The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IX Part 29

Mr. Bryan hates the rich. Would he like to be rich? He hates the bondholders. Would he like to have a million? He hates the successful man. Does he want to be a failure? If he does, let him wait until the third day of November. We want honest money because we are honest people; and there never was any real prosperity for a nation or an individual without honesty, without integrity, and it is our duty to preserve the reputation of the great Republic.

Better be an honest bankrupt than a rich thief. Poverty can hold in its hand the jewel, honor--a jewel that outshines all other gems. A thousand times better be poor and n.o.ble than rich and fraudulent.

Then there is another question--the question of the tariff. I admit that there are a great many arguments in favor of free trade, but I a.s.sert that all the facts are the other way. I want American people as far as possible to manufacture everything that Americans use.

The more industries we have the more we will develop the American brain, and the best crop you can raise in every country is a crop of good men and good women--of intelligent people. And another thing, I want to keep this market for ourselves. A nation that sells raw material will grow ignorant and poor; a nation that manufactures will grow intelligent and rich. It only takes muscle to dig ore. It takes mind to manufacture a locomotive, and only that labor is profitable that is mixed with thought. Muscle must be in partnership with brain. I am in favor of keeping this market for ourselves, and yet some people say: "Give us the market of the world." Well, why don't you take it? There is no export duty on anything. You can get things out of this country cheaper than from any other country in the world. Iron is as cheap here in the ground, so are coal and stone, as any place on earth. The timber is as cheap in the forest. Why don't you make things and sell them in Central Africa, in China and j.a.pan? Why don't you do it? I will tell you why.

It is because labor is too high; that is all. Almost the entire value is labor. You make a ton of steel rails worth twenty-five dollars; the ore in the ground is worth only a few cents, the coal in the earth only a few cents, the lime in the cliff only a few cents--altogether not one dollar and fifty cents; but the ton is worth twenty-five dollars; twenty-three dollars and fifty cents labor! That is the trouble. The steamship is worth five hundred thousand dollars, but the raw material is not worth ten thousand dollars. The rest is labor. Why is labor higher here than in Europe? Protection. And why do these gentlemen ask for the trade of the world? Why do they ask for free trade? Because they want cheaper labor. That is all; cheaper labor. The markets of the world! We want our own markets. I would rather have the market of Illinois than all of China with her four hundred millions. I would rather have the market of one good county in New York than all of Mexico. What do they want in Mexico? A little red calico, a few sombreros and some spurs. They make their own liquor and they live on red pepper and beans. What do you want of their markets? We want to keep our own. In other words, we want to pursue the policy that has given us prosperity in the past. We tried a little bit of free trade in 1892 when we were all prosperous. I said then: "If Grover Cleveland is elected it will cost the people five hundred million dollars." I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, nor a profitable son, but I placed the figure too low. His election has cost a thousand million dollars. There is an old song, "You Put the Wrong Man off at Buffalo;" we took the wrong man on at Buffalo. We tried just a little of it, not much. We tried the Wilson bill--a bill, according to Mr. Cleveland, born of perfidy and dishonor--a bill that he was not quite foolish enough to sign and not brave enough to veto. We tried it and we are tired of it, and if experience is a teacher the American people know a little more than they did. We want to do our own work, and we want to mingle our thought with our labor. We are the most inventive of all the peoples. We sustain the same relation to invention that the ancient Greeks did to sculpture. We want to develop the brain; we want to cultivate the imagination, and we want to cover our land with happy homes. A thing is worth sometimes the thought that is in it, sometimes the genius. Here is a man buys a little piece of linen for twenty-five cents, he buys a few paints for fifteen cents, and a few brushes, and he paints a picture; just a little one; a picture, maybe, of a cottage with a dear old woman, white hair, serene forehead and satisfied eyes; at the corner a few hollyhocks in bloom--may be a tree in blossom, and as you listen you seem to hear the songs of birds--the hum of bees, and your childhood all comes back to you as you look. You feel the dewy gra.s.s beneath your bare feet once again, and you go back in your mind until the dear old woman on the porch is once more young and fair. There is a soul there. Genius has done its work. And the little picture is worth five, ten, may be fifty thousand dollars. All the result of labor and genius.

