IC-N GIFT OF Class of 1887 ORATION HENRY E. HIGHTON AT SANTA ROSA, CAL, JULY 4, 1890 C. A. MURDOCK it CO. 532 CI.AY STREET 1890 ORATION BY HENRY E. HIGHTON AT SANTA ROSA, CAL, JULY 4, 1890 SAN FRANCISCO C. A. MURDOCK & CO. 532 CLAY STREET 1890 HENRY E. HIGHTON, AT SANTA ROSA, CAL., JULY 4, 1890. J/r. President and Fellow-Citizens: I esteem it a great privilege, when nine-tenths of the most prolific century in many departments of human achievement have almost passed, to be per- mitted before an audience, which, exceptionally, com- bines the best elements of American citizenship, briefly to discuss the birth, the growth and the future of our vast Republic, which has already cast a lumin- ous shadow upon the darkening civilizations that had their origin in feudal institutions, based on the divine right of kings. The yearly celebration of the Battle of Bunker Hill appropriately manifests our appreciation of the capac- ity for heroic effort and endurance which placed that conflict, apparently unimportant in its immediate re- sults, among the decisive battles of the world. Memorial Day is the grandest and most permanent tribute to the unforgotten and the patriotic dead ever devised by a free and an united people, and it has ac- quired a deeper and a nobler signification, because, 930872 through a spontaneous and generous impulse in the ;N.orth and.in % .the- South, it has come to represent the obTiteratron br" all the rancorous memories of our Civil ^^^^*f% i ppinjrj>fete supremacy of the Union in the hearts of our citizens. But, as the greater includes the less, so our National Anniversary must always remain pre-eminent while our Constitutional Government and our American ideas prevail and endure. That Anniversary is related to the most important event in secular history, with all its realized and developing results and consequences. It means, not merely the birth of a nation after throes and anguish which lasted for centuries not merely the establishment and the organization of great communi- ties in which the rights and the liberties of individuals, of municipalities and of States, are fundamentally pre- served and guarded from attacks from within and from without by State Constitutions and laws, and by an indestructible Federal system ; but it means also the discovery and the practical application of the true theory of government for the whole human race and the supremacy of the deepest personal and political sentiment that, from the earliest ages, has agitated the turbulent breast of mankind. The celebration in which we are engaged, therefore, is deeply important, not only to this nation, but to all nations, not only to our own citizens, but to all citizens and all subjects, not only to the present generation, but to all succeeding generations. It concentrates the intelligence and the aspirations of men upon the mo- mentous questions of the success and the kind of suc- cess we have attained, and of the risks and dangers we are encountering and have yet to encounter in our experiment, if indeed we have not passed the experi- mental phase of national existence. If we traced our history and analyzed the present condition of our country excluding from our consid- eration for the time certain enormous evils and injuri- ous influences to which I may hereafter advert we should have before our dazzled eyes the most crowded and glittering pages in the annals of mankind. It would destroy the promised brevity of this address to attempt so intricate and so enlarged a view of my subject, but I cannot resist the temptation, before I proceed to the governing thoughts I desire to present, rapidly and suggestively to bring before your instructed minds a few propositions and facts, which, in them- selves and by what they imply, are amply sufficient to gratify our national pride and to justify reasonable self-glorification. We have given to the world the spectacle of a pro- digious, of an unequaled development and advance- ment. In Colonial times, especially in the Declaration of Rights of October izj.th, 1774, our forefathers travailed in the pain of political gestation. By the Declaration of Independence this pain was assuaged, and they formulated the correlative ideas of the abso- lute sovereignty of God and the relative or derived sovereignty of man, twin conceptions which define the original and sustained aspirations of the human race. In the Revolutionary War these advanced and definite thoughts were carried into effective action, out of weakness was evolved strength, out of chaos law and discipline. The Articles of Confederation, ratified March ist, 1781, and the Federal Constitution, which became operative September I3th, 1787, completed the establishment and the organization of liberty and of order, and furnished the means for the indefinite expansion of our institutions. We successfully fought the War of 1812, which may be called the aftermath of our acknowledged independence. We suppressed local rebellions and insurrections. Through our State and National tribunals, we applied our political princi- ples and placed the Union and the States within