take various brands of liver
pills [laughter], to chew "Virgin leaf," or to "give the baby Castoria;"
but we have green meadows bright with shining brooks; we have high
mountains and pleasant valleys as well as marsh and sand dunes; and,
instead of liver-pills and Castoria, by a large majority, we are for the
gold cure. [Great applause.]

I cannot let this opportunity pass without referring to the great work
which this Chamber has wrought for the state and city whose name it
bears and for the country at large. It is a long interval since these
dinners were held at Fraunce's tavern, but during all that period, this
institution has stood as the pilot, the guide, the director, and pioneer
in all wise policies of commerce and trade and patriotism. [Applause.]
You have bestowed not only wisdom and enlightenment and courage on the
world of commerce, but millions of dollars upon the unfortunate victims
of fire and flood and fever. You have been the promoters of good fortune
and the comforters of misfortune. I wish that the people of this land
could understand how much true and loyal patriotism, how much
disinterested devotion to the highest interests of the country are found
among just such men as compose the Chamber of Commerce of the State of
New York. [Applause.]

During your corporate life you have seen a great country grow into
independence; you have seen it advance and extend along all the lines of
progress and prosperity until the seven wonders of the world, of which
we learned in our youth, have been lost sight of and forgotten in the
thousand greater wonders of this industrial age. You have seen
education become the common provision of every State for every child of
the Republic. You have seen intelligence increase; you have seen reason
and reasonableness, the ability to take right views of things, become
more universal among this people than among the people of any other
land. [Applause.] You have seen the average of comfort and prosperity
higher among all classes in this country than could be found at any
other age of the world and any other land upon the surface of the earth.
[Applause.]

And yet there are complainings, there are discontents, and there are
dissatisfactions, and gloomy minds think they see, in these, evidences
and signs that there is coming a social revolution, an overturning of
our system of popular government, and the substitution for it of some
plan whereby, by legal enactments, all the citize