And another thing we want is to produce great men and great women here in our own country; then again we want business. Talk about charity, talk about the few dollars that fall unconsciously from the hand of wealth, talk about your poorhouses and your sewing societies and your poor little efforts in the missionary line in the worst part of your town! Ah, there is no charity like business. Business gives work to labor's countless hands; business wipes the tears from the eyes of widows and orphans; business dimples with joy the cheek of sorrow; business puts a roof above the heads of the homeless; business covers the land with happy homes.

We do not want any populistic philanthropy. We want no fiat philosophy.

We want no silver swindles. We want business. Wind and wave are our servants; let them work. Steam and electricity are our slaves; let them toil. Let all the wheels whirl; let all the shuttles fly. Fill the air with the echoes of hammer and saw. Fill the furnace with flame; the moulds with liquid iron. Let them glow.

Build homes and palaces of trade. Plow the fields, reap the waving grain. Create all things that man can use. Business will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, educate the ignorant, enrich the world with art--fill the air with song. Give us Protection and Prosperity. Do not cheat us with free trade dreams. Do not deceive us with debased coin.

Give us good money--the life blood of business--and let it flow through the veins and arteries of commerce.

And let me tell you to-night the smoke arising from the factories' great plants forms the only cloud on which has ever been seen the glittering bow of American promise. We want work, and I tell you to-night that my sympathies are with the men who work, with the women who weep. I know that labor is the Atlas on whose shoulders rests the great superstructure of civilization and the great dome of science adorned with all there is of art. Labor is the great oak, labor is the great column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created the countless things of art and beauty. I want to see labor paid. I want to see capital civilized until it will be willing to give labor its share, and I want labor intelligent enough to settle all these questions in the high court of reason. And let me tell the workingman to-night: You will never help your self by destroying your employer. You have work to sell.

Somebody has to buy it, if it is bought, and somebody has to buy it that has the money. Who is going to manufacture something that will not sell.

n.o.body is going into the manufacturing business through philanthropy, and unless your employer makes a profit, the mill will be shut down and you will be out of work. The interest of the employer and the employed should be one. Whenever the employers of the continent are successful, then the workingman is better paid, and you know it. I have some hope in the future for the workingman. I know what it is to work. I do not think my natural disposition runs in that direction, but I know what it is to work, and I have worked with all my might at one dollar and a half a week. I did the work of a man for fifty cents a day, and I was not sorry for it. In the horizon of my future burned and gleamed the perpetual star of hope. I said to myself: I live in a free country, and I have a chance; I live in a free country, and I have as much liberty as any other man beneath the flag, and I have enjoyed it.

Something has been done for labor. Only a few years ago a man worked fifteen or sixteen hours a day, but the hours have been reduced to at least ten and are on the way to still further reduction. And while the hours have been decreased the wages have as certainly been increased. In forty years--in less--the wages of American workingmen have doubled. A little while ago you received an average of two hundred and eighty-five dollars a year; now you receive an average of more than four hundred and ninety dollars; there is the difference. So it seems to me that the star of hope is still in the sky for every workingman. Then there is another thing: every workingman in this country can take his little boy on his knee and say, "John, all the avenues to distinction, wealth, and glory are open to you. There is the free school; take your chances with the rest." And it seems to me that that thought ought to sweeten every drop of sweat that trickles down the honest brow of toil.

So let us have protection! How much? Enough, so that our income at least will equal our outgo. That is a good way to keep house. I am tired of depression and deficit. I do not like to see a President p.a.w.ning bonds to raise money to pay his own salary. I do not like to see the great Republic at the mercy of anybody, so let us stand by protection.

There is another trouble. The gentleman now running for the presidency--a tireless talker--oh, if he had a brain equal to his vocal chords, what a man! And yet when I read his speeches it seems to me as though he stood on his head and thought with his feet. This man is endeavoring to excite cla.s.s against cla.s.s, to excite the poor against the rich. Let me tell you something. We have no cla.s.ses in the United States. There are no permanent cla.s.ses here. The millionaire may be a mendicant, the mendicant may be a millionaire. The man now working for the millionaire may employ that millionaire's sons to work for him.