their constitutional spheres. We defeated Mexico and ex- tended our western border to the Pacific. We de- stroyed slavery and secession in one gigantic struggle. We assimilated races that were capable of grasping our institutions and our civilization, and, to some ex- tent, and after much labor and contention, we repelled and excluded races and individuals who were incapa- ble of assimilation. We conquered languages and hereditary prejudices and opinions which conflicted with our social and political system. We made edu- cation a birthright, and, through the Common Schools, endeavored to raise our entire population, native and naturalized, to a full realization of the obligations, the duties and the rewards of American citizenship. These are a very few references which, perhaps, may be termed historical. I now propose to offer brief, very brief and slight, statistical illustrations of the material progress of the United States, which will be compressed into two or three pages of this address, and which, though they cover only a fraction of the evidences of our resources and of our wealth, may nevertheless serve to indicate a development that, in the details, could hardly be comprehended. The area of the States and of the Territories is about 3,570,271 square miles. The surveyed public lands up to June 3Oth, 1889, embraced 604,508,986 acres. The unsurveyed public lands which include many thousands of acres granted to corporations, and, therefore, not available to the people, and many thou- sands of acres also which ought to be restored to the public domain up to the same period, were 833,882,163 acres. Our population, as nearly as it could be estimated in 1885, was 56,785,456, and it is confidently expected that the present census will show that it has increased to from 63,000,000 to 65,000,000 persons. The popu- lar vote in 1888 was 11,384,937, which, reckoning five and a half persons to each voter, then established a population of 62,617,133. In 1880 there were 10,013,826 enrolled scholars in the different States and Territories, and 6,118,331 pupils in actual attendance upon the public schools, where, thank God, our boys and girls can now usually receive patriotic inspiration from the flag of their country. In this connection the statistics of illiteracy for the year 1880 showed, even with the opportunities supplied by our laws, 4,923,451 persons who could not read, and 6,239,958 who could not write. The value of our manufactured products in 1880 was $5,369,667,706. In February, 1890, the esti- mated value of stock on farms, including horses, mules, cattle, sheep and swine, was $2,418,766,028. Our crop of cereals for 1889, limiting our view to corn, oats and wheat, was worth $1,112,191,544. Nine years ago since which time I have found no complete statement on the point our metallic and mineral pro- ducts aggregated in value about $591,659,931, and, at the same period, we had 162,160 miles of railroad, now largely increased. The amount of money invested in electrical industries alone was appraised in 1889 at $600,000,000. The total value of all the property in the country- that is, the gross value on January ist, 1890, was es- timated at $66,000,000,000, or at the rate of more than $ 1,000 to each inhabitant. We had then about 18,000,000 owners of land against 4,500,000 in France and 30,000 in England. In Scotland the proportion is even smaller. It may be interesting, while I am on this branch of my theme, to observe that from April, 1775, until the present year, we had sixteen wars, the aggregate forces engaged in which were 3,881,371. In the Civil War the men actually in the field on both sides numbered 2,772,388. These figures which cannot be dry and uninterest- ing to educated men and women although I believe them to be approximately correct, feebly suggest rather than display our material advancement. Without en- tering into an elaborate exposition of the topic to which they relate, they speak more eloquently and more definitely than an array of words, and they are ample to prove a degree of accumulation and availa- ble resources which might well tax the credulity of an Adam Smith or of a John Stuart Mill. When we consider that we now have forty-three States, including Norih Dakota and South Dakota, admitted November 3d, 1889, Montana, admitted No- vember 8th, 1889, and Washington, admitted Novem- ber nth, 1889, all hostages for the Union and yet preserving their sovereignty under the Constitution; that our republic is washed by two oceans, more than 3,000 miles apart, and connecting us with Europe, with Africa, with Asia, with Polynesia, and with Aus- tralasia; that we have expanded to such an extent through the Alaska purchase by William H. Seward, that San Francisco is near the geographical center of the Union; that the center of population is now far west of Cincinnati ; that we are about to have an ex- position of the industries and the productions of all nations in a city with over a million inhabitants, the site of which fifty years ago was barely known ; that commonwealths of heterogeneous origin, but of homo- geneous character