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 he begins by
saying: "Oh, ye honest, industrious laboring men, who have furnished all
the capital of the world, who have built all the palaces and constructed
all the railroads and covered the ocean with her steamships. Oh, you
laboring men! You are nothing but slaves; you are ground down in the
dust by the capitalist who is gloating over you as he enjoys his
beautiful estates and as he has his banks filled with gold, and every
dollar he owns is coined out of the hearts' blood of the honest laboring
man." Now, that is a lie, and you know it is a lie; and yet that is the
kind of speech that they are all the time hearing, representing the
capitalists as wicked and the laboring men so enslaved. Why, how wrong
it is! Let the man who loves his flag and believes in American
principles endeavor with all his soul to bring the capitalist and the
laboring man together until they stand side by side, and arm in arm, and
work for the common good of humanity.

He is an enemy to his country who sets capital against labor or labor
against capital.

Suppose I were to go down through this audience and ask you to introduce
me to the great inventors who live here in Philadelphia. "The inventors
of Philadelphia," you would say, "Why we don't have any in Philadelphia.
It is too slow to invent anything." But you do have just as great
inventors, and they are here in this audience, as ever invented a
machine. But the probability is that the greatest inventor to benefit
the world with his discovery is some person, perhaps some lady, who
thinks she could not invent anything. Did you ever study the history of
invention and see how strange it was that the man who made the greatest
discovery did it without any previous idea that he was an inventor? Who
are the great inventors? They are persons with plain, straightforward
common sense, who saw a need in the world and immediately applied
themselves to supply that need. If you want to invent anything, don't
try to find it in the wheels in your head nor the wheels in your
machine, but first find out what the people need,