There is a chance for us all. Sometimes a numskull is born in the mansion, and a genius rises from the gutter. Old Mother Nature has a queer way of taking care of her children. You cannot tell. You cannot tell. Here we have a free open field of compet.i.tion, and if a man pa.s.ses me in the race I say: "Good luck. Get ahead of me if you can, you are welcome."

And why should I hate the rich? Why should I make my heart a den of writhing, hissing snakes of envy? Get rich. I do not care. I am glad I live in a country where somebody can get rich. It is a spur in the flank of ambition. Let them get rich. I have known good men that were quite rich, and I have known some mean men who were in straitened circ.u.mstances. So I have known as good men as ever breathed the air, who were poor. We must respect the man; what is inside, not what is outside.

That is why I like this country. That is why I do not want it dishonored. I want no cla.s.s feeling. The citizens of America should be friends. Where capital is just and labor intelligent, happiness dwells.

Fortunate that country where the rich are extravagant and the poor economical. Miserable that country where the rich are economical and the poor are extravagant. A rich spendthrift is a blessing. A rich miser is a curse. Extravagance is a splendid form of charity. Let the rich spend, let them build, let them give work to their fellow-men, and I will find no fault with their wealth, provided they obtained it honestly.

There was an old fellow by the name of Socrates. He happened to be civilized, living in a barbarous time, and he was tried for his life.

And in his speech in which he defended himself is a paragraph that ought to remain in the memory of the human race forever.

He said to those judges, "During my life I have not sought ambition, wealth. I have not sought to adorn my body, but I have endeavored to adorn my soul with the jewels of patience and justice, and above all, with the love of liberty." Such a man rises above all wealth.

Why should we envy the rich? Why envy a man who has no earthly needs?

Why envy a man that carries a hundred canes? Why envy a man who has that which he cannot use? I know a great many rich men and I have read about a great many others, and I do not envy them. They are no happier than I am. You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property owns them. It gets them up early in the morning. It will not let them sleep; it makes them suspect their friends. Sometimes they think their children would like to attend a first-cla.s.s funeral. Why should we envy the rich? They have fear; we have hope. They are on the top of the ladder; we are close to the ground. They are afraid of falling, and we hope to rise.

Why should we envy the rich? They never drank any colder water than I have. They never ate any lighter biscuits or any better corn bread. They never drank any better Illinois wine, or felt better after drinking it, than I have; than you have. They never saw any more glorious sunsets with the great palaces of amethyst and gold, and they never saw the heavens thicker with constellations; they never read better poetry. They know no more about the ecstasies of love than we do. They never got any more pleasure out of courting than I did. Why should we envy the rich?

I know as much about the ecstasies of love of wife and child and friends as they. They never had any better weather in June than I have, or you have. They can buy splendid pictures. I can look at them. And who owns a great picture or a great statue? The man who bought it? Possibly, and possibly not. The man who really owns it, is the man who understands it, that appreciates it, the man into whose heart its beauty and genius come, the man who is enn.o.bled and refined and glorified by it.

They have never heard any better music than I have.

When the great notes, winged like eagles, soar to the great dome of sound, I have felt just as good as though I had a hundred million dollars.

Do not try to divide this country into cla.s.ses. The rich man that endeavors to help his fellow-man deserves the honor and respect of the great Republic. I have nothing against the man that got rich in the free and open field of compet.i.tion. Where they combine to rob their fellow-men, then I want the laws enforced. That is all. Let them play fair and they are welcome to all they get.

And why should we hate the successful? Why? We cannot all be first. The race is a vast procession; a great many hundred millions are back of the center, and in front there is only one human being; that is all. Shall we wait for the other fellows to catch up? Shall the procession stop?

I say, help the fallen, a.s.sist the weak, help the poor, bind up the wounds, but do not stop the procession.

Why should we envy the successful? Why should we hate them? And why should we array cla.s.s against cla.s.s? It is all wrong. For instance, here is a young man, and he is industrious. He is in love with a girl around the corner. She is in his brain all day--in his heart all night, and while he is working he is thinking. He gets a little ahead, they get married. He is an honest man, he gets credit, and the first thing you know he has a good business of his own and he gets rich; educates his children, and his old age is filled with content and love. Good! His companions bask in the sunshine of idleness. They have wasted their time, wasted their wages in dissipation, and when the winter of life comes, when the snow falls on the barren fields of the wasted days, then shivering with cold, pinched with hunger, they curse the man who has succeeded. Thereupon they all vote for Bryan.

