that a period of paralysis and rest would come into
all our business ventures. And what did come? I
will not attempt to picture the sad state in which our
country has been during the last two years. Call it a
panic it is hardly a proper name for it, for a panic
implies movement, and this was death. The character
of the condition was this : There was a shrinkage, a dry
ing up. Every man who had securities found them
shrinking. Every man who had real estate found
it shrinking in value and hard of sale. Every man
who worked for his living found his place imperiled
or his wages reduced. Whoever is responsible, what
ever policy is responsible for bringing this condition
upon the country, carries a very heavy burden for the



THE GREAT MASS MEETING 405

suffering that has come into the houses of our honest'
working people. Men who had never in their lives be
fore applied for charity came to the relief committees
with a blush upon their cheeks and with bowed
heads as for the first time they found that their own
arm, willing and strong, was unable to maintain
them and their families. They said at first:
"The Sherman bill," and our Republican friends
who had passed it promptly came forward to the
message of Mr. Cleveland and gave their votes for
the repeal of the bill. It was a measure which, judged
from the conditions which prevailed when it passed, I
believe was justified. But the expectations of those
who passed it were disappointed, and I believe its re
peal was justified.

But it became very apparent after the passage of
that bill that the crushing weight that rested upon
the industries and energies of this country had not
been lifted; it was there still, apparently with undi-
minished weight. The money that had been drawn
out of the banks flowed back, and from that day to
this the bank vaults in our great commercial cen
ters have been full of money, and there has been no use
for it. No new enterprises, no enlargement of the
lines of business in any direction, but contraction!
And from that day to this we have had a condition
in which money was abundant and cheap, but
abundant and cheap as it was, our people did not find
the condition such that they had the courage to use



406 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

it in business. What is it that our Demo
cratic friends want to accomplish, if they have
the purpose, in this tariff crusade? They tell us
that we are fenced in, hemmed in by our tariff pol
icy, and that if these fences, as Mr. Wilson called
them, when he was dined by his London friends, were
taken down, we should have great expansion in our
business; that what we need here is to open the mar
kets of the world. This is a very resonant expres
sion, and a very fond one with Democrats. I feel
sometimes that I should like to call upon some of
them to specify what they mean by it. I had a
friend once in Indiana who had been very popular
in a certain town, but by reason of some connection
with a railroad project there, had become very
unpopular and did not visit the place for several
years. Thinking, however, the clamor against him
had subsided, he went back to make a speech,
and began by saying: "I am very glad to meet my
friends again to-day," when some one in the audi
ence called out "Name them, please; name them."
I feel like asking those gentlemen to name those
markets ; they are too general ; they say they have set
about getting them, by getting free raw material
for our manufactories. My countrymen, of course,
what they have in view is to enable our manufact
urers to produce as cheaply as the manufacturers
of Great Britain and Germany and France, so that
they can sell as cheaply in the markets of the world.



THE GREAT MASS MEETING 4O/

We had already provided for our manufactories by
the rebate that was allowed in the tariff of 1890.
But does not every man of sense see that if this plan
is to be carried out, there is one thing more that
must be done. Our manufacturers, if they are to com
pete in the general markets of the world in the
sale of woolens and cottons and other like prod
ucts, must not only have free raw material, but they
must have men and women who will work at the
same wages that are paid abroad. The wool
that is in a coat is a very small part of its
cost. It is the carding, and spinning, and dyeing,
and weaving, the wages, the labor that goes into it,
that make its cost; and if we are to compete in the
markets of the world, selling our goods at the same
price with the nations of Europe, we must get our
labor as cheap as they get theirs. And yet our friends
are always shy of admitting that. Indeed, in the last
campaign, they seemed to promise that they would
bring in a time when every man would sell what he
had to sell, high, and buy what he wanted to buy, low,
forgetting that there was a buyer and seller in every
transaction and that it could not be high and low.

No, it had just as well be admitted that this chasing
after the markets of the world involves scaling down
the wages of our working people; for how
can one compete, who pays for his labor two dollars
a day, with another making the same product who
pays fifty cents a day? He must go out of the mar-



408 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

ket or cut down wages, so that the workingmen of
our country, and all men must suffer; for this is not
a question for workingmen only; it is a question that
goes to every right- feeling man and right-thinking
man, however independent his circumstances in life
may be. I can not help but feel that, in a country
like ours, where our social security and the good order
of our communities depend upon a well-conditioned
and well-disposed laboring people, and where the de
fenses of our flag and our institutions depend upon
the strong arm and patriotic hearts of our workingmen
I can not help but feel that it would be a disaster to
bring in a condition of wages in this country so low
that hope would go out of the heart of the man who
toils in the mill. Unless there is hope in the heart, some
promise of better things, some margin of comfort,
some ladder for the feet of his children to climb to
heights that he had not attained; unless these
things are in the heart, you may expect anarchy to
increase and social disorders.

