for fair wages and decent treatment. In early life I had
been a working-man myself, and I thought I could understand the feelings
and sympathize with the trials of the laborer from the standpoint of
personal experience. I was sorely mistaken. The laboring man of to-day
is a different proposition from the man who did manual labor "before the
war." That he is more intelligent, more provident, happier, or better in
any way, I sincerely doubt; that he is restless, dissatisfied, and less
efficient, I believe; that he is unreasonable in his demands and
regardless of the interests of his employer, I know. There are many
shining exceptions, and to these I look for the ultimate regeneration of
labor; but the rule holds true.

I do not believe that the principles of life have changed in forty
years. I do not believe that an intelligent, able-bodied man need be a
servant all his life, or that industry and economy miss their rewards,
or that there is any truth in the theory that men cannot rise out of the
rut in which they happen to find themselves. The trouble is with the
man, not with the rut. He spends his time in wallowing rather than in
diligently searching for an outlet or in honestly working his way up to
it. Heredity and environment are heavy weights, but industry and
sobriety can carry off heavier ones. I have sympathy for weakness of
body or mind, and patience for those over whom inheritance has cast a
baleful spell; but I have neither patience nor sympathy for a strong man
who rails at his condition and makes no determined effort to better it.

The time and money wasted in strikes, agitations, and arbitrations, if
put to practical use, would better the working-man enough faster than
these futile efforts do. I have no quarrel with unions or combinations
of labor, so far as they have the true interests of labor for an object;
but I do quarrel with the spirit of mob rule and the evidences of
conspicuous waste, which have grown so rampant as to overshadow the
helpful hand and to threaten, not the stability of society--for in the
background I see six million conservative sons of the soil who will look
to the stability of things when the time comes--but the unions
themselves.

I remember my first summer on a farm. It lasted from the first day of
April to the thirty-first day of October, and on the evening of that day
I carried to my father $28, the full wage for seven months. I could not
have spent one cent during that time,