One of the reasons why
I am opposed to slavery is just here. What is the true condition of the
laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to
acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe
in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than
good. So, while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to
allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.
When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such
that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed
condition of labor for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that
twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a
flatboat--just what might happen to any poor man's son! I want every man
to have a chance--and I believe a Black man is entitled to it--in which he
can better his condition; when he may look forward and hope to be a hired
laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to
hire men to work for him! That is the system. Up here in New England, you
have a soil that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans, and yet where will you
find wealthy men so wealthy, and poverty so rarely in extremity? There is
not another such place on earth! I desire that if you get too thick here,
and find it hard to better your condition on this soil, you may have a
chance to strike and go somewhere else, where you may not be degraded, nor
have your families corrupted, by forced rivalry with negro slaves. I want
you to have a clean bed and no snakes in it! Then you can better your
condition, and so it may go on and on in one endless round so long as man
exists on the face of the earth!

Now, to come back to this shoe strike,--if, as the senator from Illinois
asserts, this is caused by withdrawal of Southern votes, consider
briefly how you will meet the difficulty. You have done nothing, and have
protested that you have done nothing, to injure the South. And yet, to get
back the shoe trade, you must leave off doing something which you are
now doing. What is it? You must stop thinking slavery wrong! Let your
institutions be wholly changed; let your State constitutions be subverted;
glorify slavery, and so you will get back the shoe trade--for what? You
have brought owned labor with it, to compete with your own labor, to
underwork you, and to degrade you! Are you ready to get back the trade on
those