I have stated before and have been called to ac
count for it here, I think, in New York, by one in
very high position, that I thought things might be
too cheap. Whenever anything that I wear on
my back or use in my house is produced at so
low a cost that the man or woman who makes
it does not get a decent, comfortable living out
of the making of it, I ought to be ashamed to
wear or to have it. I suppose there are not many



THE GREAT MASS MEETING 409

agriculturists here, but the agriculturist knows that
fences are to keep things out as well as to keep things
in. And these fences of ours have inclosed the brightest
landscapes, the most fertile fields, the richest meadows
and pastures, the sunniest hillsides and the stateliest
woods that are to be found in the world.

The story of our progress during these thirty
years of protection was marvelous, unequaled, with
the increase in population having been more than
equaled by the increase in wealth; and a commit
tee of the senate, constituted of Democrats and Re
publicans, to inquire into the effect of the tariff law
of 1890, reported that under it wages had appre
ciated and the cost of living to our workingmen had
diminished.

Out on the range beyond these fences of ours I
am sure the grass is not so good. The range
is already overcrowded, and the angry and horned
cattle that browse upon it are coming up to our
fences and putting their heads through the cracks
to get some of our grass. I think it is quite better
that, instead of tearing the fences down and
making everything common, we should have some
convenient gates that we can let in what we
want to and get out what we want to. We are
not under a few disadvantages in this strife with
the markets of the world. We are not a coloniz
ing nation. England, France, Germany, Italy are en
gaged now in a mad struggle to take up every part of the



4IO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

earth that is not already in the possession of one of the
great powers. They have carved up Africa and Asia,
and are seizing the islands of the sea and establishing
their armed hosts and their governors and their steam
ship communications with such places, and it gives
them an advantage. We are not on equal terms. We
can not enter into this ruthless struggle to seize the
lands of other people. Thank God, American diplo
macy has always been a sentimental diplomacy, and
every one of the young South American republics has
found a cheer and a helping hand from this great
republic. We do not push our commerce upon unwill
ing people at the bayonet's point. We do not fire our
cotton and our wool and our opium from the mouths of
great guns. We are at a disadvantage.

We are not a colonizing nation. Indeed, it has
been thought improper even to take up an island or
two, and, not only a commercial island that was im
portant, but one that occupied a military and naval
position of great strategic interest and necessity to
the United States.

Then again in this contest for the commerce of
the world we are without steamship lines. Our
communications, our naval marine, has not been re
established yet; and until we have great steamship
lines plying regularly and swiftly to these countries
with which we would trade, we can not compete
with the nations that have. So long as it remains
true that a man or merchandise must go from Rio



THE GREAT MASS MEETING 4! I

to Liverpool in order to get to New York, we are
not in a good position for competition. And
then again these fields have been largely occu
pied. We should come into many of them as a new
trading nation in many branches of commerce.
Already English and German and French and other
agents have sought out the peculiar demands of these
countries and have adapted their products to sale
there. Already they have established banking in
stitutions, so that exchange is easy between these
foreign ports and London. That has not yet been
done by us, though I hope it may be, and New York
may stand in such relation to many of these great
South American countries. So that we are in too
much of a hurry, I think, to take down our fences.
But that is not all. There is good reason to believe
that this excuse for these tariff reforms is not wholly
sincere, for, my countrymen, we had already, under
section 3 of the tariff law of 1890, known as the
reciprocity section we had already secured the most
advantageous commercial arrangements with many of
the great South and Central American countries, with
Cuba and Porto Rico, and even with Germany itself.
We had secured terms that gave us the markets of Cuba
for American breadstuffs and provisions, and for an
important line of manufactured products upon terms
no other nation in the world could enjoy, and that
gave us practically the control of the trade.
We had even found Germany's interest, she



412 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

being a large exporter of beet sugar to the
United States, was such as to induce that great em
pire to make a favorable arrangement with us as to
the introduction of American products into Germany
in exchange for free sugar in the United States.
This had cost us nothing. We had given to American
households free sugar. A notable item of diminished
cost in the household of the poor is free sugar; and we
have not reduced the wages of a single American
workman. We had got it without cost, save as the
public treasury surrendered the revenues. How was
this regarded abroad? The Democratic platform of
1893 called it a sham reciprocity.

