ow
all the country-seats on the banks of the Hudson, and all the fine
houses on Madison Square, and Brooklyn Heights, and Bunker Hill, and
Rittenhouse Square, and Beacon Street, and all the bricks and timber
and stone will just fall back on the bare head of American labor. The
worst enemies of the working-classes in the United States and Ireland
are their demented coadjutors. Assassination--the assassination of
Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin,
Ireland, in the attempt to avenge the wrongs of Ireland, only turned
away from that afflicted people millions of sympathizers. The recent
attempt to blow up the House of Commons, in London, had only this
effect: to throw out of employment tens of thousands of innocent Irish
people in England.

In this country the torch put to the factories that have discharged
hands for good or bad reason; obstructions on the rail-track in front
of midnight express trains because the offenders do not like the
president of the company; strikes on shipboard the hour they were
going to sail, or in printing-offices the hour the paper was to go to
press, or in mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or on house
scaffoldings so the builder fails in keeping his contract--all these
are only a hard blow on the head of American labor, and cripple its
arms, and lame its feet, and pierce its heart. Take the last great
strike in America--the telegraph operators' strike--and you have to
find that the operators lost four hundred thousand dollars' worth of
wages, and have had poorer wages ever since. Traps sprung suddenly
upon employers, and violence, never took one knot out of the knuckle
of toil, or put one farthing of wages into a callous palm. Barbarism
will never cure the wrongs of civilization. Mark that!

Frederick the Great admired some land near his palace at Potsdam, and
he resolved to get it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the miller
three times the value of the property. The miller would not take it,
because it was the old homestead, and he felt about as Naboth felt
about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. Frederick the Great was a
rough and terrible man, and he ordered the miller into his presence;
and the king, with a stick, in his hand--a stick with which he
sometimes struck his officers of state--said to this miller: "Now, I
have offered you three times the value of that property, and if you
won't sell it I'll take it anyhow." The miller said, "Your majest