, for some unaccountable reason, prefer to leave a
place where they are doing well and come to one where they must do
worse.

The same thing can be said of Denmark and Sweden, of England,
Scotland, Ireland and of Italy. The truth is, that in all those
lands the laboring man can earn just enough to-day to do the work
of to-morrow; everything he earns is required to get food enough
in his body and rags enough on his back to work from day to day,
to toil from week to week. There are only three luxuries within
his reach--air, light, and water; probably a fourth might be added
--death.

In those countries the few own the land, the few have the capital,
the few make the laws, and the laboring man is not a power. His
opinion in neither asked nor heeded. The employers pay as little
as they can. When the world becomes civilized everybody will want
to pay what things are worth, but now capital is perfectly willing
that labor shall remain at the starvation line. Competition on
every hand tends to put down wages. The time will come when the
whole community will see that justice is economical. If you starve
laboring men you increase crime; you multiply, as they do in England,
workhouses, hospitals and all kinds of asylums, and these public
institutions are for the purpose of taking care of the wrecks that
have been produced by greed and stinginess and meanness--that is
to say, by the ignorance of capital.

_Question_. What effect has the protective tariff on the condition
of labor in this country?

_Answer_. To the extent that the tariff keeps out the foreign
article it is a direct protection to American labor. Everything
in this country is on a larger scale than in any other. There is
far more generosity among the manufacturers and merchants and
millionaires and capitalists of the United States than among those
of any other country, although they are bad enough and mean enough
here.

But the great thing for the laboring man in the United States is
that he is regarded as a man. He is a unit of political power.
His vote counts just as much as that of the richest and most
powerful. The laboring man has to be consulted. The candidate
has either to be his friend or to pretend to be his friend, before
he can succeed. A man running for the presidency could not say
the slightest word against the laboring man, or calculated to put
a stain upon industry, without destroying every possible chance of
success. Generally