How was it looked upon in England? The Lon
don chamber of commerce memorialized the govern
ment to appoint a commission to devise some method
to counteract what they called this American com
mercial crusade. The president of the associated
chambers of commerce of Great Britain declared that
British trade with those countries had fallen off in
that year some $24,000,000, and that this was strongly
due to the American reciprocity plan. And recently
I noticed in an English newspaper an article congratu
lating itself upon the fact that under the new
tariff bill this arrangement had all been overthrown.
I believe that through these arrangements and
by them, through our nearness to the Cen
tral and South American countries, and to
the islands in the West Indies, through that



THE GREAT MASS MEETING 413

bond of sympathy that exists between sister repub
lics, we had a large field for foreign trade that, by
the proper encouragement for the establishment of
steamship lines, would have greatly stimulated Ameri
can productions, both in agriculture and in the me
chanic arts. And this was all thrown away, every one
of these arrangements stricken down, and stricken
down by gentlemen who excuse their whole project
only upon the theory that they want the markets of
'the world. I think that we may well call the Demo
cratic party to account for its failure to deal with
these great public questions in an intelligent and
patriotic manner. I do not believe there is a Dem
ocratic business man who, if he were a stockholder
in a concern whose directory had dealt like this with
great affairs, would not at the next stockholders*
meeting elect a new board. And yet after all this
dreadful time we have had, after drawing the coun
try through this slough of despond, we are still told
that the end has not yet been reached; that the work
is to go on. Mr. Cleveland tells us that, Mr. Wilson
tells us, and the Democratic senators tell us that. It
is very distressing information. It is always a com
fort when we can say that the worst has happened, and
that there is nothing worse in store for us. If we could
only know that we were at the bottom of the well, and
that no other depths yawned for us, we would anoint
our bruises and look up and see if out of the darkness
some star did not show itself, and then try to get out



414 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

of the hole. But these gentlemen all tell us that this
war is to go on; but they are not quite sure to have
their own way about it. This congress has three
months more of life and only three. A great deal of
that time will be required to frame the necessary appro
priation bills. And if, as I believe, the congress chosen
this fall is Republican, all the balance of the time of
the session, I am sure, will be taken up by our Repub
lican senators explaining to their Democratic col
leagues what the election this fall meant. And we
shall have an end of this destructive war on our Ameri
can industries.

I have wondered why our Democratic leaders
should hate an American smokestack. And yet
they have in these campaigns described the American
manufacturer as a thieving robber-baron. They have
had no terms but those of denunciation for him. I
never could see why this could be so why it was
an offense against society or the country for a man
to build a mill and give employment to men and
women at decent wages inside of it. But
these appeals have been made, and the minds of
the workingmen were inflamed against their employ
ers. They were made to believe that the man who
paid them wages was their enemy, and they must
assume toward him the attitude of hostility. They
were told that the benefits of protection were not
equally distributed, and that the manufacturer got
too much. Other men were told if they did not



THE GREAT MASS MEETING 415

work in protected industries they got no benefit
from protection; as if there was not a gradation be
tween wages, the common wages of the common la
borer on the street up to the skilled man in the
shop. If the skilled man or engineer gets $20 a
month, will the laborer on the street get $i a day?
There is a relation of these things. This question
touches all labor. And it is sophistry to attempt to
separate labor into two classes, one in the protected
industries and one out of it. All are alike interested,
and yet their minds have been poisoned, and they were
told that we lived under a system that made the rich
richer and the poor poorer; and by way of curing it
they brought in a time when we were all poor.

My countrymen, I wish we could banish epithets
from our public discussion. I wish we could get
our people all to understand that when we have
prosperous times they are good for everybody;
not equally, one may gain more than another;
but when we have good times everybody shares
them in his measure. And when we have evil
times, every man shares the sorrow of them. We are
in our social and civil life so knit together that it is
an impossible condition of things when the times can
be prosperous for some of our people and disastrous
for others. Let us take that lesson to our hearts. Let
us put bitterness out of them. Let us stop these envy-
ings and these jealousies, and look at these questions
from the standpoint of a common love for a common



4l6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

i

country, and a brotherhood among the citizens of that
land. The workingman is told that the um
brella that sheltered him and his employer is not
held quite level. He was getting too much of the
drip. He was made angry and he said: "I will
smash the umbrella and we will both be out in the
wet." But the poor fellow forgot that the employer
had a rubber coat, while he was in his shirt sleeves. I
think we are wiser now than we were. Adversity is a
great teacher. Experience exacts a high tuition, but
we carry its lessons a long time. The Democratic
party was uninstructed and inexperienced. All of the
cost we have suffered has been brought about in an
effort to educate it to the management of the
government. It has been a very costly experiment,
and I submit to you whether we had not better close the
school.