and of cosmopolitan tendencies and ambitions, stretch, under our flag and Constitution, along the length of the Mississippi and across the continent ; that for our protection we need only a small army of 25,000 or 26,000 men, which, nevertheless, in any emergency, through our militia and volunteers, can be almost instantly made as numerous, and, pro- portionately, scarcely less effective than the disciplined armies of Europe; that we are rapidly constructing a powerful navy, and find the resources and the plant even of the extreme West adequate to the enterprise ; that we are engaged in immense works of drainage, excavation and irrigation, which possibly disturb and affect the equilibrium of natural forces below and above the earth ; that, in art, science and literature, we have won a marked and recognized distinction through- out the world ; that our multiplication, by means of inventions ; of comforts and luxuries, and, therefore, of necessities, transcends all previous experience; that the blending of blood and ideas among us is produc- ing a composite race of men which, in fertility of re- sources, in power of adaptation, and in physical .and IO mental energy and strength, is rapidly surpassing the expectations of philosophers, of statesmen and of po- litical economists; when all these uncolored though mighty truths are apprehended and coupled with the selected figures I have grouped together, what more need be said, from an utilitarian standard at any rate, of what we have accomplished in a hundred and four- teen years ? All that I have endeavored to depict, and perhaps have succeeded in depicting through the facts alone, has been done And now, in all these aspects having surpassed the dreams of genius, what of it ? is our experiment an assured success? My eulogy, if it may be called an eulogy, is ended. Let us honestly look at the reverse side of the picture. Comprehensively regarding the situation of the world, not excepting our own country, I doubt the Nineteenth Century that is, I would doubt it if I questioned the absolute sovereignty of God and the subordinate sovereignty of man. Optimism and not pessimism has been my life-long creed, and from this point of observation it may be justly said that, in a certain sense, all ages have been progressive, and that everywhere and in every epoch darkness and light have alternated in some of the elements of progress. This is true. But it is also true that there are some things, fundamental in civilization, which are not pro- gressive. The conception of a Personal God, the blunt directions of the moral law, the principles essential to honor and to integrity in individual, social and national life, are inelastic, fixed and immutable. There is no possible compromise between right and wrong. The ruts made by our first ancestors are those in which we must travel if we would keep the road. Now, I have said, with some reservations, that I doubt the Nineteenth Century. Why do I doubt it ? I am not here to deliver a moral or a theological lecture, but in strict relation to my subject, this question must be shortly answered. It has been stated that "some- times there is more truth in honest doubt than in all the creeds." Nevertheless, the doubt itself must be defined or there is no basis for criticism. Why then do I doubt the Nineteenth Century? Surely not be- cause of any want of intellectual activity, for in that respect it is unique and incomparable. Surely not be- cause of any deficiency in invention or discovery, for it has brought to light the locomotive, the telegraph, the sewing machine, the phonograph, and a host of expe- dients for abridging space, for drawing populations together, for extending trade, commerce and agricul- ture for diminishing labor and multiplying the muscu- lar power of man, for recording human feelings, human thoughts, human utterances, human acts, human achieve- ments, even human voices, for subduing, controlling, harnessing, so to speak, the most obdurate forces of nature. Surely not for want of ingenuity, of industry, of method, of system, for in all these respects it has capitalized the previous labors of humanity and marked the products with its own original stamps. Surely not because it has failed to explore the spheres of physics, of society, of morals, of theology, because in all these departments of investigation it has been bold, search- ing and penetrating beyond all possible comparison, and it has advanced theories and hypotheses more nu- merous than the years, the weeks, or even the clays of its existence. No! In all these respects, and in many others which might be added, I recognize although I do not inva- riably admire the effectiveness of the Nineteenth Cen- tury. It is unparalleled in many of its phases. Its addi- tions to human comforts, its extensions of human energy, its useful products in every direction, should be, as they are being, appropriated. Why, then, do I question the Nineteenth Century? My answer must be positive but, like every part of this address, in a logical or even in a literary sense, incomplete. I detest the Agnosticism of