een the stockholders of the factory and their employes.
Now, friends, there has also come a discouraging gloom upon this
country and the laboring men are beginning to feel that they are being
held down by a crust over their heads through which they find it
impossible to break, and the aristocratic money-owner himself is so
far above that he will never descend to their assistance. That is the
thought that is in the minds of our people. But, friends, never in the
history of our country was there an opportunity so great for the poor
man to get rich as there is now and in the city of Philadelphia. The
very fact that they get discouraged is what prevents them from getting
rich. That is all there is to it. The road is open, and let us keep it
open between the poor and the rich. I know that the labor unions have
two great problems to contend with, and there is only one way to solve
them. The labor unions are doing as much to prevent its solving as are
the capitalists to-day, and there are positively two sides to it. The
labor union has two difficulties; the first one is that it began to
make a labor scale for all classes on a par, and they scale down a man
that can earn five dollars a day to two and a half a day, in order to
level up to him an imbecile that cannot earn fifty cents a day. That
is one of the most dangerous and discouraging things for the working
man. He cannot get the results of his work if he do better work or
higher work or work longer; that is a dangerous thing, and in order to
get every laboring man free and every American equal to every other
American, let the laboring man ask what he is worth and get it--not
let any capitalist say to him: "You shall work for me for half of what
you are worth;" nor let any labor organization say: "You shall work for
the capitalist for half your worth." Be a man, be independent, and
then shall the laboring man find the road ever open from poverty to
wealth. The other difficulty that the labor union has to consider, and
this problem they have to solve themselves, is the kind of orators who
come and talk to them about the oppressive rich. I can in my
dreams recite the oration I have heard again and again under such
circumstances. My life has been with the laboring man. I am a laboring
man myself. I have often, in their assemblies, heard the speech of the
man who has been invited to address the labor union. The man gets up
before the assembled company of honest laboring men and h