I think that the great masses of every political creed
and of every religion are patriotic lovers of their
country, and that according to their lights they are
willing to serve it. It is a country worthy the love
of us all. It has a noble history, a history illus
trated by great deeds, a history sanctified by
great sacrifices, a history that has set in the galaxy
of the world's great statesmen some enduring names,
a history that has set in the rolls of the military
chieftains names that are at the top, a country that
has fought a great war to a successful issue without
a standing army. A country that has preserved a



THE GREAT MASS MEETING 417

vast domain, domestic peace, and individual security;
a country that has riches untold, a country whose flag
the world recognizes as the emblem of a great power
resting upon the affection of its own people.
It is worthy of our love. It should be be
fore everything else but God. Wife, children,
mother, lover all these men have put aside for it,
and they have poured out their blood in its defense,
glad that they might thus contribute to the security
of their country and the honor of the flag.
Is it too much, then, to ask you, my coun
trymen, here to-night, in this great national
crisis, in this time when our American workmen
are suffering and out of employment, in this time
when wages are going down and hope is going out,
to stand by that good American doctrine that would
maintain these wages at a living standard and de
fend our homes against an enemy more fatal to our
peace and prosperity than any armed legions that
could be marshaled against them the invasion of pau
perism ?

I read this morning that the operatives of Fall
River, after a loss of a million or more in wages
and the exhaustion of their union treasury funds,
have returned to work at the scale proposed. I went
only a week or two ago through a busy section of
my own state, where industries, stimulated by the
discovery of natural gas as a fuel, have sprung up in
the last six years with marvelous rapidity. I walked



41 8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

through lines of workmen from some of those shops
bearing on their hats this legend: "Wages 221-2
per cent, off." So it is down, down, down! My
countrymen, let us stop this war on American in
dustry and American homes. Let the greatest of the
manufacturing states, by her people in this election,
speak in a voice that shall be heard from ocean to ocean
in condemnation of those who have brought these
disasters upon the country. I believe that will be the
verdict of the country.



A TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE ONES

In "The Interior" Chicago, August, 1896

Why should I be asked to write about education,
who am not an educator? In truth, all I under
stand as to this particular is only this: that the
greatest and most important difficulty of human
science is the nurture and education of children.
There is a sense in which we are all educators un
licensed teachers. We have no roll of our pupils
they are a truant lot, and take their lessons in a cas
ual way. We are seldom conscious that we are im
parting instruction, and the pupils do not know that
they are taking lessons. Perhaps the sum of what
is learned in this way is greater and more potent
in the life of the pupils than what is learned in the
schools. The former is absorbed; the latter may be
only a skin polish. If this educational number of
The Interior is dedicated to the schools, I can con
tribute only reminiscences; but if it is educational in
the broader sense, I might indulge in some sugges
tions; and, for the increased room it will give me, I
shall assume that it is so.

419



42O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

When the boy is six, or it may be seven years of
age, the parents say: "It is time we were putting
him in school." My dear, deluded friends, he has
been "in school" since he was eighteen months old;
and for the most of that time he was a scholar with
out opinions and without doubts; he controverted
nothing, save only when his physical desires were
crossed, and was more alert, observing, curious and
retentive than he will be again. Nothing has be
come commonplace to him. He has acquired his let
ters can read a little; but has any grown person
ever had a conversation with him? He has been
lectured, teased, chaffed and petted; has had some
moral and religious precepts imparted to him. His
antics of body and mind have been laughed at; but
has any man or woman ever had a conversation with
him? He has had, perhaps, governesses and nurses,
but never in most cases an adult companion. He
may be pert in some things and ways, but he has a
store of things that he hides, and will only uncover
to a chum. Every boy and girl needs an adult chum
as an educational force. Consider the case of a boy.
He has been brought into a vast workshop, where
the most subtle forces and the most intricate mechan
isms are humming and whirling; into a vast picture
gallery where thousands of canvases, great and
small, are hung; into a great auditorium where on
many stages clowns and tragedians are acting and
reciting. He needs help; for a habit that will in-



A TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE ONES 421

fluence, yes control, his intellectual life is now being
acquired. Is he to have a wandering or a fixed eye;
a habit of attention or of mental dissipation? Per
ception is near the base of all intellectual growth.
That men can see, and see not, was one of the Bible
paradoxes that my infant mind hearing heard not.
But the explanatory words "perceive" and "under
stand" make the saying not only plain but profound.
Seeing is a mental, not an optical fact. The great
men in every department of labor are the men who
seeing, see, and hearing, hear. A "scatter-brain"
may run on to a bee tree, but he can not be depended
upon to supply the table with honey. We note many
mental "characteristics" in men. We say this one
has a good memory, and this one great reasoning
powers; but from a mental standpoint there are in
truth only two great classes among men the men
who give attention and the men who do not.

The first command on the drill ground is "atten
tion;" and it ought to be the first in the nursery, the
home and the school. The best way to cultivate the
memory is to get a focus and then to give a proper
exposure. The most of the things we have forgot
ten are things we never knew. As soon as a child
is old enough to notice anything, he may be taught
to make his notice particular and not casual.

"The clay is moist and soft; now, now make haste,
And form the vessel, for the wheel turns fast."



422 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT

Why did the good God make things to differ
the leaf and bark and seed, only enough alike to in