the Nineteenth Century I detest its casuistry I detest its substitutions of expediency for principle I detest its evasions of the terse, definite, moral law I detest its intellectual arrogance and pretension I detest its pretexts and its excuses for vice, for dishonesty, for blasphemy I detest its weak platitudes and its chop- logic for the benefit of the rich and its absurd and flimsy sentiment to unsettle the ignorant and the poor I detest its stupid deference, through sophistry and assumed refinement, to the worst and most enervating appetites and passions I detest its steady effort to mould stern Truth to the palliation or justification of practices and habits which corrupt politics, society, the family, the individual and the community alike. All these things I detest. Do you not recognize and detest them ? What less can I say about that which is detestable? Look at the practical results as they exist in per- sonal, social and political life. Realize for an instant the moral indenniteness and evasiveness, the selfishness, the rottenness, the lazi- ness, the vanity, the false pride, which, although they have always existed, are among the special growths of the Nineteenth Century. The question may well be tol- erated, speaking in a large and comprehensive sense are truth, faith, earnestness, love, duty, responsibility, subordination, left among men, or have they been slain? "Is life worth living?" was the interrogation of a modern philosopher, and, with other motives and objects, the interrogatory frequently recurs to those who have outlived all that was worth having in them- selves. These monstrous evils to a great degree developed - to some extent originated by the Nineteenth Century, have borne practical results. Do you comprehend the actual state of the Europe of to-day? It is a disturbed though a slumberous volcano. Its political institutions, modified through necessity or tempered by fear, are founded on feudalism and imperialism. Its uneducated and its poorer classes seek only and naturally for change through internationalism, through nihilism, through anarchy, through the obliteration of private rights, and through revolutions which, like Saturn, destroy their own children. They are kept down for the time, but only for the time, by armies maintained by discipline, by science, by arrogance. The aris- tocratic class has bred within itself until it is all manner and form and has discarded morality. To be sure, these propositions are not universally true there are exceptions, and many exceptions, to all general rules but they are true in the main. There are great men, great statesmen, great philoso- phers, great philanthropists, noble scions of ancient stocks, in Europe, who are earnestly striving to bring their discordant and unsettled populations under the sway of orderly progress; but Europe, as a whole, is no better than I have described, and its highest efforts in the direction of political amelioration are feeble imi- tations of American ideas, so disfigured as to be beyond recognition. -The privileged classes of Europe are to- day drawing upon American blood and American capital to recuperate physical degeneracy and to rebuild shat- tered fortunes and broken houses. In fact, although we have partly stemmed an Asiatic onslaught upon our territory and our industries, although we have devised some inadequate legislation to exclude paupers and criminals, we are to-day undergoing a European invasion. The irruption of Gengis Khan and his hordes upon the steppes of Russia was not more real or more ominous. Our public lands, our important industries, our mines, our commerce, our manufactures, are being absorbed, and trusts and con- solidations, which coil themselves with inflexible pur- pose about our limbs, are inspired and controlled by foreigners, not merely idlers and aristocrats, but men of nerve, of enterprise, of capital, who are yet our enemies and not our friends. What does all this mean? Is it a tribute to our institutions and our resources, or does it portend the audacity of desperation the ultimate conflict between the old and the new between Europe and America? I believe, fellow-citizens, that the oligarchies, the anarchies, the despotisms of the Old World will not go down without one final effort to suppress constitutional liberty; and that, flatter ourselves though we may, invoke the Monroe doctrine though we do, the time will come, and is rapidly approaching, when the civilized world will become American or our Republic will be destroyed. 