Then there is another question, and that is whether the Government has a right to protect itself? And that is whether the employees of railways shall have a right to stop the trains, a right to prevent interstate commerce, a right to burn bridges and shoot engineers? Has the United States the right to protect commerce between the States? I say, yes.

It is the duty of the President to lay the mailed hand of the Republic upon the mob. We want no mobs in this country. This is a Government of the people and by the people, a Government of law, and these laws should be interpreted by the courts in judicial calm. We have a supreme tribunal. Undoubtedly it has made some bad decisions, but it has made a vast number of good ones. The judges do the best they can. Of course they are not like Mr. Bryan, infallible. But they are doing the best they can, and when they make a decision that is wrong it will be attacked by reason, it will be attacked by argument, and in time it will be reversed, but I do not believe in attacking it with a torch or by a mob. I hate the mob spirit. Civilized men obey the law. Civilized men believe in order. Civilized men believe that a man that makes property by industry and economy has the right to keep it. Civilized men believe that that man has the right to use it as he desires, and they will judge of his character by the manner in which he uses it. If he endeavors to a.s.sist his fellow-man he will have the respect and admiration of his fellow-men. But we want a Government of law. We do not want labor questions settled by violence and blood.

I want to civilize the capitalist so that he will be willing to give what labor is worth. I want to educate the workingman so that he will be willing to receive what labor is worth. I want to civilize them both to that degree that they can settle all their disputes in the high court of reason.

But when you tell me that they can stop the commerce of the Nation, then you preach the gospel of the bludgeon, the gospel of torch and bomb. I do not believe in that religion. I believe in a religion of kindness, reason and law. The law is the supreme will of the supreme people, and we must obey it or we go back to savagery and black night. I stand by the courts. I stand by the President who endeavors to preserve the peace. I am against mobs; I am against lynchings, and I believe it is the duty of the Federal Government to protect all of its citizens at home and abroad; and I want a Government powerful enough to say to the Governor of any State where they are murdering American citizens without process of law--I want the Federal Government to say to the Governor of that State: "Stop; stop shedding the blood of American citizens. And if you cannot stop it, we can." I believe in a Government that will protect the lowest, the poorest and weakest as promptly as the mightiest and strongest. That is my Government. This old doctrine of State Sovereignty perished in the flame of civil war, and I tell you to-night that that infamous lie was surrendered to Grant with Lee's sword at Appomattox.

I believe in a strong Government, not in a Government that can make money, but in a strong Government.

Oh, I forgot to ask the question, "If the Government can make money why should it collect taxes?"

Let us be honest. Here is a poor man with a little yoke of cattle, cultivating forty acres of stony ground, working like a slave in the heat of summer, in the cold blasts of winter, and the Government makes him pay ten dollars taxes, when, according to these gentlemen, it could issue a one hundred thousand dollar bill in a second. Issue the bill and give the fellow with the cattle a rest. Is it possible for the mind to conceive anything more absurd than that the Government can create money?

Now, the next question is, or the next thing is, you have to choose between men. Shall Mr. Bryan be the next President or shall McKinley occupy that chair? Who is Mr. Bryan? He is not a tried man. If he had the capacity to reason, if he had logic, if he could spread the wings of imagination, if there were in his heart the divine flower called pity, he might be an orator, but lacking all these, he is as he is.

When Major McKinley was fighting under the flag, Bryan was in his mother's arms, and judging from his speeches he ought to be there still.

What is he? He is a Populist. He voted for General Weaver.

Only a little while ago he denied being a Democrat. His mind is filled with vagaries. A fiat money man. His brain is an insane asylum without a keeper.

