s.

Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of Nature, and this
can be done only by labor and by thought. Labor is the foundation of
all. Without labor, and without great labor, progress is impossible. The
progress of the world depends upon the men who walk in the fresh furrows
and through the rustling corn; upon those who sow and reap; upon those
whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnace fires; upon the
delvers in the mines, and the workers in shops; upon those who give to
the winter air the ringing music of the axe; upon those who battle with
the boisterous billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers;
upon the brave thinkers.

From the surplus produced by labor, schools and universities are built
and fostered. From this surplus the painter is paid for the productions
of the pencil; the sculptor for chiseling shapeless rock into forms
divinely beautiful, and the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the
memories, and the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us
the books in which we converse with the dead and living kings of the
human race. It has given us all there is of beauty, of elegance, and of
refined happiness.

I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to what
progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of to-day as
destructive of all happiness--of all good. I know that there are many
worshipers of the past. They venerate the ancient because it is ancient.
They see no beauty in anything from which they do not blow the dust of
ages with the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old; no
religion, no governments like the ancient; no orators, no poets, no
statesmen like those who have been dust for two thousand years. Others
love the modern simply because it is modern.

We should have gratitude enough to acknowledge the obligations we are
under to the great and heroic of antiquity, and independence enough not
to believe what they said simply because they said it.

With the idea that labor is the basis of progress goes the truth that
labor must be free. The laborer must be a free man.

The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head and hands in
partnership.

To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of time, is the
problem of free labor.

Slavery does the least work in the longest space of time.

Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought will give us truth.

Slowly but surely man is freeing his imagination o