15 We may insist on remaining fatuous and blind, but the indications of the unavoidable crisis are visible on every side, and indefinite postponement is not within the Providential order. You may dismiss, but I beg of you to remember my prognostications. We are justly rroud of our Native Sons and of our Native Daughters. There are those among them who will live to see whether these ideas are false or true. I say we are threatened from without, but what are we doing within? To my mind the superficial indica- tions of the day are against the permanence of our gov- ernment and of our form of civilization. I have used the term "superficial indications" advisedly, because I believe in God and in the people, and, notwithstanding all the omens of disaster, I have faith in the ultimate success of our system, not only upon this continent, but throughout the habitable globe. As in the analogies of the ocean or the atmosphere, the deeper currents of popular thought and of popular feeling are often below the surface and contrary to apparent movements and tendencies. The most flaunting appearances of the day, those which are the most distinct in society, in business and in politics, are against us, and through inertness, through a want of public spirit, through a deficiency in unselfish patriotism, through a tacit infidelity to American insti- tutions, we are co-operating with our enemies, external and internal. In this place and at this time I can only outline and recapitulate and leave the filling-in to yourselves. But let us not blink the facts. From one end of the Re- public to the other Labor and Capital, naturally allies, are 16 organized, antagonistic and mutually defiant. Capital aggregates and forms trusts and syndicates, which monopolize products and oppress the masses. Labor consolidates its forces and disturbs both production and distribution. Fortunes are created beyond the former "dreams of avarice," and having exhausted the pleasures of accumulation, Dives aspires to exclusive- ness, to privilege, to reactionary revolution. Too fre- quently he despises the equality of his own country, and transfers his wealth and his affections. Old men, who are imitated by the young, spend their last days in graduated sensuality, and arrogantly seek to buy their immortality and their happiness. The judiciary, dis- trusted, occasionally corrupt, are driven or led into alliances with monopoly or license. The public lands are seized in immense bodies through subsidies, through fraud and through collusion. Over-education without o industrial direction produces the parasite, the office- seeker, the hoodlum the licentious drones of metro- politan communities the bully and the beggar, united like the Siamese twins. Blatant demagogues assume the functions of leaders. The cities are crowded with tax-eaters and property-eaters. Bosses run municipal, sometimes State, never, so far, national politics, and the mere figure-heads of more obscure, but more pow- erful criminals behind them bleed alike their merce- naries and the public, and render fraud and dishonesty so respectable that criticism excites derision and de- generates into useless cant. Every subordinate depart- ment of Government is more or less tainted and infected. Even the punishment or the acquittal of persons accused of crime depends more upon influence and combination than upon facts and law. Official action is neither equal nor uniform, and is regulated by favoritism or con- trolled by money or power. Public institutions minis- ter to private greed, and their operations are falsified and their objects disregarded. Federal Senatorships are sold to the highest bidders without distinction of party and with no regard to qualifications. Men are placed in high positions who are less reputable and less useful than the horse that Nero converted into a consul. Divorces bear an undue proportion to mar- riages, and the diminution of the death rate is more than compensated by the frequency of births. The discipline of the family is superseded by insubordina- tion and premature self-assertion. Scheming takes the place of labor, tricks the place of honesty. The Almighty and the moral law are ignored. Intellect is purchased, submerged, driven into obscurity, or, by the reaction of disgust, turned into channels inimical to the public interests. The press more especially the metropolitan press fails in its duty caters to the worst appetites and passions invades the privacy of the family attacks reputation causelessly and wan- tonly permits itself to be subsidized represents in- dividual and corporate interests becomes a tool of wealth and of dishonorable ambition distorts, per- verts and seeks to control the proceedings in courts of justice fails in its great mission of generating while it represents public opinion. And when spasmodic and ill-conceived reforms are attempted, we find one class seeking to minimize plunder by antagonizing all public improvements, and another class using enterprise and improvement as a means of plunder; we find the sore occasionally cicatrized and covered by the scab, while the impure blood feeds the disease and induces new eruptions. i8 These are superficial but actual facts, which are disclosed and uncovered day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year. And all the time the masses of the American people work and eat and sleep in blissful unconsciousness and security. What wonder that the philosophical and thoughtful poet of our last celebration but one in the city where I live should have expressed the truth in stinging lines like these: "But when (oh, distant be the time!) Majorities in passion draw Insurgent swords to murder Law, And all the