laborers all stop work, strike,
appoint guards, who attack, kill, or intimidate any one who attempts to
take their place. In this way it is said that one billion dollars have
been lost in the last few years. Contracts have been broken, men
ruined, localities and cities placed in the greatest jeopardy, and
hundreds of lives lost. Every branch of trade has its "union," and in so
many cases have the laborers been successful that a national panic comes
almost in sight. Never was there a more farcical illustration of
freedom. Irrational, ignorant Irishmen, who had not the mental capacity
to earn more than a dollar a day, dictated to merchant princes and
millionaire contractors. In New York it was proved that the leaders of
the strikers sold out to employers, and accepted bribes to call off
strikes.

The question before the American people is, Has an American citizen the
right to conduct his own business to suit himself and employ whom he
wishes? Has the laborer the right to work for whom and what rate he
pleases? The imported socialists, anarchists, and their converts among
Americans say no, and it will require but little to precipitate a
bloody war, when labor, led by red-handed murderers, will enact in New
York and all over the United States the horrors of the French Commune.

The republic for a great and enlightened country has too many criminals.
I am told by a prohibition clergyman that the curse of drink and license
has its fangs in the heart of the land. He tells me that the Americans
pay yearly $1,172,000,000 for their alcoholic drink; for bread,
$600,000,000; for tobacco, $625,000,000; for education, $197,000,000;
for ministers' salaries, $14,000,000. It has been found that the
downfall of eighty-one per cent of criminals is traceable to drink. He
said: "Our republic is a failure morally, as we have 2,550,000 drunkards
and people addicted to drink. We have 600,000 prostitutes, and many more
doubtless that are not known, and in nine cases out of ten their
downfall can be traced to drink."

I listen to this side of the story, and then I see wonderful
philanthropy, institutions for the prevention of crime, good men at work
according to their light, millions employed to educate the young,
thousands of churches and societies to aid man in making man better.
When I listen to these men, and see tens of thousands of Christian men
and women living pure lives, building up vast cities, great monuments
for the future, I feel