Imagine that man President. Whom would he call about him? Upon whom would he rely? Probably for Secretary of State he would choose Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota; for Secretary of the Interior, Henry George; for Secretary of War, Tillman with his pitchforks; for Postmaster-General, Peffer of Kansas. Once somebody said: "If you believe in fiat money, why don't you believe in fiat hay, and you can make enough hay out of Peffer's whiskers to feed all the cattle in the country." For Secretary of the Treasury, Coin Harvey. For Secretary of the Navy, c.o.xey, and then he could keep off the gra.s.s. And then would come the millennium. The great cryptogram and the Bacon cipher; the single tax, State saloons, fiat money, free silver, destruction of banks and credit, bondholders and creditors mobbed, courts closed, debts repudiated and the rest of the folks made rich by law.

And suppose Bryan should die, and then think, think of Thomas Watson sitting in the chair of Abraham Lincoln. That is enough to give a patriot political nightmare.

If McKinley dies there is an honest capable man to take his place. A man who believes in business, in prosperity. A man who knows what money is.

A man who would never permit the laying of a land warrant on a cloud. A man of good sense, a man of level head. A man that loves his country, a man that will protect its honor.

And is McKinley a tried man? Honest, candid, level-headed, putting on no airs, saying not what he thinks somebody else thinks, but what he thinks, and saying it in his own honest, forcible way. He has made hundreds of speeches during this campaign, not to people whom he ran after, but to people who came to see him. Not from the tail end of cars, but from the doorstep of his home, and every speech has been calculated to make votes. Every speech has increased the respect of the American people for him, every one. He has never slopped over. Four years ago I read a speech made by him at Cleveland, on the tariff. I tell you to-night that he is the best posted man on the tariff under the flag.

I tell you that he knows the road to prosperity. I read that speech. It had foundation, proportion, dome, and he handled his facts as skillfully as Caesar marshaled his hosts on the fields of war, and ever since I read it I have had profound respect for the intelligence and statesmanship of William McKinley.

He will call about him the best, the wisest, and the most patriotic men, and his cabinet will respect the highest and loftiest interests and aspirations of the American people.

Then you have to make another choice. You have to choose between parties, between the new Democratic and the old Republican. And I want to tell you the new Democratic is worse than the old, and that is a good deal for me to say. In 1861 hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Democrats thought more of country than of party. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands shouldered their muskets, rushed to the rescue of the Republic, and sustained the administration of Abraham Lincoln. With their help the Rebellion was crushed, and now hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Democrats will hold country above party and will join with the Republicans in saving the honor, the reputation, of the United States; and I want to say to all the National Democrats who feel that they cannot vote for Bryan, I want to say to you, vote for McKinley.

This is no war for blank cartridges. Your gun makes as much noise, but it does not do as much execution.

If you vote for Palmer it is not to elect him, it is simply to defeat Bryan, and the sure way to defeat Bryan is to vote for McKinley. You have to choose between parties. The new Democratic party, with its allies, the Populists and Socialists and Free Silverites, represents the follies, the mistakes, and the absurdities of a thousand years. They are in favor of everything that cannot be done. Whatever is, is wrong. They think creditors are swindlers, and debtors who refuse to pay their debts are honest men. Good money is bad and poor money is good. A promise is better than a performance. They desire to abolish facts, punish success, and reward failure. They are worse than the old. And yet I want to be honest. I am like the old Dutchman who made a speech in Arkansas. He said: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I must tell you the truth. There are good and bad in all parties except the Democratic party, and in the Democratic party there are bad and worse." The new Democratic party, a party that believes in repudiation, a party that would put the stain of dishonesty on every American brow and that would make this Government subject to the mob.

You have to make your choice. I have made mine. I go with the party that is traveling my way.

I do not pretend to belong to anything or that anything belongs to me.

When a party goes my way I go with that party and I stick to it as long as it is traveling my road. And let me tell you something. The history of the Republican party is the glory of the United States. The Republican party has the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom of old age.

The Republican party has the genius of administration. The Republican party knows the wants of the people. The Republican party kept this country on the map of the world and kept our flag in the air. The Republican party made our country free, and that one fact fills all the heavens with light. The Republican party is the pioneer of progress; the grandest organization that has ever existed among men. The Republican party is the conscience of the nineteenth century. I am proud to belong to it. Vote the Republican ticket and you will be happy here, and if there is another life you will be happy there.