. Two items may be given in illustration: The total expenditures of the country in support of the common schools in 1870 were $63,300,000; in 1880, $78,100,000; and in 1890, $140,370,000, an average increase of nearly $4,000,000 per annum. The value of school property has also greatly increased. In 1870 it was $130.380,000; in 1880, $209,571,000; and in 1890, $342,