land is red with crime ; "Or nearer menace ! when the band Of feeble spirits cringe and plead To the gigantic strength of Greed, And fawn upon his iron hand ; "Nay, when the steps to pow'r are worn In hollows by the feet of thieves, And Mammom sits among the sheaves And chuckles while the reapers mourn "Then stay thy miracle; replace The broken throne, repair the chain, Restore the interrupted reign And veil again thy patient face." This invocation is the condensation of truth and the essence of true poetry. Of course, you will not unduly extend or exaggerate the views I have ventured to express with reference to the superficial evils which, if they were permitted to breed and eat into the body politic, might ultimately destroy our institutions. They are real, apparent, dan- gerous evils, the actual existence and extent of which you cannot fail to recognize. They are too conspicuous and obvious to be ignored. I have referred to them i 9 in terms which, however discursive and disconnected, sound strongly in my own ears. But please to remember that they represent only one phase and that an exterior phase of our condition. The deeper currents still exist and they harmonize with our blood, our faith, our re- spect for the home and for the family, our ambition for decency, our consciousness of the need of clean and wholesome trade, commerce, manufacture, agriculture and politics. The heart and the intellect of the masses are to-day sound and unpolluted. They have simply allowed themselves to be ignored or used and have been guilty of indifference, apathy and neglect. Re- lieved through the bounty of Providence from the struggle for mere existence, from the wearing competi- tions and sufferings which prevail in the dense popula tions of Europe, they have not stopped to consider that even their rich inheritance could not be forever wasted, and that fundamental law and principle could not for- ever be disregarded, without the reproduction of all those conditions which from the beginning of time have demoralized and disrupted monarchies, empires and republics. They have not been forced, through individual trials and experiences, to realize that there is absolutely no exemption from the operation of immu- table truth, and that the shifts, the devices, the casuis- tical reasoning, the sophistical evasion and pretenses, the temporary successes even, of men, in their efforts to have their own way and to substitute themselves for the Almighty, have strewn the path of history with failures and ruins. These facts and these reflections, it seems to me, are now brought home to us, and respect for the Founders of the Republic, the instinct of self-preservation, our 20 inherent love of the right and of the true, our obliga- tions to posterity, even to humanity at large, demand a swift, intelligent, bold and definite remedy. A free, educated people with the moral law in their hearts and with the ballot in their hands are, and of right ought to be, invincible. No evident emergency has ever arisen in our history that has not been fully met. It is the emergencies which are not evident that delude and paralyze good citizenship. I am quite aware that it may be considered that he who exposes disease should offer a satisfactory cure, but who can go beyond the lines of broad generaliza- tion in a restricted popular address, hastily prepared, and delivered in the midst of brilliant pageantry and patriotic rejoicings? I must not attempt to extend these observations, but I can, and I will tell you where, in my opinion, the remedy is to be found. It is in the people themselves, aroused to the necessities of this occasion, and acting under the Constitution and the laws. There is no cure for our evils either in senti- mentality or in disorder. Anarchy, nihilism, all the alien and domestic sects, which offer to purify our country by lawlessness or by patent medicines, are not worth a rush in America, and are in themselves dangers which it is our duty to control and extirpate. Believe me, fellow-citizens, you will never improve the system or the ideas of the fathers. They placed government on its only true foundation, and they trained their own generation to build on that foundation in strength, in symmetry and in beauty. Their work is indelible their precedents the only safe and perfect guide, as applicable to five hundred millions and to a complex and intricate network of relations and interests as to 2 I three millions and the comparative penury and sim- plicity of the last century. Let self-government, under our institutions, be real and constant, and all our problems will be settled. It is a plain and easy remedy to suggest, but it would compel radical alterations in our own conduct. To govern ourselves successfully we must love God and our neighbors, and that implies the intelligent study and the rigid performance of all our duties, to our fam- ilies, to our friends, to local and subordinate depart- ments of the State, to the State itself and to the Fed- eral Government. The fact is the people must reform themselves, or rather not so much reform themselves as reform their conduct. They must return that is the word to the principles and the methods in which their national existence and their prosperity originated. The public interests must be ever before them. Selfish absorption in private concerns, civic indifference, must be regarded as a crime. Every man must do his part, be it humble or great, in regulating and controlling every department of government. He must vote at the primaries, he must attend and participate in public meetings, he must faithfully exercise his right at the ballot-box. A corrupt "boss," a purchased dema- gogue, a selfish monopolist, a rotten politician, is sub- stantially a traitor, and it ought to be considered trea- sonable to commit the management of political affairs to such men, or to suffer them, even by mere inaction, to assume any political authority whatever. If merce- nary politicians, incompetent and tricky office holders, unfaithful judges the entire mass of men who dissipate or who purloin the earnings of their neighbors are too strong for the people, the sooner we know the fact the 22 better. But they are not too strong let the people arise like a giant refreshed by sleep and they would be instantly punished for their offenses or swept into merited obscurity. My whole deduction from the premises I have imperfectly laid down resolves itself into the proposi- tion that if we believe what we profess, if we have faith in our institutions, if we recognize God and the moral law, if we are true to ourselves, if we have not abandoned the rugged convictions of duty and of obli- gation self-government, after the manner of our ancestors and in conformity with our political system, will be made a solid and durable fact throughout the United States, and our theories and our practices be brought into at least approximate correspondence. The combined accumulations of all the individuals, trusts, syndicates and corporations in the country which are actually dangerous to our social and political life, do not represent one-twentieth of the value of all the property held by American citizens. They are successful because they are active and united, because they can buy and prostitute intelligence beyond their own, and because they are let alone and allowed to operate in mystery and in darkness, while good citizen- ship is worshiping its own Mammon in the distance and ignoring the flight of time and the fecundity of wrong. Am I not accurate, fellow-citizens ? Is it not essen- tial that, in some particulars, we reform ourselves and cease to delegate our powers or permit them to be usurped ? Let every voter, for one single year, inde- pendently and manfully do his part of the common labor, and inspired patriotism will see the beginning of the Golden Age. Oh! that we may be re-baptized into a pure Amer- icanism which is broad enough and liberal enough to take in and appropriate the best elements of the world ! Oh ! that we may fix our eyes upon the lofty standard of those who toiled and died that we micrht live ! Oh ! o for a great uprising of the people in unconquerable might and dignity, until every evil which stains and endangers our nation shall be swept away and disap- pear ! Then and the time is at hand unless all calcula- tions based on the intelligence and the integrity of the people are fallacious we shall see agriculture, com- merce, trade, manufacture, working hand in hand for a common object and testing their power against every disorganizing force we shall see the end of all par- tisan strifes which seek merely for the spoils we shall see mind, governed by integrity, supreme over every form of chicanery we shall see enforced decency and prosperity in individual, domestic, social and political life we shall see brains and honesty emancipated from the despotism of wealth and restored to influence and authority we shall see education directed to spe- cific ends and engaged in the definite work of civiliza- tion, making men producers and not parasites we shall see Labor and Capital, which have a common origin and a common obligation, blended into harmony, instead of antagonizing each other in protracted con- troversies we shall see human rights and property adequately protected we shall see the suppression of narrow sectarianism and of patent remedies for flaring wrongs we shall see God and the moral law asserted and obeyed we shall see the full development of healthy and proselytizing Americanism and we shall - 24 - pay our debt, not only to France by a visible gift, but to humanity by a flood of light from a permanent and regenerated Republic, whose Stars and Stripes shall be the converging point of hope and faith in the destiny of man. " O blessed Flag, sign of our precious Past, Triumphant Present, and our Future vast, Beyond starred blue and bars of sunset bright Lead us to higher realms of Equal Right ! Float on, in every lovely allegory, Kin to the eagle and the wind and light, Our hallowed, eloquent, beloved 'Old Glory.'" Photomount Pamphlet Binder Gaylord Bros., Inc. Makers Stockton, Calif. PAT. JAN. 21. 1908 930972 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY